Democrat super lawyer behind Russia collusion dossier now sees Iran interference intel as ‘big lie’

The Clinton campaign lawyer who helped fund British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier pushing baseless claims of Trump-Russia collusion in 2016 joined other Democrats in denying confirmed Iranian election influence efforts in 2020 and 2024 aimed at denigrating President Donald Trump, calling it a “Big Lie.”

Just the News published a story titled “Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with U.S.” late Friday night. In the early morning hours of Saturday, Trump shared the Just the News article and its full headline on Truth Social shortly after releasing his video announcing strikes against Iran.

A cadre of Democrats — led by former Hillary Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias — and other Trump opponents soon sought to deny that Iran had meddled in the U.S. presidential elections of 2020 and 2024 in an effort to undermine Trump’s candidacies, despite even the Biden Administration intelligence community and Justice Department saying that is what the Iranian regime had done.

Elias on Saturday shared a screenshot of Trump’s Truth Social post about Iranian election influence efforts in 2020 and 2024 and dismissed these facts as “the next Big Lie.”

“The next Big Lie is to taking [sic] shape right in front of us,” Elias said. “Donald Trump will try to use this to assert illegal and unconstitutional powers over the 2026 elections.”

Elias has a long history of peddling baseless anti-Trump material

Elias played a key role in the genesis of the Steele Dossier and in pushing baseless Trump-Russia collusion claims in 2016, despite dismissing Iranian election influence efforts as a “Big Lie.”

Trump had also issued a March 2025 executive order on “Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court” — where he singled out Elias.

“Lawyers and law firms that engage in actions that violate the laws of the United States or rules governing attorney conduct must be efficiently and effectively held accountable,” Trump wrote, adding, “Recent examples of grossly unethical misconduct are far too common. For instance, in 2016, Marc Elias, founder and chair of Elias Law Group LLP, was deeply involved in the creation of a false ‘dossier’ by a foreign national designed to provide a fraudulent basis for Federal law enforcement to investigate a Presidential candidate in order to alter the outcome of the Presidential election. Elias also intentionally sought to conceal the role of his client — failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — in the dossier.”

A federal district court judge blocked the executive order.

Special Counsel Durham’s report concluded that “the FBI ignored the fact that at no time before, during, or after Crossfire Hurricane were investigators able to corroborate a single substantive allegation in the Steele dossier reporting.”

Durham’s special counsel inquiry further undercut the dossier’s credibility and resulted in indictments against Steele’s primary source, Igor Danchenko, as well as against Elias’s former Perkins Coie law partner, Michael Sussmann, with whom Elias worked closely in 2016. Both Danchenko and Sussmann were found not guilty.

The Steele dossier was used by the FBI in FISA warrants targeting Carter Page and underpinned a key judgment in the 2016 ICA on Russian meddling, but Steele and Fusion also pushed dossier claims to the media during the 2016 election.

When Elias was asked whether he knew that Fusion sent Steele to talk to media outlets during 2016, Elias testified to Congress in 2017 that he was “aware that he [Steele] talked to media outlets in that time period” and admitted that he knew about the meetings before they happened.

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said in 2017 that he had authorized Elias to hire a firm to dig up dirt on Trump’s connections with Russia and said Elias periodically briefed the Clinton campaign about the dirt that Fusion (and therefore Steele) had allegedly dug up.

Perkins Coie was paid more than $12 million between 2016 and 2017 for its work representing Clinton and the DNC. According to Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson, Fusion was paid $50,000 per month from Perkins Coie. Elias testified it was $60,000 each month. Fusion claimed that it paid Steele $168,000 for his work. Perkins Coie claimed Fusion approached them in March 2016 while knowing that Perkins Coie represented Clinton’s campaign.

Fusion co-founders Simpson and Peter Fritsch wrote in their 2019 book that they met with Elias in April 2016 and that Elias wanted “deep research on Trump.”

Fritsch said he told Elias, “We think you guys will really want to pay attention to the Russia angle.” The authors wrote that “it was obvious from Elias’s reaction that the Russia element was new to him” and that “this angle was all new to Elias, and he loved it.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s August 2020 report said that “Elias told Fusion GPS to report only to him, so Fusion GPS’s communications could be solely with a lawyer and thus covered by attorney-client privilege.”

