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Edited by: TJVNews.com
An investigation into the origins of the FBI’s probe into ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign has finally been concluded, with prosecutor John Durham submitting a much-awaited report that found major flaws, as was reported by the Associated Press on Tuesday.
The report, the culmination of a four-year investigation into possible misconduct by U.S. government officials, contained withering criticism of the FBI but few significant revelations. Nonetheless, it will give fodder to Trump supporters who have long denounced the Russia investigation, the AP reported. Meanwhile Trump opponents will likely point to the Durham team’s meager court record — one guilty plea and two acquittals at trial — as proof that the probe was a politically motivated farce.
A background on John Durham. He has spent decades as a Justice Department prosecutor, with past assignments including investigations into the FBI’s cozy relationship with mobsters in Boston and the CIA’s destruction of videotapes of its harsh interrogations of terrorism subjects, the AP reported.
Durham found that the FBI acted too hastily and relied on raw and unconfirmed intelligence when it opened the Trump-Russia investigation, the AP reported. He said at the time the probe was opened, the FBI had no information about any actual contact between Trump associates and Russian intelligence officials.
The AP also reported that he claimed that FBI investigators fell prone to “confirmation bias,” repeatedly ignoring or rationalizing away information that could have undercut the premise of their investigation, and he noted that the FBI failed to corroborate a single substantive allegation from a dossier of research that it relied on during the course of the probe.
“An objective and honest assessment of these strands of information should have caused the FBI to question not only the predication for Crossfire Hurricane, but also to reflect on whether the FBI was being manipulated for political or other purposes,” the report said, using the FBI’s code name for the Trump-Russia probe, as was reported by the AP. “Unfortunately, it did not.”
Crossfire Hurricane is the FBI codename for the agency’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
John Durham was appointed in 2019 to investigate potential misconduct by U.S. government officials as they examined Russian election interference in 2016 and whether there was any illegal coordination between the Kremlin and Trump’s presidential campaign, according to the AP report.
Durham was able to continue his work well into the Biden administration, thanks in part to William Barr appointing Durham as a Justice Department special counsel shortly before Barr’s 2020 resignation as attorney general, the AP reported.
From the start, Barr was deeply skeptical of the investigation’s foundation, telling Congress that “spying did occur” on the campaign, the AP reported.
He enlisted an outside prosecutor to hunt for potential misconduct at the government agencies who were involved in collecting intelligence and conducting the investigation, and according to the report, even flew with Durham to Italy to meet with officials there as part of the probe.
A Justice Department inspector general inquiry already identified many problems with the Russia-Trump investigation.
The watchdog report found that FBI applications for warrants to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page, contained significant errors and omitted information that would likely have weakened or undermined the premise of the application, the AP reported. The cumulative effect of those errors, the report said, was to make it “appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case.”
Still, the inspector general did not find evidence that investigators acted with political bias and said there was a legitimate basis to open a full investigation into potential collusion, though Durham has disagreed.
Prominent legal scholar Alan Dershowitz told the Epoch Times on May 15th that special counsel John Durham’s report is a prime example of why Americans lack confidence in the government.
“I think it reveals that Americans are right to distrust the government—even civil servants people in the government,” Dershowitz told The Epoch Times. “This case demonstrates that people are prepared to distort the Constitution to get their way—get their partisan, political way.”
“Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Durham wrote in the report, as was reported by the Epoch Times.
Durham wrote that the FBI relied on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” for its investigation. “The objective facts show that the FBI’s handling of important aspects of the Crossfire Hurricane matter were seriously deficient,” he added, as was reported by The Epoch Times.
Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said that the U.S. intelligence community, including the FBI and the CIA, saw Trump as a “danger,” a view that the scholar said drove their conviction to “get Trump,” echoing the name and theme of his book, “Get Trump.” The Epoch Times reported that in that book, Dershowitz argues that Trump’s political enemies have waged an unconstitutional campaign to prevent Trump from retaking the presidency and, in the process, challenging the foundational American principles such as due process and free speech.
“I think it was who he was—what kind of an outsider he was. He was a disruptive outsider who had no respect for the Washington, D.C. permanent government.”
Ultimately, Dershowitz believes good people were motivated by a biased mindset about Trump.
“I think the Durham report shows that good people can do bad things, when they decide they have to get Trump, that the Trump derangement syndrome really affects decent people,” Dershowitz told The Epoch Times.
He continued: “These are decent people who honestly believe that there was a higher duty than truth or principle in getting Trump and preventing him from winning as president. And that just distorts our Constitution, our rule of law, and our civil liberties.”
“So they use the apparatus of the Intelligence Community and the national security community, to distort reality and try to get him. And that’s what happens when good people do bad things,” Dershowitz said, as was reported by the Epoch Times.
The scholar also commented on the recent revelation that an open letter signed by dozens of former senior intelligence officials ahead of the 2020 presidential election turned out to be false. The letter framed the Hunter Biden laptop story published by the New York Post as Russian disinformation.
“These people should have known better. And they didn’t use their intelligence. They didn’t use their thoughtfulness, because they were so determined to get Trump, they were prepared to sign on to something which they never would have signed on to, had the shoe been on the other foot,” Dershowitz said, according to the Epoch Times report.
