Trump-appointed Special Counsel John Durham has issued a report on his years-long probe into how the FBI investigated the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.
Durham was hired by Attorney General Bill Barr in 2019 to take a fresh look at the the origins of the Department of Justice’s investigation into whether former President Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.
In his 306-page report, Durham reiterates an argument that he’s made before, that the FBI never should have launched its investigation into connections between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The report further asserts that the FBI used “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” to launch its “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into ties between Trump and Russia but used a different standard when weighing concerns about alleged election interference regarding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
For instance, the report notes that while the FBI gave Clinton’s team a defensive briefing when agents learned of possible evidence by a foreign actor to garner influence with her, agents moved quickly to investigate the Trump campaign without giving its principles a defensive briefing.
Despite finding the FBI’s handling of key components of the case “seriously deficient” and based on “seriously flawed information,” however, Durham did not recommend any new charges against individuals or any “wholesale changes” regarding how the FBI handles politically-tinged investigations.
The senior FBI officials who ran the Crossfire Hurricane investigation left the agency years ago. They have long asserted that they had a duty to investigate the allegations against the Trump campaign.
Durham, a veteran federal prosecutor who’s been with the Department of Justice since 1982, lost the only two prosecutions that he brought to court.
The Durham report has been released amid an ongoing probe by House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) into what he calls the “weaponization” of the U.S. justice system.