The Federal Election Commission ruled in 2022 there was “probable cause” to believe Hillary for America and the DNC violated federal laws by “misreporting the purpose of certain disbursements” and fined them.

The FEC said the DNC paid $849,407 and the Clinton campaign paid $175,000 to Perkins Coie for what was alleged in a complaint to be “opposition research done by Fusion.” The Clinton campaign falsely reported the purpose of all those payments as “legal services” while the DNC reported the purpose of most of those payments as “legal and compliance consulting.”

DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz’s 2019 report noted that “with Fusion GPS’s authorization” in late September 2016, Steele traveled to D.C. and met with “numerous persons outside the FBI to discuss the intelligence he had obtained.” These included meetings with Elias at his D.C. office, DOJ official Bruce Ohr, and others. Steele later met with State Department officials such as Kathleen Kavalec and Jonathan Winer.

Steele has said in legal filings that he met with numerous reporters in 2016 “at Fusion’s instruction.”

Elias told Congress in 2017 that he had seen “some” of the dossier “but not all of it” during the 2016 campaign. He said he started getting briefing on Steele’s findings, either in hard copy, orally, or in person, in late June 2016 or early July 2016, and he likely first heard Steele’s name in early July 2016 from one of Fusion’s founders.

When discussing what sort of information from Steele and Fusion he passed along to the Clinton campaign, Elias said, “If I received information and it was useful and it was verifiable and it was information that I felt comfortable with, then it went in one bucket. If it was information that wasn’t, it wasn’t.”

Elias testified in the Sussmann case in 2022 that “I provided Fusion direction on the research and information I thought would help me perform my job. … On some occasions, Fusion’s work was distilled and incorporated into my judgments about legal issues, while in other instances, I shared the results of Fusion’s work with my clients.”

Jake Sullivan told the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 that he was in meetings where Elias briefed the campaign on opposition research, claiming, “Marc wears a tremendous number of hats, so I wasn’t sure who he was representing. … I sort of thought he was, you know, just talking to us as, you know, a fellow traveler … in the campaign effort.”

Mook told the Senate Intelligence Committee that “counsel [Elias] starting in the summer [of 2016] had briefed him” along with Sullivan, Tony Podesta, Jennifer Palmieri, and others on “pieces of the reporting” in the dossier.

Palmieri spoke to the Senate about the Elias briefings, saying, “He had reports. … Some of the things that I have read are in the dossier I had heard about from Marc, including the famous encounter at the hotel.”

Mook testified that he, Sullivan, Palmieri, and Podesta all approved pushing baseless Alfa Bank claims to the media after Mook was alerted to the claims by Elias. Mook said Clinton then personally approved pushing the false Trump-Russia claims to the press.

Durham said members of the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS, and Perkins Coie all played a coordinated role in pushing collusion claims and that Elias was part of the “joint venture” in 2016. Sussmann and Elias worked for Perkins at the time, and Fusion pushed Alfa Bank claims, too.

The Clinton campaign dropped its last-minute “October Surprise” on Halloween 2016 — a story about Trump and Alfa Bank.

An investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller ultimately “did not establish” any criminal Trump-Russia collusion. DOJ watchdog Horowitz found huge flaws with the FBI’s investigation, criticizing the “central and essential” role of the dossier in the FBI’s politicized surveillance of former Trump campaign associate Carter Page.

Elias' history of alleged campaign law violations

Elias, who helped Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign fund Steele’s debunked anti-Trump dossier and helped spread baseless collusion claims, had hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn had hired Steele in 2016.

The Federal Election Commission levied a fine of more than $100,000 against the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign over an investigation into alleged misreporting of spending related to the now-infamous Steele dossier. Politico reported that "In a letter addressing one of the complaints, the commission said it dismissed allegations against Marc Elias — who was then an attorney at Perkins Coie and is now the namesake of his own firm — and the law firm itself, Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele himself, and other allegations against the DNC over impermissible contributions from foreign nationals."

The Iranian regime sought to undermine Trump’s reelection bid in 2020, with Joe Biden emerging victorious, then Iran doubled down in 2024 through a host of election meddling efforts and even assassination attempts in 2024.

