Crossfire Hurricane was the code name for the counterintelligence investigation undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from July 31, 2016, to May 17, 2017, into links between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia and "whether individuals associated with Trump's presidential campaign were coordinating, wittingly or unwittingly, with the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election". Trump was not personally under investigation until May 2017, when his firing of FBI director James Comey raised suspicions of obstruction of justice, which triggered the Mueller investigation.
The investigation was officially opened on July 31, 2016, initially due to information on Trump campaign member George Papadopoulos's early assertions of Russians possessing damaging material on Trump's rival candidate Hillary Clinton which the Russians offered to anonymously release as assistance to the Trump campaign. From late July to November 2016, the joint effort between the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Agency (NSA) examined evidence of Russian meddling in the presidential election. The FBI's team enjoyed a large degree of autonomy within the broader interagency probe.
The FBI's work was taken over on May 17, 2017, by the Special Counsel investigation of 2017–2019, which eventually resulted in the Mueller Report. Mueller concluded that Russian interference occurred in a "sweeping and systematic fashion" and that there were substantial links between Russians and the Trump campaign, but the evidence available to investigators did not establish that the Trump campaign had "conspired or coordinated" with the Russian government.
Trump and his allies repeatedly alleged that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened on false pretenses for political purposes. A subsequent review done by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz, released in redacted form in December 2019, found no evidence that political bias against Trump tainted the initiation of the investigation, but did find that the FBI made 17 errors or omissions in its FISA warrant applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) for surveillance of former Trump aide Carter Page.
On January 23, 2020, two of the four FISA warrants were declared invalid by the Department of Justice. James E. Boasberg, a Washington D.C. federal judge, also said that surveillance collected against Page lacked a legal basis. As a result of this and Attorney General William Barr's beliefs in conspiracy theories about the origins of Crossfire Hurricane, Barr assigned John Durham, the United States attorney for the District of Connecticut, to lead an investigation into Crossfire Hurricane's origins.
On August 19, 2020, a former FBI attorney pleaded guilty to making a false statement stemming from his alteration of an email connected to one of the FISA warrant applications. On October 19, 2020, Barr appointed Durham to be a Special Counsel, elevating the form of the investigation, in this probe. Upon release of his final report, Durham did not recommend charges against any new individuals or recommend wholesale changes to how the FBI conducts controversial investigations. However, he criticized the FBI and Justice Department, stating that they "failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report" and argued that a full investigation never should have been launched, despite the December 2019 probe by the Justice Department inspector general, which found that sufficient evidence existed to launch the investigation.
Origins After working on the Ben Carson 2016 presidential campaign as a foreign policy adviser, in early February 2016 George Papadopoulos, codenamed "Crossfire Typhoon" by the FBI, left the Carson campaign. That same month, he moved to London to begin working for the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP), with which he had been associated for several months. On March 6, he accepted an offer to work with the Trump campaign. As part of his duties with the LCILP, on March 12 he traveled to the Link Campus University in Rome to meet officials with the university. While on this trip, on March 14 he met Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud and informed the professor about his joining the Trump campaign. On March 21, the Trump campaign told the Washington Post that Papadopoulos was one of five foreign policy advisers for the Trump campaign. Mifsud took more interest in Papadopoulos, and met him in London on March 24 with a Russian woman posing as "Putin's niece".
Mifsud traveled to Moscow in April 2016, and upon his return he told Papadopoulos that Russian government officials were in possession of "thousands of emails" that could be politically damaging to Hillary Clinton. According to reporting by Malta Today about FBI records, Mifsud told the FBI in his February 2017 interviews that he had no advanced knowledge of Russia having emails from the Democratic National Committee, and did not make any offers to Papadopolous. On May 6, Papadopoulos met Alexander Downer, the Australian High Commissioner to Britain in a London bar, and told him about the Clinton emails over drinks. After WikiLeaks released hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails on July 22, the Australian government on July 26 advised American authorities of the encounter between Downer and Papadopoulos. Receipt of this information spurred the FBI's launch of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation on July 31.Multiple sources:
In late July 2016, according to his May 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, CIA director John Brennan convened a group of officials from the CIA, NSA and FBI to investigate Russian interference. In a July 2017 interview, Brennan described this group effort as a "fusion cell". According to his later testimony, Brennan gave the FBI leads involving "contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign" that were beyond the CIA's mandate to pursue. He said this information "served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred".
