“What Is Not Ready?” Bartiromo Presses Acting AG Blanche on the Russia-Hoax Probe.
On Sunday morning, May 17, 2026, a visibly irritated Maria Bartiromo stared down Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday Morning Futuresand asked the question Fox News viewers have been hammering on for the better part of a decade. “What is not ready?” Blanche’s answer: “Well, look, that’s exactly what we’re investigating right now. The whole Russia hoax — there was absolutely nothing to it.”
Where the probe actually stands, as of this writing: a Southern District of Florida grand-jury investigation led by U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones. James Comey re-indicted on April 28, 2026 after a superseding indictment replaced the September 25, 2025 charges that a federal judge dismissed on November 24, 2025. John Brennan is the subject of an active grand-jury probe; career prosecutor Maria Medetis Long has been removed from the file. James Clapper, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page have been subpoenaed. DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s July 18, 2025 criminal referral named senior Obama-era officials.
The scoreboard is the part Bartiromo will not let go. Across nine years of Russia-hoax origin work — Mueller, Durham, OIG, House Intelligence, Senate Judiciary — the United States government has produced one criminal conviction: Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who altered an email used in a Carter Page FISA application. He pleaded guilty in 2020 and was sentenced to probation. Michael Sussmann and Igor Danchenko were both acquitted by D.C. juries in 2022. Comey has now been twice-indicted. Brennan and Clapper had their security clearances stripped. The Clinton campaign and the DNC together paid more than $1 millionthrough the Perkins Coie law firm for the Steele dossier — an expenditure for which the FEC later fined the DNC $105,000 and the Clinton campaign $8,000 for misreporting.
- 150+grand-jury subpoenas issued in the SDFL probe under U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones — per Washington Examiner / RedState reporting (May 2026)
- 1criminal conviction (Kevin Clinesmith, 2020 — probation) across nine years of Russia-hoax origin investigations
- $1M+paid by the Clinton campaign and the DNC for the Steele dossier via Perkins Coie — FEC settlements DNC $105K, Clinton campaign $8K for misreporting
- 30+federal grand-jury subpoenas in the broader 2016 origins investigation — Durham final report and contemporaneous reporting
- April 282026 superseding indictment re-charged James Comey after the November 24, 2025 dismissal of the original September 25, 2025 indictment
- July 182025: DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s formal DOJ criminal referral against senior Obama-era officials
- April 22026: Attorney General Pam Bondi out; Todd Blanche steps in as Acting AG
- Zeroconvictions to date of any named principal — Brennan, Clapper, McCabe, Strzok, Page — for the underlying Crossfire Hurricane conduct
Acting Attorney General: Todd Blanche (R-appointed) — stepped in April 2, 2026 after the firing of AG Bondi. Trump’s former personal defense counsel.
Former AG: Pam Bondi (R) — fired April 2, 2026.
FBI Director: Kash Patel (R-appointed) — the official who publicly disclosed thousands of sensitive Trump-Russia probe documents found inside “burn bags” in a secret FBI room.
DNI: Tulsi Gabbard (R-appointed) — author of the July 18, 2025 criminal referral and the declassified HPSCI report.
US Attorney SDFL: Jason Reding Quiñones (R-appointed) — runs the grand jury hearing the bulk of the named-officials cases.
House Judiciary Chair: Jim Jordan (R-OH) — referred John Brennan to DOJ for criminal prosecution.
Targets named publicly so far: James Comey (D-appointee), John Brennan (D-appointee), James Clapper (D-appointee), Andrew McCabe (D-appointee), Peter Strzok (D-appointee), Lisa Page (D-appointee). Named in the Gabbard referral: Barack Obama (D). Campaign-funding side: Hillary Clinton (D) (Steele dossier via Perkins Coie).
On Sunday Morning Futures, May 17, 2026, Bartiromo opened by noting that Acting AG Blanche had been at the job for six weeks and that the audience was running out of patience. Blanche walked her through the operational reality: a sitting grand jury, a sealed-then-unsealed superseding indictment against James Comey, an active probe of John Brennan, subpoenas served on Clapper, Strzok, and Page. None of it satisfied her. The phrase she kept returning to was “what is not ready?”
“What is not ready?”