Trump won the latter election. Israel and the U.S. soon struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear weapons program last summer, and the U.S. and the Israelis launched a joint attack early Saturday morning against Tehran, killing Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei.

Elias did not respond to a request for comment sent to him through his Elias Law Group.

Trump foes deny that Iran meddled in 2020 and 2024 electons

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., also responded to Trump's sharing the Just the News article by claiming on X that “Trump sending our sons and daughters to war because he still can’t accept that he lost 2020 election!” Neither the article nor the post by Trump claimed that the U.S. was going to war with Iran because of Iranian election meddling.

George Conway — an anti-Trump commentator, the former husband of Trump ally Kellyanne Conway, and a Democratic primary candidate for a NYC-based congressional seat — said of Trump’s post about Iran’s election influence efforts that “this is psychotic.”

Timothy Snyder, a historian and strident Trump critic, said on X that “in 2020 Iran did try to interfere with the presidential election” but, without noting that the next part of his assessment contradicted conclusions by U.S. intelligence, also argued that “the Iranian operation in 2020 was designed to help Donald Trump get elected.”

Leftwing online influencer Brian Tyler Cohen also referred to Iran’s election influence efforts from 2020 and 2024 as being Trump’s “insane conspiracy theories about how Iran meddled in the election.”

Leftist Tiktok influencer Aaron Parnas shared a screenshot of Trump’s Truth Social post in an effort to cast doubt on Iranian election meddling, tweeting that “following the strikes in Iran, the American President posted an article suggesting unverified claims that Iran meddled in the American election in 2020 to stop him.”

Parnas also said on Instagram that “Donald Trump amplified articles suggesting that Iran interfered with the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections to hurt Donald Trump. Those claims are unverified.”

Conspiracy theories abound on the left

Former Rep. Denver Riggleman, an ex-Republican who was a staffer on the Capitol Jan. 6 riot committee, also sought to cast doubt on Iranian election meddling. Riggleman, who tried to help Hunter Biden’s legal team in its efforts to cast doubt on the laptop belonging to Joe Biden’s son, tweeted that Trump remarking on the Iranian election influence efforts was an example of “fabricating foreign interference to follow the 2020-2021 conspiracy theory playbook.”

The Daily Beast published an article about Trump’s post on Iranian election meddling titled “Trump Pushes Crackpot Election Theory as Bonkers War Excuse.” The article did not attempt to back up the article’s claim that Iranian election meddling was a “crackpot election theory” and the story itself admitted that “Iran has a long history of attempted election interference, and charges were brought against Iranians for efforts in both 2020 and 2024.”

Wired also claimed that Trump had “posted misinformation about Iran interfering with U.S. elections in 2020 and 2024.”

The Intercept contended that Trump was “amplifying without evidence unsubstantiated claims that Iran interfered in the 2020 election.”

A story published on the far-left Daily Kos claimed that Trump was "adding Iran to the cabal of conspirators who, in his pathological paranoia, he thinks were plotting against him."

The far-left Occupy Democrats group also said on Facebook that Iranian election influence efforts in 2020 and 2024 were actually nothing but Trump’s “longstanding, baseless election interference fantasy.”

Leftwing blogger Marcy Wheeler — who goes by “Empty Wheel” on X — also sought to cast doubt on the idea that Iranian election meddling efforts in 2020 were designed to undermine Trump’s candidacy by tweeting, “Fact check: The Iranian intervention in 2020 was actually targeted at suppressing voters of color (but it cleverly shielded itself behind fake Proud Boy avatars).”

Karen Piper, a leftwing author, tweeted that Iran’s election interference efforts were just “election conspiracies.” Bill Madden, a leftwing activist and songwriter, tweeted about the supposedly “BULLSHIT claims of Iran interfering with the 2020 and 2024 elections.” Eva Golinger — a lawyer, leftwing activist, and a defender of former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez — also sought to cast doubt on Iranian election meddling, tweeting, “First Venezuela, now Iran. Next they will be saying it was Cuba.”

George Szamuely, the host of a leftwing show called The Gaggle, also claimed on X that Trump’s highlighting of Iranian election interference efforts was “fact-free nonsense.”

