What to expect from John Durham’s congressional testimony this week
Jack Birle
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Special counsel John Durham is set to testify before two committees in the House of Representatives this week, more than a month after releasing the findings of his inquiry into the FBI‘s Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
The Durham report alleged that the FBI and Department of Justice had no proper basis to launch their investigation into alleged ties between Donald Trump‘s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.
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Durham concluded in the report that “based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly investigations of these matters,” including the special counsel’s inquiry, “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.”
The House Intelligence Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing with Durham on Tuesday at 3 p.m. on Capitol Hill, in which lawmakers are expected to probe Durham’s findings.
Shortly after the release of the report, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) said the report outlined “serious errors and shortcomings” from the FBI’s handling of the investigation.
“The Durham Report underscores what former Chairman Devin Nunes and Republican members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have been saying for years: There were serious errors and shortcomings with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe into the alleged connections between the Russian government and the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election,” Turner said in a statement in May.
“The report confirms that FBI personnel repeatedly disregarded critical protections established to protect the American people from unlawful surveillance. Such actions should never have occurred, and it is essential that Congress codifies clear guardrails that prevent future FBI abuses and restores the public’s trust in our law enforcement institutions,” he continued.
Durham will also testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday at 9 a.m. on Capitol Hill, and the hearing will focus on the special counsel’s report.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has called for Congress to leverage the power of the purse to keep the FBI in check in the wake of the Durham report.
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Jordan said immediately after the report was released that he had reached out to Durham to testify before his committee the following week, but the hearing was not held in May and is now scheduled for Wednesday.
The Durham report took multiple years of investigation by the former U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut under then-President Donald Trump.