There has been a surge in posts on the dark web concerning election interference in the first two months of the year, the "vast majority" of which reference the U.S. presidential election and were written in Russian, according to analysts at NordVPN.

The virtual private network firm found that in 2022, there were 26 such discussions on the hidden forums, but it increased to 101 last year—a rise of nearly 400 percent. In January and February alone, the company traced 35 discussions.

Last year, John Durham, a special prosecutor for the Department of Justice (DOJ), concluded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should never have opened its investigation of alleged collusion by then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and Russia in late July of 2016.

Now, multiple credible sources tell Public and Racket that the United States Intelligence Community (IC), including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), illegally mobilized foreign intelligence agencies to target Trump advisors long before the summer of 2016.

China, Russia and Iran all sought to meddle in the 2022 U.S. elections, using covert manipulation operations and hidden online influence efforts to misinform and try to sway voters, according to a newly declassified intelligence community report.

British intelligence expressed skepticism about the FBI's investigation into the Donald Trump campaign's alleged ties to Russia in 2016, and eventually became so concerned it stopped cooperating, according to evidence made public in Special Counsel John Durham's recent report.

Durham released his 300+ page report on the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion probe on Monday, representing the culmination of years of investigations. That report excoriated the FBI for pursuing the investigation without possessing any significant evidence of wrongdoing.

The Washington Post issued a series of corrections on stories published during the Russiagate saga, a direct result of reporting from the Twitter Files by independent journalist Matt Taibbi.

In January, Taibbi drew attention to Hamilton 68, a "dashboard" that purportedly monitored Russian bot activity and was frequently cited by top Democrats and the media in the height of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation. But behind the scenes, Twitter executives trashed Hamilton 68 and deliberated over whether they should publicly rebuke the program. 

Among the most troubling conclusions in special counsel John Durham’s Russiagate report is that the FBI — even as it relied on Clinton-campaign-funded opposition research against Donald Trump that it failed to verify — ignored strongly supported intelligence that Hillary Clinton was intentionally smearing Trump as a Putin puppet.

To my mind, Durham is being too kind.

Observers and political analysts have commented on the long-awaited report of special counsel John Durham, which looked into the purported scheme to link former president Donald Trump to Russia in 2016, with some saying the report exonerated him in a way.

Special counsel John Durham’s report released Monday details his investigation of a purported effort by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign to tie Donald Trump to Russia but which Durham concludes “did not, all things considered, amount to a provable criminal offense.”

Durham reveals in a footnote that he interviewed the former secretary of State in May 2022 as part of his investigation.