The Reveal: The Public is Finally Learning How Democrats Pulled Off the Greatest Political Trick in History

By: Jonathan Turley | August 1, 2025

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2025/08/01/the-reveal-the-public-is-finally-learning-how-democrats-pulled-off-the-greatest-political-trick-in-history/

Below is my column in Fox.com on the release of the last declassified material on the origins of the Russian collusion investigation. After the release, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote in the New York Times insisted that they never relied on the Steele dossier. The column only reaffirmed the level of dishonesty and duplicity that marked their tenures in office. (The Times still printed this claim despite being demonstrably untrue).

The documents quote Brennan in overruling career analysts and intervening to include the dossier in the intelligence assessment. Moreover, the column echoes the media spin that the investigation was about an attempted Russian interference while dismissing the collusion claim that consumed much of the first term. (Even after leaving office, Brennan continued to push the false collusion claim). Both countries routinely hacked each other’s emails — that is why we have the most recent incriminating evidence on the Clinton campaign’s funding and spreading the false collusion claims. We hacked their emails. We have also regularly tried to influence the elections of other nations. The key to the dossier and the Russian investigation was the allegation of collusion and the central role of the Clinton campaign in creating the narrative that Trump was a Russian asset.

Here is the column:

This week, Washington was rocked by new releases in the declassification of material related to the origins of the Russian investigation. The material shows further evidence of a secret plan by the Clinton campaign to use the FBI and media to spread a false claim that Donald Trump was a Russian asset. With this material, the public is finally seeing how officials and reporters set into motion what may be the greatest hoax ever perpetrated in American politics. There never was a Russian collusion conspiracy. This is the emerging story of the real Russian conspiracy to manufacture a false narrative that succeeded in devouring much of the first term of the Trump Administration.

What is emerging in these documents is a political illusion carefully constructed by government officials and a willing media. The brilliance of the trick was getting reporters to buy into the illusion; to own it like members of an audience called to the stage by an illusionist.

The effort closely followed the three steps of the classic magic trick: The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige.

The Pledge

The trick began with the pledge, the stage where the public is set up by showing ordinary events with the suggestion that it is about to transform into something extraordinary. The key is to make something seem real that is actually not.

The Clinton campaign delivered the pledge by secretly funding the Steele dossier, using Fusion GPS and a former British spy named Christopher Steele, to create a salacious account of Trump being an agent of Russia. New emails state that Hillary Clinton personally approved the operation.

It was Elias who was the general counsel to the Clinton presidential campaign when it funded the infamous Steele dossier and pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was indicted but acquitted in a criminal trial.)

During the campaign, a few reporters asked about the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement in the Steele Dossier. After the election, journalists discovered that the payments for the Steele dossier were hidden as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie under Elias.

When New York Times reporter Ken Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”

Later, John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, appeared before Congress for questioning on the Steele dossier. Podesta emphatically denied any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.

The FEC ultimately sanctioned the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee over the handling of the funding of the dossier through his prior firm.

The Turn

The next step is the turning point when the ordinary becomes something extraordinary. This required the involvement of the government. The Clinton team worked behind the scenes to feed the dossier to the FBI. It would be the criminal investigation that would transform the ordinary accounts, like Carter Page speaking in Moscow, into an elaborate Russian plot. Even though the FBI was warned early on that Page was a CIA asset, not a Russian asset, the Clinton team found eager officials in the Obama Administration to assist in the illusion.

The newly disclosed evidence shows how the turn was made. In July 2016, Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s “plan” to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” The original Russia investigation — funded by Clinton’s campaign — was launched days after this briefing.

Months later, it would be Brennan who overruled his own CIA analysts in his ordering of a second last-minute assessment at the end of the Obama Administration in support of the Russian allegations. It would help make the turn with the all-consuming Russian investigation that would follow.

Career analysts were not buying the turn. They objected that the reliance on the Steele dossier “ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.” One CIA analyst told investigators that “[Brennan] refused to remove it, and when confronted with the dossier’s main flaws, [Brennan] responded, ‘Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?’”

That is the key to the turn; it needs only to be enough to fool the audience.

The Prestige

The final stage is called the Prestige, where the magician faces the toughest part of the trick. As explained in the 2006 movie “The Prestige,” the viewer is “looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled.” However, “making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back.”

The difference is that this trick was designed to derail Trump and it worked. In the end, however, the Special Counsel and Inspector General both rejected the Russian collusion claims. The public then reelected Trump. Now, the prestige may be revealed by the CIA.

Reports indicate that the CIA is about to declassify material showing that foreign sources were also in on the trick. The information reportedly indicates that foreign sources were aware of the move to create a Russian collusion scandal and expected that the FBI would play a role in the plan. That was before the bureau launched its controversial Crossfire Hurricane probe. One source said the foreign intelligence predicted the move “with alarming specificity.”

The most recently declassified material shows that the Russian actors in 2016 hacked emails from the Open Society Foundations, formerly known as the Soros Foundation. The emails reveal a broader network of activists and allies who were aware of the Clinton conspiracy.

Leonard Bernardo, who was the regional director for Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations, explained that “during the first stage of the campaign, due to lack of direct evidence, it was decided to disseminate the necessary information through the FBI-affiliated…from where the information would then be disseminated through leading U.S. publications.”

Bernardo added, “Julie (Clinton Campaign Advisor) says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later, the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”

The media (including the Washington Post and New York Times, which won Pulitzer prizes for reporting on the debunked claims) are apoplectic in dismissing these disclosures. The last thing they will do is report on how they helped sell a political hoax. The problem is that they never said it was a trick. They said it was the truth. That is why they cannot honestly cover the story. To do so would not be coverage, it would be a confession.

It appears that everyone was in on the trick: the U.S. government, the media, even foreign governments. The only chumps were the American people. Now they are about to see how it was done.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”