FBI Director Kash Patel has submitted numerous pages of declassified documents to Congress pertaining to the bureau’s ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ investigation, which focused on unfounded claims of collusion between Trump and Russia, following an executive order from President Donald Trump that mandated their declassification.
Almost 700 pages of these documents, titled the ‘Crossfire Hurricane Redacted Binder’ and dated April 9, 2025, have been exclusively acquired by Just the News.
The action taken by Trump and Patel pertains to a March executive order focused on finalizing the declassification of documents associated with the FBI’s investigation into Trump-Russia connections—an initiative that had been obstructed by Trump’s own Justice Department in January 2021, during the concluding days of his initial term.
This follows four years of opposition from the Department of Justice and the FBI during the Biden administration, under the leadership of former Attorney General Merrick Garland and former FBI Director Christopher Wray, who declined to disclose the documents.
The Crossfire Hurricane investigation conducted by the FBI, which focused on then-candidate and subsequently President Trump in 2016 and thereafter, was initiated due to unverified claims of collusion with the Russian government.
Subsequently, it faced significant criticism as a politically motivated initiative by certain factions within the intelligence and law enforcement sectors aimed at destabilizing Trump’s presidency.
Trump’s directive from March is named ‘Immediate Declassification of Materials Pertaining to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane Inquiry.’ In this directive, he alludes to his previous, unsuccessful effort to declassify the identical materials on the last full day of his presidency during his initial term.
I have concluded that all materials mentioned in the Presidential Memorandum dated January 19, 2021, are no longer classified, as he stated while announcing the directive.
In January 2021, Trump issued an order that mentioned a collection of documents pertaining to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which he claimed was provided to the White House by the Justice Department at his request on December 30, 2020.
On January 19, 2021, Trump stated, “I officially declassify the remaining documents in the binder. This constitutes my conclusive decision regarding the declassification review, and I have instructed the Attorney General to carry out the redactions suggested in the FBI’s submission dated January 17, and to provide the White House with a suitably redacted version.”
In a memo from 2021, Trump stated that he had concluded the materials should be declassified to the fullest extent feasible. Nevertheless, the FBI, led by Wray, indicated in mid-January 2021 that it had pinpointed the sections it deemed essential to withhold from public release.
At that time, Trump stated that he would agree to the redactions suggested for ongoing classification by the FBI and instructed that the remaining documents be declassified and released by the Justice Department.
The Justice Department obstructed Trump’s last request for declassification after his departure from the White House, thereby preventing it from occurring.
A memorandum from Mark Meadows, who was the Chief of Staff at the White House at the time, stated on the morning of January 20, 2021, that the Justice Department was required to disclose the binder of declassified documents concerning the problematic Trump–Russia investigation, subject to a review under the Privacy Act.
Nevertheless, the Department of Justice led by Garland and the Federal Bureau of Investigation under Wray did not disclose the records, despite the declassification order issued by Trump and the last-minute directive from Meadows.
A comprehensive two-year inquiry conducted by Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of criminal collusion between Trump and Russia. Furthermore, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz pointed out significant deficiencies in the FBI’s investigation, notably its dependence on a dossier that he characterized as having a “central and essential” role in the FBI’s politically motivated surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
The report was assembled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, who was contracted by the opposition research company Fusion GPS.
A later report from the newly appointed special counsel of the Justice Department, John Durham, determined that ‘neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community seems to have had any concrete evidence of collusion in their records at the start of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.’
Durham also stated that the FBI overlooked the reality that investigators were unable to substantiate any significant claims made in the Steele dossier at any point before, during, or after the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
Notable Democrats, including current Senator Adam Schiff from California, persisted in disseminating the unfounded claims through the media regardless.
