Special Counsel Criticizes FBI for Launching Probe into Trump's Russian Plot

Special prosecutor John Durham, pictured May 2022.Manuel Balce Ceneta (AP)

John Durham, the special prosecutor in charge of investigating whether there were irregularities in the opening of an investigation into the Russian plot of Donald Trump's campaign in the 2016 presidential elections, has made public on Monday the report with the result of four years of work. The Durham report harshly criticizes the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for biased action and for "lack of analytical rigor." He assures that the existing indications did not justify the opening of the case and that the evidence was discarded contrary to the premises established in the investigation.

Although the Durham report does not provide great news or reveal any conspiracy such as the one that the former president assured that he would bring to light ("the crime of the century", he has come to say), it serves to feed the narrative of the former president that he is the object of an unfair persecution for the political use of the FBI and the Department of Justice, at a time when he is charged in one case in New York and investigated in several others. The report also gives trump cards to Republicans, who accuse the Joe Biden administration of political use of institutions to investigate Trump.

The former president has reacted immediately on his network, Truth Social: "WOW!!! After an extensive investigation, special counsel John Durham concludes that the FBI should never have launched the Trump-Russia Investigation! In other words, the American public was ripped off, just as it is being ripped off right now by those who don't want to see GREATNESS for AMERICA!"

The Justice Department and FBI "failed to fulfill their important mission of strict fidelity to the law," Durham concludes in its 306-page report plus front page and indexes. Durham, a former federal prosecutor in Connecticut, was appointed in 2019 by Trump's attorney general, William Barr, shortly after special counsel Robert Mueller had completed his investigation into whether Trump's 2016 campaign had colluded with Russia to swing the outcome of the election in his favor.

Durham criticizes the FBI for opening a full investigation based on "raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence," and maintains that the speed at which it did so was a deviation from the norm.

"It seems highly likely that, at a minimum, confirmation bias played a significant role in the FBI's acceptance of extraordinarily serious allegations stemming from uncorroborated information that had not been subjected to the demanding analysis typical of the FBI and other members of the intelligence community," the report said in its conclusions.

"In summary, the Bureau assesses that the FBI voluntarily discarded or ignored relevant information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia. Similarly, the FBI's Inspection Division report says investigators "repeatedly ignored or dismissed evidence contrary to the theory that the Trump campaign ... had conspired with Russia ... It seemed that ... there was a pattern of assuming a nefarious intention.' An objective and honest assessment of these strands of information should have caused the FBI to question not only the prediction of Crossfire Hurricane [the name of the Russian plot investigation], but also to reflect on whether the FBI was being manipulated for political or other purposes. Unfortunately, that was not the case," Durham continues.

The report comes after the special counsel's investigation has actually yielded few results. Prosecutors only obtained a guilty plea from a little-known FBI employee, who confessed to manipulating an email to solicit surveillance of a former Trump campaign aide. Instead, Durham and his prosecutors lost the only two criminal cases they brought to trial trying to accuse of irregularities in the Russia investigation: a lawyer for the Clinton campaign and an analyst for a Russian-American think tank were acquitted of charges of lying to the FBI.

Some of the shortcomings described in the now-released report have already been thoroughly examined by the Justice Department's inspector general. In addition, the FBI announced dozens of corrective measures to prevent failures like those of then. "Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the errors pointed out in the report could have been avoided. This report reinforces the importance of ensuring that the FBI continues to do its job with the rigor, objectivity and professionalism that the American people rightly deserve," the FBI said in a statement.

The investigation into Russian interference in the election was opened in July 2016 after the FBI learned from an Australian diplomat that a Trump campaign associate named George Papadopoulos had claimed to know "dirty laundry" the Russians had on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of hacked emails.

Now, Durham hints that the FBI was swayed by the Clinton campaign's wishes: "Our investigation also revealed that senior FBI personnel showed a serious lack of analytical rigor toward the information they reviewed, especially information received from politically affiliated individuals and entities. This information in part triggered and sustained the Crossfire Hurricane [case] and contributed to the subsequent need for special counsel Mueller's investigation."

Mueller's investigation resulted in about three dozen criminal charges, including convictions of a half-dozen Trump associates, and concluded that Russia intervened on Trump's behalf in the campaign and that the campaign welcomed the help. But Mueller's team found no indication of an election-rigging conspiracy. That led to complaints that the investigation had been opened without sufficient basis for it.

Durham's mandate was precisely to scrutinize the decisions of the Government and identify possible misconduct in the early days of the investigation of the Russian plot. Trump and his supporters hoped he would expose a conspiracy against him at the top of the FBI and other government agencies. They also wanted it to be published before the 2020 presidential election, in which Trump was clearly defeated by Joe Biden (306 to 232 electoral votes).

Despite four years of exhaustive work and research inside and outside the United States, the result has not been so good. However, the conclusions of his report are enough to feed the victimhood of Trump, who maintained that the investigation of the Russian plot was a "witch hunt" and ensures the same of the cases now underway.

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