Global Courant 2023-05-16 02:03:59
In a long-awaited report, Special Counsel John Durham slams the FBI for actions taken by agents during its 2016 investigation into then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and alleged ties to Russia.
Durham’s final report examining the origins of the Russia investigation ends a four-year investigation that failed to yield any major convictions despite the expectations of Trump and his allies.
The Justice Department and FBI “have failed to fulfill their important mission of strict adherence to the law,” Durham concluded in the 306-page report.
Durham was commissioned in late 2020 by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the origins of the Trump campaign’s “Crossfire Hurricane” FBI probe launched in July 2016.
Some of the FBI’s most controversial actions were largely based on since-debunked allegations made by former British spy Christopher Steele.
“Our investigation … revealed that senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor with regard to the information they received, especially information received from politically affiliated individuals and entities,” Durham wrote in his report. “In particular, there was great reliance on investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents. The Department did not adequately investigate or question these materials and the motivations of those who provided them before a full investigation was opened.”
In his final report, Durham claims the early days of the Trump investigation were handled differently from how the FBI approached previous cases, including allegations of “planning to interfere in foreign elections,” allegedly targeting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign leading up to the campaign of 2016. which Durham’s team also investigated.
Special Counsel John Durham, the prosecutor assigned to investigate possible government misconduct in the early days of the Trump-Russia investigation, leaves federal court in Washington on May 16, 2022.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP, FILE
While Durham doesn’t seem to be saying outright that the FBI’s Russia investigation should not have been launched, he strongly suggests that it is.
In a statement following the report, FBI officials said: “The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham investigated was the reason that the current FBI leadership has already taken dozens of corrective actions, which have been in effect for some time now. Had those reforms taken place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been avoided. and rightly expected.”
The report was sent to Congress Monday afternoon, sources told ABC News. The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan, said in a tweet that his committee has asked the Justice Department to allow Durham to testify next week.
A major report from the Justice Department’s inspector general, released in late 2019, found that the FBI was unaffected by political bias when it opened its investigation — though it outlined what it called “serious performance glitcheson the part of agents as they sifted through information from sources and sought surveillance warrants against a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.
At the time Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report was released, both Barr and Durham – citing the ongoing nature of Durham’s own investigation – issued statements distancing themselves from the conclusion that the Russia investigation was correct opened.
In the years since, Durham has secured only one conviction during the investigation: a mid-level FBI attorney who pleaded guilty to altering an email address used in one of the FISA applications used to increase surveillance against Page. to stand.
Last year, the only two other criminal cases brought by Durham ended in acquittal at trial. Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity attorney involved in the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign, was found not guilty by a jury last May after Durham accused him of making false statements to the FBI when Sussmann told a former top agency attorney that he did not act on behalf of any client when he laid out allegations of ties between a computer server linked to Trump and a bank in Moscow.
Several months later, in October, a jury acquitted intelligence analyst Igor Danchenko on charges of lying to federal investigators about information he gathered for the infamous Steele Dossier, including many outrageous and unsubstantiated allegations about Trump’s ties to Russia.
Some legal experts expressed concern about the cases brought by Durham, arguing that they would discourage future would-be FBI sources from bringing forward information for fear they could be targeted by prosecution.
Durham was formally appointed as special counsel by Barr in October 2020, just weeks before Trump was defeated by President Joe Biden, effectively allowing Durham’s work to continue even after Biden took office. Attorney General Merrick Garland has largely declined to comment on substantive issues surrounding Durham’s investigation, other than offering assurances to Congress that Durham has been given all resources to complete his work.
For years, Trump and other conservatives have pointed to Durham’s ongoing investigation with speculation that he would press charges against senior former FBI officials or individuals close to former President Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, or otherwise unearth damning information that would support their accusation. supports that the FBI “deep state” was wrongly targeting Trump.
Infuriated Trump in the months leading up to the 2020 election publicly pressured Barr to demand that Durham act more quickly to release preliminary findings or announce high-level arrests.
In case files and other lawsuits during his investigation, Durham sometimes brought forward allegations and additional information suggesting that he, too, believed the Trump investigation was politically tainted — though he never ultimately charged any criminal conspiracy that arose from those allegations. .
The conclusion of Durham’s four-year investigation contrasts sharply with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, which resulted in indictments against 34 individuals and three Russian companies on charges ranging from conspiracy to hacking to lying to the FBI and financial crimes. The charges led to seven pleas and five people being sentenced to prison.
While Mueller’s final report found there was not enough evidence to indict a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, it described dozens of cases of contacts between people close to Trump and his campaign and Russian nationals, and he discovered that the Russian government thought it might have taken place. benefited from Trump’s presidency and that it “worked to secure that outcome”, with actions often applauded by Trump’s campaign.