In March 2017, FBI director James Comey confirmed in a congressional hearing that the FBI had been investigating Russian interference as part of its counterintelligence mission. He further confirmed that the probe included links between Trump campaign members and the Russian government, and "whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts". Comey added in a June Senate hearing that President Trump had not been personally under investigation until after Comey's departure from the FBI.
In February 2018, the Nunes memo, written by staff for U.S. representative Devin Nunes, stated: "The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok",Multiple sources: rather than the Steele dossier as asserted by, among others, President Donald Trump, Nunes, and several Fox News hosts such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. A rebuttal memo by Democrats in the House Intelligence Committee confirmed that the investigation was opened on July 31, 2016, and stated that Christopher Steele's memos "played no role in launching the counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference and links to the Trump campaign". The counter-memo added that the FBI investigative team only received the Steele dossier in mid-September, "because the probe's existence was so closely held within the FBI". The New York Times reported in April 2019 that investigators received the dossier on September 19, 2016.
In April 2018, the House Intelligence Committee, then in Republican control, released a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, as well as the American response to it. The report corroborated that the FBI opened its counterintelligence probe in late July 2016 "following the receipt of derogatory information about foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos".
In June 2018, the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General released a report on its counter-investigation into the FBI's investigation of the Hillary Clinton email controversy. This report stated: "On July 31, 2016, just weeks after the conclusion of the Midyear investigation [into Clinton], the FBI opened its investigation of Russian interference in the ongoing presidential election [...] the Russia investigation, which touched upon the campaign of then candidate Trump."
The Mueller Report of the Special Counsel investigation, completed in March 2019, states that the Papadopoulos information about Russia having acquired damaging material on Clinton "prompted the FBI on July 31, 2016, to open an investigation into whether individuals associated with the Trump Campaign were coordinating with the Russian government in its interference activities".
A review of Crossfire Hurricane done by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz resulted in a report released in December 2019. The report stated that the following information from a Friendly Foreign Government triggered the investigation: George Papadopoulos "suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama)."
Horowitz's review also found that the FBI electronic communication opening the investigation into Papadopoulos said that Papadopoulos "made statements indicating that he is knowledgeable that the Russians made a suggestion to the Trump team that they could assist the Trump campaign with an anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to the Clinton campaign."
The "Crossfire Hurricane" codename was taken from the opening line of "Jumpin' Jack Flash", a Rolling Stones song. Trump's 2016 campaign had prominently featured another Rolling Stones song, "You Can't Always Get What You Want", at rallies and at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
Investigations
The FBI's concerns became clear after Brennan shared intelligence about Russian interference with Comey in mid-August 2016. The FBI investigation, code named Crossfire Hurricane, had a large degree of independence from inter-agency efforts to investigate Russian interference. According to an April 2018 House Intelligence Committee report, a "fusion cell on Russian election interference, which was analysts from the CIA, FBI, and NSA [...] operated through the election". The report also wrote that the fusion cell itself stood down in mid-November 2016.
After receiving the Papadopoulos information from the Australian government, the Office of Inspector General reported that "...the initial investigative objective of Crossfire Hurricane was to determine which individuals associated with the Trump campaign may have been in a position to have received the alleged offer of assistance from Russia."(p. 59) The Senate Intelligence Committee took this to mean the Crossfire Hurricane team initially focused attention on confirming "'exactly who Papadopoulos spoke with' as 'it is implausible that Papadopoulos did not' share the offer with members of the Trump campaign."
Crossfire Hurricane initially targeted several people connected to the Trump campaign: Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Roger Stone.