Maria Bartiromo · Sunday Morning Futures · May 17, 2026
Blanche’s defense was procedural: indictments need to survive trial; superseding the dismissed Comey charge took five months of grand-jury work; the broader Brennan grand jury has been issuing subpoenas in waves to avoid alerting subjects. The exchange ended without a date certain. The clip ran throughout the afternoon on Fox News Digital and Daily Caller and was the subject of a companion Daily Signal piece the same day.
“You heard the former chairman of the Intelligence Committee saying that there has been a conspiracy over 10 years. What have you done about it?”
Maria Bartiromo · to Acting AG Todd Blanche · May 17, 2026
“Viewers and people watching are frustrated because it just keeps happening.”
Maria Bartiromo · Sunday Morning Futures · May 17, 2026
“We are working hard and we are working efficiently, but we are going to do it right. We are not going to rush something that isn't ready.”
Acting AG Todd Blanche · Sunday Morning Futures · May 17, 2026
“The whole Russia hoax — there was absolutely nothing to it.”
Acting AG Todd Blanche · Sunday Morning Futures · May 17, 2026
The active investigative center of gravity is a grand jury sitting in the Southern District of Florida under U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones, a Trump-administration appointment. Per contemporaneous reporting from the Washington Examiner and RedState, the office has issued more than 150 subpoenas targeting documents, communications, and testimony related to the 2016 origins of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the FISA applications targeting Carter Page.
Separately, FBI Director Kash Patelpublicly disclosed in early 2026 that bureau personnel had uncovered “thousands of sensitive Trump-Russia probe documents” inside burn bags stored in a secret FBI room — material Patel told Fox News the bureau had not been able to find during prior Inspector General reviews. The provenance and contents of those documents are now part of the SDFL grand jury record.
Grand jury: SDFL, U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones.
Subpoenas: 150+ issued; recipients include former agency principals, line FBI agents, and contractors who handled the Steele dossier-adjacent material.
Indicted: James Comey (re-indicted April 28, 2026 via superseding indictment).
Active grand-jury probe (no indictment yet): John Brennan.
Subpoenaed (no indictment yet): James Clapper, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page.
Convicted: Kevin Clinesmith (2020 plea, probation).
Acquitted in adjacent Durham prosecutions: Michael Sussmann (2022), Igor Danchenko (2022).
“Patel found thousands of sensitive Trump-Russia probe documents inside burn bags in a secret FBI room.”
Fox News · 2026 · per FBI Director Kash Patel
On September 25, 2025, a federal grand jury indicted former FBI Director James Comey (D-appointee) on charges tied to his 2020 Senate Judiciary testimony and to social-media posts the indictment characterized as obstructive. Then-AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Patel released a joint statement.
On November 24, 2025, a federal judge dismissed the indictment on procedural grounds tied to a defective grand-jury presentation. On April 28, 2026, a superseding indictment was returned and unsealed, with new counts tied in part to Comey’s “86 47” Instagram post (a number sequence interpreted by prosecutors as a coded reference to the 47th president). Comey is presumed innocent of all charges until proven guilty in court.
Sept 25, 2025: First federal indictment unsealed in SDFL.
Nov 24, 2025: Judge dismisses on grand-jury procedural grounds.
April 28, 2026: Superseding indictment returned. Charges include counts tied to the “86 47” Instagram post.
Status: pre-trial. Comey is presumed innocent until conviction.
Beyond Comey, four other named officials are inside the active grand-jury process:
John Brennan (D-appointee, CIA Director 2013-17). House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) formally referred Brennan to DOJ for criminal prosecution after the panel’s review concluded Brennan had given misleading testimony about the Intelligence Community Assessment of 2016. Career prosecutor Maria Medetis Long, originally assigned to the Brennan file, was removed in 2026. No indictment to date.
James Clapper (D-appointee, DNI 2010-17), Peter Strzok (D-appointee, FBI counter-intelligence), and Lisa Page (D-appointee, FBI lawyer) have all been served with grand-jury subpoenas in the SDFL probe per Washington Examiner reporting. None has been indicted.
Andrew McCabe (D-appointee, FBI Deputy Director) figures in the DOJ OIG Horowitz reports and the Durham report, but no public record yet places him under SDFL subpoena.
John Brennan misled Congress about the Intelligence Community Assessment. We have referred him to DOJ for criminal prosecution. The American people deserve accountability for a decade of weaponized intelligence.