Iran used "Proud Boys" hoax and other efforts to undermine Trump in 2020

Iranian intelligence sought to undermine Trump’s reelection bid in 2020 through a variety of election influence efforts. Microsoft assessed in September 2020 that a cyber actor dubbed “Phosphorus, operating from Iran, has continued to attack the personal accounts of people associated with the Donald J. Trump for President campaign.”

Then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and then-FBI Director Christopher Wray held an October 2020 press conference where they warned that Iran had gained access to U.S. voter registration information, with Ratcliffe warning Iran was trying to harm Trump’s candidacy.

Ratcliffe explained: “We have already seen Iran sending spoofed emails designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest, and damage President Trump.”

A senior U.S. intelligence officer told The Washington Examiner in October 2020 that “the Iranians follow U.S. politics closely and saw the last debate where the Proud Boys were an issue and saw an opportunity here to manufacture blowback on Trump by creating a narrative that violent Trump supporters are sending out threatening emails.”

A senior government official also told Reuters at the time, “Either they made a dumb mistake or wanted to get caught. We are not concerned about this activity being some kind of false flag due to other supporting evidence. This was Iran.”

The Miami Herald reported in October 2020 that intimidating emails claiming to be from the right-wing Proud Boys group, but actually sent by the Iranians instead, had been sent to hundreds of voters in numerous counties in Florida, seemingly targeting Democrats with a bit of reverse psychology. The emails said, in part, that “you will vote for Trump on Election Day, or we will come after you.” The ODNI’s office said at the time that it would brief the Republican and Democratic lawmakers representing the Florida counties most targeted.

ODNI’s National Intelligence Council later assessed in 2024 that, during the 2020 election, “Iranian cyber actors used data on more than 100,000 voters for its operation impersonating the Proud Boys.”

The Department of State and Department of the Treasury sanctioned IRGC-linked groups and other Iranian regime elements in late October 2020 over Iran’s election influence efforts.

After Trump lost that November, Biden's ODNI’s report in March 2021 concluded: “We assess with high confidence that Iran carried out an influence campaign during the 2020 U.S. election season intended to undercut the reelection prospects of former President Trump.”

The ODNI added: “Tehran’s efforts were aimed at denigrating former President Trump [...] Iran’s efforts in 2020 — especially its emails to individual U.S. voters and efforts to spread allegations of voter fraud — were more aggressive than in past election cycles [...] In a highly targeted operation, Iranian cyber actors sent threatening, spoofed emails purporting to be from the Proud Boys group to Democratic voters in multiple U.S. states.”

The Justice Department then charged alleged Iranian hackers for their roles in the scheme in November 2021, saying the Iranians had carried out “a cyber-enabled campaign to intimidate and influence American voters, and otherwise undermine voter confidence and sow discord, in connection with the 2020 U.S. presidential election.”

The FBI says that “the defendants allegedly obtained United States voter information from at least one state election website, sent threatening voter email messages to intimidate voters, crafted and disseminated disinformation pertaining to the election and election security, and accessed, and attempted to access, without authorization, the computer systems of several online United States media entities and states.”

The Treasury Department in November 2021 also “designated six Iranian individuals and one Iranian entity … for attempting to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election.”

Democrats have denied Iran’s 2020 election meddling efforts before

Multiple Democrats sought to cast doubt on the idea that Iran was trying to undermine Trump’s presidential campaign in 2020, and stuck to the baseless narrative that Russia was the true disinformation culprit. “Russia is the villain here, from what we have seen in the public domain,” then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in October 2020. “Iran is a bad actor but in no way equivalent. And they always try to find some equivalence to protect their friend, Russia.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., also sought to cast doubt on the Iranians seeking to harm Trump.

“I did receive a classified briefing this afternoon on this, and so I can’t discuss the details, but I can tell you one thing: It was clear to me, that the intent of Iran in this case, and Russia in many more cases, is to […] basically undermine confidence in our elections,” Schumer said on MSNBC in October 2020. “This action I do not believe was aimed […] at discrediting President Trump […] It was much rather to undermine confidence in elections and not aimed at any particular figure.”

