Is Trump Really Planning To Charge Hillary Clinton Over Russiagate With 18 U.S. Code 371?
Reports and commentary on the right are circulating a big claim: that President Donald Trump is preparing to push the Justice Department to indict Hillary Clinton over the origins of “Russiagate,” using 18 U.S. Code § 371 — the federal statute for conspiracy against or to defraud the United States.
So far, there is no public indictment against Clinton, and neither the DOJ nor Special Counsel-style filings mention her by name as a charged target. What does exist are new investigations into the 2016 Trump–Russia probe, a fresh grand jury looking at Obama-era officials, and declassified documents that Republicans say expose a coordinated effort to frame Trump. In that environment, talk of using 18 U.S.C. 371 on Clinton is less about what has already happened and more about what Trump’s allies say they want to see next.
To understand why 18 U.S. Code § 371 keeps coming up, you have to look at what the law actually says. Section 371 is the broad federal “conspiracy” statute: it makes it a crime for two or more people to agree either to commit an offense against the United States or to “defraud the United States,” and then take at least one concrete step toward that goal. Courts have long allowed prosecutors to use it when they believe officials or campaign figures interfered with the lawful functions of government, even if the government did not actually lose money. That means if investigators could show a coordinated effort to feed false information into the FBI, DOJ, or intelligence community to trigger an investigation under false pretenses, they could try to frame that as a 371 conspiracy to defraud.
The fuel for these new calls to indict Clinton is a wave of documents and reports revisiting how the Trump–Russia investigation began. Special Counsel John Durham’s 2023 report criticized the FBI for rushing into Crossfire Hurricane and treating tips about Trump more aggressively than similar information about others, but he did not charge Hillary Clinton or her campaign. More recently, a previously classified appendix to the Durham report was released by Sen. Chuck Grassley, describing intelligence that suggested a “Clinton campaign plan” to tie Trump to Russia and alleging that the FBI failed to seriously examine that possibility. Republicans say this annex, paired with declassified intelligence championed by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, shows a deliberate operation to use the U.S. government as a weapon in the 2016 race. Democrats and many legal analysts counter that the material is selective, disputed, and still falls far short of a criminal conspiracy case.
On top of the paper trail, the political temperature has gone up. Attorney General Pam Bondi has launched a DOJ “strike force” to dig into alleged misconduct around the 2016 probe, and a grand jury is now hearing evidence about whether Obama-era officials broke federal law when they approved or shaped the Russia investigation. Vice President JD Vance has gone on television saying that “a lot of people” are going to be indicted over Russiagate, pointing to declassified documents Gabbard released as proof of “aggressive violation of the law.” None of these statements name Hillary Clinton as a confirmed target, but they create a public expectation that someone high-profile — possibly in her orbit — could face conspiracy charges tied to 18 U.S.C. 371 if prosecutors decide the evidence is strong enough.
Where does Hillary Clinton fit into all of this? In the eyes of Trump’s supporters, she is the political center of gravity behind the Steele dossier, the Alfa-Bank narrative, and a broader media push to brand Trump as a Kremlin asset. They argue that if campaign lawyers or operatives knowingly laundered opposition research into official intelligence channels, that could be framed as a conspiracy to defraud the United States by corrupting the FBI and intelligence community. Critics respond that multiple investigations — including the Mueller report and a bipartisan Senate Intelligence report — found real Russian interference and numerous contacts between Trump associates and Russian-linked figures, even if they did not prove a criminal collusion conspiracy. From that perspective, Clinton may have fought Trump hard, but turning that into a criminal 371 case would require proof of intent and false statements that prosecutors so far have not shown in court.
The phrase “Trump plans to indict Hillary” also hides an important practical point: presidents don’t sign indictments. They can pressure the attorney general, pick loyal prosecutors, and publicly demand prosecutions, but under U.S. law, it is the DOJ and a grand jury that actually bring charges. We have already seen Trump’s DOJ push aggressively in this direction with the Comey indictment and the broader push to reopen 2016-era decisions. If Bondi’s team ever believes they have enough admissible, non-disputed evidence that Clinton or her inner circle conspired to defraud the government under 18 U.S.C. 371, they could try to take that case to a grand jury. But that would be a massive legal and political escalation, and even some conservative lawyers warn that stretching 371 too far could turn every hard-fought campaign into a potential conspiracy case.
From a broader, middle-of-the-road view, this fight is about more than one possible indictment. It is about whether the United States is sliding into a cycle where each administration tries to criminally punish the last one, especially over murky questions of intelligence, campaigns, and media narratives. Many conservatives say that accountability now is the only way to stop future weaponization of the FBI and CIA; many centrists and liberals worry that turning campaign dirty tricks into federal felonies will normalize tit-for-tat prosecutions and further shred whatever trust remains in institutions. If Trump really does push for 18 U.S.C. 371 charges against Hillary Clinton, that case would not just test one law. It would test whether the country can handle criminal trials at the very top of its political class without tearing itself apart.
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@1TheBrutalTruth1 DEC. 2025 Copyright Disclaimer under Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976: Allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research.
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