Paraphrased · not a verbatim post
Their goal was to usurp President Trump and subvert the will of the American people. No matter how powerful, every person involved in this conspiracy must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
The reason Bartiromo’s impatience tracks with her audience is that the nine-year scoreboard, if taken on its own, is meager:
Kevin Clinesmith (D-appointee, FBI lawyer). Pleaded guilty August 19, 2020 to one count of making a false statement after altering an email used in the Carter Page FISA renewal application. Sentenced to 12 months probation, 400 hours community service, $0 fine, no prison. First and so far only criminal conviction arising from the Crossfire Hurricane / Durham investigative arc.
D.C. federal jury acquittal, May 31, 2022. Charged by Durham with making a false statement to the FBI’s James Baker during a September 2016 meeting about the Alfa Bank server allegations. Jury rejected the charge.
E.D. Va. federal jury acquittal, October 18, 2022. Durham’s Steele-dossier-source case collapsed on all four counts.
Brennan and Clapper had their TS/SCI clearances stripped in earlier rounds. Strzok and McCabe were fired from the FBI in the Crossfire Hurricane fallout. None of these are criminal outcomes.
“The Russia hoax was a decade-long conspiracy to subvert the will of the American people. Nine years in, the conviction count is one — and that one was a probation sentence.”
Civic Intelligence editorial summary · May 17, 2026
The campaign-finance side of the story is one of the few fully adjudicated pieces of the record. According to the Durham final report and Federal Election Commission filings, the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee jointly paid more than $1 million to the Perkins Coie law firm, which retained Fusion GPS, which retained former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who produced the dossier.
The FEC found that the Clinton campaign and the DNC had misreportedthe dossier expenditures — routing them through a law firm and characterizing them as “legal services” rather than opposition research. The settlement terms:
DNC: $105,000 civil penalty for misreporting the Fusion GPS / Steele dossier expenditures.
Hillary for America (the Clinton campaign): $8,000 civil penalty for the same misreporting.
Both settlements were finalized in 2022. Neither carried criminal charges. Neither admitted to a coordinated effort to fabricate intelligence.
DOJ OIG Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December 2019 FISA report concluded that the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation had “at least 17 significant errors and omissions” in the four FISA applications targeting Carter Page — including the Clinesmith email alteration that became the basis for the only criminal conviction.
President Donald Trumphas posted repeatedly on Truth Social about the Russia-hoax probe, including a late-night burst in mid-May 2026 in which he reposted commentary characterizing Obama-era principals in the case as members of a “Russia HOAX Treason Club.” Two representative posts, paraphrased:
Brennan. Comey. Clapper. Strzok. Page. McCabe. The Obama Russia HOAX Treason Club. Every one of them lied. Every one of them gets the same justice they tried to give me. The Russia hoax was the biggest political crime in American history.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Paraphrased via Fox News reporting on the President's late-2025 Truth Social posts.
Obama the traitor. Brennan the liar. Comey the leaker. Their day in front of the grand jury is coming. The American people are owed every receipt. RELEASE EVERYTHING.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Per public reporting on the President's May 11-12, 2026 Truth Social activity (55-post late-night burst).
Every named subject of an active grand jury — including James Comey under the April 28, 2026 superseding indictment, John Brennan in the active probe, and Clapper / Strzok / Page under subpoena — is entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Subpoenas are not indictments; indictments are not convictions.
The “150+ subpoenas” figure is sourced to Washington Examiner and RedState reporting on the SDFL probe. DOJ has not released an official subpoena count.
Michael Sussmann and Igor Danchenko were both acquitted by federal juries in 2022. Their acquittals are part of the same Durham arc that produced the Clinesmith conviction, and they belong in any honest scoreboard.
Maria Bartiromo’s “what is not ready?” is the right question. Across nine years and three administrations, the Russia-hoax origin file has produced one criminal conviction — Kevin Clinesmith, probation. The current SDFL grand jury under U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones has issued more than 150 subpoenas and re-indicted James Comey after his first indictment was dismissed. John Brennan is under active grand-jury investigation; Clapper, Strzok, and Page are subpoenaed. DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s July 18, 2025 criminal referral named senior Obama-era officials. The Clinton campaign and the DNC paid more than $1 million for the Steele dossier and settled FEC misreporting charges. Whether Acting AG Todd Blanche can turn nine years of paper into one more conviction is the open question. The honest answer to Bartiromo: the indictments are not ready yet, and they may never be.