Iran sought to stop Trump’s reelection in 2024 through hack-and-leak operations

The Iranian regime stepped up its election influence efforts in 2024, hoping that Trump would yet again be defeated in the rematch against Biden, which turned into a campaign against Biden’s replacement candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.

The FBI, ODNI, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a joint statement in August 2024 saying that they had “observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity this election cycle, specifically influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting presidential campaigns. This includes the recently reported activities to compromise former President Trump’s campaign, which the IC attributes to Iran.”

The Microsoft Threat Analysis Center also released a report that month assessing that “Iranian actors have recently laid the groundwork for influence operations aimed at U.S. audiences and potentially seeking to impact the 2024 U.S. presidential election.” The report pointed to “Iran-run covert news sites,” at least one of which “caters to liberal audiences and includes sarcastic, long-winded articles insulting Trump.”

Even The New York Times admitted in September 2024 that “Iran Emerges as a Top Disinfo Threat in U.S. Presidential Race” and that “with a flurry of hacks & fake websites, Iran has intensified its efforts to discredit American democracy and possibly tip the race against Trump.”

ODNI said that month that it “assesses Iran is making a greater effort than in the past to influence this year’s elections” and that Iranian government elements had “denigrated the former President [Trump]” and had engaged in a “hack and leak” operation against his campaign.

An ODNI official also said that “Iran is also conducting covert social media operations using fake personas, and is using AI to help publish inauthentic news articles.”

The FBI, ODNI, and CISA made it clear that month that Iranian hackers had sent Biden’s campaign emails in June and July which “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails” and that “Iranian malicious cyber actors have continued their efforts since June to send stolen, non-public material associated with former President Trump’s campaign to U.S. media organizations.”

The Justice Department in September 2024 announced charges against Seyyed Ali Aghamiri and Yaser Balaghi — alleged IRGC operatives — for hacking the Trump campaign. The Treasury Department in September 2024 said that, since at least May 2024, “Iran-based hackers have increased their malicious cyber-enabled targeting of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.”

The department said that “Masoud Jalili and other Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members compromised several accounts of officials and advisors to a 2024 presidential campaign and leaked stolen data to members of the media and other persons for the purpose of influencing the 2024 U.S. presidential election.”

Aghamiri, Balaghi, and Jalili remain wanted by the FBI.

Intelligence agencies find Iran's cyber-influence campaign

The National Intelligence Council released an October 2024 report titled “Post-Election Day Information Operations Highly Likely” which stated that “Iranian cyber actors may try to publish content denigrating former President Trump.” The same report said that, in February 2024, IRGC-linked “cyber actors had accessed a network domain associated with a U.S. state government's division of elections and probably obtained data on voter registration and on whether or not some of the registered individuals voted.”

ODNI said again in early November 2024, just before the election, that “we have assessed that Iran has conducted malicious cyber activities to compromise former President Trump’s campaign.”

The Treasury Department in December 2024 — shortly after Trump’s win over Harris — announced it was “designating a subordinate organization of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps” after it had “aimed to stoke socio-political tensions and influence the U.S. electorate during the 2024 U.S. election.”

The department said that the Cognitive Design Production Center — described as a “subsidiary” of the IRGC — had “planned influence operations designed to incite socio-political tensions among the U.S. electorate in the lead up to the 2024 U.S. elections on behalf of the IRGC” and that it had done so “since at least 2023.”

Iran sought to murder Trump in 2024

The Iranian efforts to keep Trump from returning to office weren’t limited to hack-and-leak and cyber operations, according to federal law enforcement officials who alleged the Iranian regime was also trying to assassinate Trump ahead of the November election.

The Justice Department filed charges against Pakistani national Asif Merchant and against Afghan national Farhad Shakeri for their alleged roles in Iranian-backed assassination plots in 2024. The former defendant’s murky plot seemingly targeted Trump, while the latter defendant’s apparently more sophisticated plot was also aimed at the president.

Shakeri remains at large in Iran. Merchant has pleaded not guilty, and Just the News reported that the trial against him began a few days ago. ODNI has categorized both Iranian-backed assassination plots against Trump from 2024 as examples of “Notable Attack Planning” by the Iranian regime’s IRGC.

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