Tuesday’s hearing before a House committee by Special Counsel John Durham could yield additional information regarding a report that was extremely skeptical of the FBI’s choice to initiate a counterintelligence probe into the 2016 Trump campaign.
Durham, who was chosen by former US Attorney General William Barr to look into the beginnings of the investigation under the Trump administration, will testify before both the House Intelligence Committee and the House Judiciary Committee; the Intelligence Committee, however, will convene in secret.
In May, the chairman of the House subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), spoke with Fox News to discuss the Durham report disclosures and to confirm that the special counsel would appear before his committee.
“I do think he will come. You sort of owe it to the country after doing this good work. This long, long report that he put together with these harsh and troubling findings. I do think he will come in front of Congress. I think he owes that to the country and let’s hope he does,” Jordan declared, noting that FISA is due for renewed status.
“I hope he comes because we have a lot of important questions for him,” he continued, also stating that there was “no reason whatsoever” for opening the investigation into the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
Durham was chosen in May 2019 to look at “Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s 2016 bogus probe into Trump-Russia collusion, and related concerns.
Barr appointed Durham as a special counsel in December 2020 to protect the inquiry during the transition of power from then-President Trump to Joe Biden.
Durham completed his roughly four-year inquiry this month, and the Department of Justice then made his conclusions public in a 306-page report. In order to pursue a biased probe into Trump, the FBI departed from its basic mission and guiding principles, as the report painted a frightening picture of.
According to The New York Post:
The FBI’s investigation into if the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election was deemed “seriously flawed” by Durham’s final report, which was made public on May 15. It also stated that “the FBI discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship.”
When he makes an appearance at the Capitol, the special counsel is sure to face criticism from both parties.
Durham’s final report, released May 15, declared that the bureau’s probe into whether the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election was “seriously flawed” and that “the FBI discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship.”
The special counsel is likely to take heat from both sides when he appears at the Capitol.
Republican members of Congress expressed their outrage and confusion over the refusal of a number of key players in the investigation, including former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and former FBI counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok, to speak with Durham.
They also expressed concern over Durham’s lack of efforts to use the law to compel them to deliver depositions.
The report by Durham, which did not suggest any new criminal charges, was viewed by Democrats as proof that the FBI’s actions were not as serious as suggested by Trump and his allies, The Post continued.
Durham criticized the FBI’s actions in choosing to conduct an extraordinary investigation against Trump, a leading presidential candidate at the time, despite having no legitimate reason to do so.
“An objective and honest assessment of these strands of information should have caused the FBI to question not only the predication for [the investigation] but also to reflect on whether the FBI was being manipulated for political or other purposes. Unfortunately, it did not,” Durham’s report declared.
Early in Donald Trump’s presidency, the Justice Department appointed special counsel Robert Mueller to take over the investigation. However, after two years and significant leaks suggesting that Trump would probably be indicted, Mueller halted his inquiry.
Durham stated in his report that the FBI launched the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump’s campaign “based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” and that the FBI took the allegations against Trump much more seriously than the charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding corruption and improper management of classified information.
The solution, according to Durham, “Is not the creation of new rules but a renewed fidelity to the old. The promulgation of additional rules and regulations to be learned in yet more training sessions would likely prove to be a fruitless exercise if the FBI’s guiding principles of ‘Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity’ are not engrained in the hearts and minds of those sworn to meet the FBI’ s mission of ‘Protect[ing] the American People and Uphold[ing] the Constitution of the United States.’”
On July 26, 2016, the CIA was informed that Clinton had consented to a scheme “to stir up a scandal against … Trump by tying him to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”
According to The Post, Durham blasted the FBI for taking that approach.
