Nine Years After Russiagate, Obama’s Role Remains Sealed

This week, the long-awaited so-called Russiagate binder was finally released—though not to the public, only to select media. As expected, the wait wasn’t worth it. The contents, shared by The Federalist and Just the News, who deserve credit for publishing the full contents rather than hoarding them for exclusive coverage, amounted to little more than a bureaucratic housekeeping exercise. Some loose ends were tied up. Some previously known details were confirmed. But there was nothing genuinely new, let alone revelatory.

Most telling, however, is what was missing. The binder’s 700 pages revolve almost entirely around the usual cast of characters—Christopher Steele, Stefan Halper, Andrew McCabe—names already long associated with the Russiagate fraud. To be clear, these are not good people. They committed serious misconduct and worse. But their involvement is already well documented. The real story is who isn’t in the binder.

The two people most responsible for the Russiagate hoax—Hillary Clinton, who concocted it, and Barack Obama, who weaponized it—are barely acknowledged, if at all. And in many ways, their absence is the binder’s most revealing feature.