The newly exposed appendix to John Durham’s report paints a portrait of a campaign willing to weaponize national security narratives for political gain. In the intercepted messages, Leonard Benardo allegedly relays Julianne Smith’s view that exploiting the Russia storyline would both distract from Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and deliver a post-convention boost, with the FBI expected to intensify the drama. Even if the emails were originally captured by Russian cyber operations, U.S. intelligence deemed them serious enough to circulate at the highest levels just as Crossfire Hurricane was launched.

What lingers now is less about 2016 than about trust. If a major presidential campaign and sympathetic officials were prepared to stoke an unproven collusion narrative, how many voters were manipulated in the process—and how many institutions quietly went along? The controversy may never fully resolve, but its shadow still hangs over every “bombshell” investigation that follo