The FBI investigation into the Trump campaign “is unprecedented in our history,” Dershowitz said, and he warned that the probe even happening “is extraordinarily dangerous,” as was reported by The Epoch Times.
“I think there has to be consequences to the people who were involved. And that’s why I’m glad there are going to be hearings,” he said. “People have to know they can’t do this.”
On Monday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) announced that he had sent a letter to Durham, asking the special counsel to testify at a hearing on May 25. The Epoch Times reported that he asked Durham to be prepared to answer questions from committee members.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a statement calling on the committee’s Chairman, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), to “quickly hold” a hearing on the Durham report, the Epoch Times reported.
Another senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), called on the FBI to start cooperating with a GOP subpoena for documents about then-Vice President Joe Biden.
“We know the FBI relied on unverified claims to relentlessly target a Republican president. What did the FBI do to investigate claims involving a Democrat President? It’s time for the FBI to cooperate and show its work to the American people,” Grassley said, according to the Epoch Times report.
In response to the Durham report, the FBI acknowledged mistakes in its investigation of the Trump campaign. “Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented,” the FBI said.
Trump said that “the American Public was scammed” in a statement on Truth Social following the release of the report.
“The Durham Report spells out in great detail the Democrat Hoax that was perpetrated upon me and the American people. This is 2020 Presidential Election Fraud, just like ‘stuffing’ the ballot boxes, only more so,” Trump added, as was reported by The Epoch Times.
On May 3rd, the Epoch Times also reported that the Republican-led House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the FBI for a file alleging that a whistleblower linked President Joe Biden to a “criminal scheme” that involved money for policy decisions while he was the vice president.
“We have received legally protected and highly credible unclassified whistleblower disclosures,” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Senate Budget Committee ranking GOP member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray in a letter dated (pdf) on May 3, the Epoch Times reported.
“Based on those disclosures, it has come to our attention that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) possess an unclassified FD-1023 form that describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions,” the letter reads.
The Epoch Times reported that Comer’s office said it issued a subpoena to Wray (pdf) on May 3 following the whistleblower disclosures to Grassley’s office. It said the FBI now must produce all FD-1023 forms that were created in June 2020 involving the word “Biden.”
Neither Comer nor Grassley elaborated on what those policy decisions were or how much money was allegedly provided, if any. The White House hasn’t yet publicly commented on the matter.
“It has been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose,” the letter reads, according to the Epoch Times. “Based on the alleged specificity within the document, it would appear that the DOJ and the FBI have enough information to determine the truth and accuracy of the information contained within it. However, it remains unclear what steps, if any, were taken to investigate the matter.”
Citing financial records and Biden’s public comments, Republicans have for years alleged that Biden and members of his family were involved in shady deals with foreign nationals of Ukraine, China, and other countries. The Epoch Times reported that in late 2020, after a laptop that allegedly belonged to his son surfaced, a former Hunter Biden associate, Tony Bobulinski, alleged that Joe Biden was involved in a deal with a Chinese state energy company, and former President Donald Trump accused him of official corruption when he was vice president.
Financial records show that members of the Biden family reaped millions of dollars in profits from overseas business deals when Joe Biden was vice president in the Obama administration. While he was vice president, Biden also interacted with his relatives’ foreign associates, Republicans have alleged.
“The significant public interest in assessing the FBI’s response to this information, as well as growing concern about the DOJ and the FBI’s track record of allowing political bias to infect their decision-making process, necessitate exacting congressional oversight,” Comer and Grassley wrote, as was reported by The Epoch Times.
The lawmakers argue that the DOJ and FBI both appear to possess “verifiable information” that hadn’t been disclosed to the American public, according to the Epoch Times report. “Therefore, Congress will proceed to conduct an independent and objective review of this matter, free from those agencies’ influence,” they said.
In August 2022, Politico reported that FBI Director Christopher Wray said that allegations of an FBI agent’s partisan social media posts and efforts to suppress information in the investigation into Hunter Biden’s business activities were “deeply troubling.”
Wray condemned the alleged actions of Timothy Thibault, who he said was an FBI assistant special agent in charge at the Washington field office until “relatively recently.”
Politico also reported in 2022 that Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), grilled Wray on Thibault’s alleged partisan actions on social media over the past few years, such as “liking” a Washington Post article titled “William Barr has gone rogue” and tweeting to Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) that her father — former Vice President Dick Cheney — was a “disgrace.” Politico noted that Kennedy also mentioned Thibault’s retweet of a Lincoln Project post saying that “Donald Trump is a psychologically broken, embittered, and deeply unhappy man.”
Kennedy then pressed Wray on allegations that Thibault — who Kennedy said worked on both the investigation of links between Trump and Russia and the ongoing Hunter Biden probe — had “covered up derogatory info about Mr. Biden while working at the FBI,” Politico reported.
Wray gave similar answers to Kennedy’s questioning on both the social media posts and covering up of information, saying that he’d seen “descriptions to that effect” but wanted to be “careful” of not interfering with any ongoing personnel matters. But he did concede to finding the allegations about the social media posts “troubling.”
“I should say that when I read the letter that describes the kinds of things that you’re talking about, I found it deeply troubling,” he told Kennedy, as was reported by Politico in 2022.
