7th floor group

The 7th floor group, part of the Clinton network, started running a series of “deputies meetings” from July 2016 onwards, until closer to the election. As Election Day approached Susan Rice, Avril Haines and White House homeland-security adviser Lisa Monaco convened meetings in the White House Situation Room "to weigh the mounting evidence of Russian interference and generate options for how to respond."

At first, only four senior security officials were allowed to attend:CIA director John Brennan, Director of national intelligence James R. Clapper, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and FBI Director James B. Comey. Aides ordinarily allowed entry as “plus-ones” were barred. Gradually, the circle widened to include Vice President Joe Biden and others. Agendas were sent to Cabinet secretaries — including John F. Kerry at the State Department and Ashton B. Carter at the Pentagon.

The 7th Floor Group was a US deep state faction made up of US State Department officials that was exposed in 2016 and terminated in 2017. Over the years, the term has been used for the State Department leadership.

The 7th Floor Group met on Wednesday afternoons and discussed FOIA requests and the congressional record in order to contain particularly sensitive information, and how best to release other information. CNBC reported in October 2016 that the group had "argued for a Clinton document release to be conducted all at once "for coordination purposes" instead of on a rolling basis as would normally be the case".

The FBI mentioned a group referred to as The "Shadow Government" inside the State Department, exposed in Autumn 2016, and which briefly attracted the attention of commercially-controlled media. They met regularly on the 7th floor of the Harry S. Truman Building in Washington, DC. The group appears to have formed around Hillary Clinton, who had an office on the 7th floor of the State Deapartment although no direct evidence has yet emerged to tie her to the group. Most if not all remaining members had their employment terminated on 17 February 2017.

President Obama’s former acting CIA chief Michael Morrell published a hearty endorsement of Clinton in the New York Times and claimed “Putin ha[s] recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation,” George W. Bush’s post-9/11 CIA and NSA Chief, General Michael Hayden, writing in the Washington Post, echoed Morrell by accusing Trump of being a “useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow” and sounding “a little bit the conspiratorial Marxist.”

This working group would go on to manufacture evidence in partnership with deep state British intelligence that would come to be known as the Steele Dossier.