John Durham reveals ‘troubling violations of law’ with FBI Trump-Russia investigation
Jerry Dunleavy
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John Durham defended his “sobering” report on wrongdoing committed during the Trump–Russia investigation, telling Congress that the problems he unearthed could pose “significant national security risks” if left unaddressed at the FBI.
Durham, who appeared before the House Judiciary Committee during his first public testimony on the report on Wednesday, argued that “the findings set forth in this report are serious and deserve attention from the American public and its elected representatives.”
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Durham’s report in May revealed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act wrongdoing related to the FBI’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited and Democratic-funded dossier to obtain flawed FISA surveillance against Trump campaign associate Carter Page during and after the 2016 election.
“Many of the most significant issues documented in the report that we have written — including those related to lack of investigative discipline, failure to take logical investigative steps, and bias — are relevant to national security interests that this committee and the American people are concerned about,” Durham said. “If repeated and left unaddressed, these issues could result in significant national security risks and further erode the public’s faith and confidence in our justice system.”
Durham’s lengthy report concluded the FBI had no proper basis to launch the controversial 2016 election inquiry, which soon transformed into special counsel Robert Mueller’s sprawling investigation.
The report also revealed that evidence of Trump-Russia collusion never materialized and that Steele’s dossier was linked to Russian sources.
While Durham’s yearslong investigation provided substantial evidence that many of the biggest Trump-Russia collusion claims could be traced back to the Clinton campaign and Democratic operatives, his new report also repeatedly raised the possibility that the dossier at the heart of the collusion claims contained Russian disinformation.
“While I’m encouraged by some of the reforms that have been implemented by the FBI, the problems identified in this report … are not susceptible to overnight fixes,” Durham testified Wednesday. “As we said in the report, they cannot be addressed solely by enhancing training or additional policy requirements, rather what is required is accountability, both in terms of the standards which our law enforcement personnel hold themselves, and in the consequences they face for violations of laws and policies.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the committee, claimed that “seven years” after the 2016 campaign, “nothing has changed, and frankly they’re never going to stop.” He contended that “seven years of attacking Trump is scary enough, but what is more frightening is that any one of us could be next.”
Jordan said of Durham’s testimony that “hopefully it will help change things at the Department of Justice, but regardless of what the Biden administration and the Biden Justice Department does, I know what Republicans in the House are committed to doing — we will work to dramatically change the FISA law, and we will do everything we can in the appropriations process to stop the federal government from going after the American people.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the committee’s ranking member, claimed that “Republicans have planned this hearing and constructed an entire false narrative around the work of special counsel Durham in an effort to distract from the former president’s legal troubles and mislead the American public.”
Nadler contended that “the Durham report is, by itself, a deeply flawed vessel.”
Durham pushed back on any claims that he was a partisan.
“We found troubling violations of law and policy in the conduct of highly consequential investigations directed at members of a presidential campaign and ultimately a presidential administration,” Durham said. “To me, it matters not whether it was a Republican campaign or a Democratic campaign — it was a presidential campaign.”
Durham was appointed by former Attorney General William Barr in 2019 to investigate the origins and conduct of the FBI investigation into the Trump-Russia collusion claims.
“I want to emphasize in the strongest terms possible that my colleagues and I carried out our work in good faith, with integrity, and in the spirit of following the facts wherever they lead without fear or favor,” Durham testified. “At no time and in no sense did we act with a purpose to further partisan political ends — to the extent that somebody suggests otherwise, that’s simply untrue and offensive.”
The Durham report also concluded that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign played an outsize role in pushing such collusion claims to the media and the FBI.
Durham’s report revealed that then-Vice President Joe Biden was briefed in the summer of 2016 by former CIA Director John Brennan about an alleged plan by Clinton to tie former President Donald Trump to Russia to distract from her own use of an illicit private email server while secretary of state.
Nadler also attempted to revive the debunked Alfa Bank saga, wrongly claiming the FBI never looked into “questionable computer contacts between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, one of the largest banks in Russia.”
Democratic cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann had been charged by Durham after allegedly concealing his two clients, Neustar Chief Technology Officer Rodney Joffe and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, from FBI General Counsel James Baker when he pushed debunked allegations of a secret line of communication between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank during a September 2016 meeting. A jury found Sussmann not guilty last year.
Clinton personally signed off on sharing the since-debunked Alfa Bank allegations with the media during the 2016 election.
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Durham had also charged Russian analyst Igor Danchenko, the main source for Steele’s discredited dossier, with misleading about the sourcing for dossier claims, including related to the baseless allegations of a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation between then-candidate Trump and the Russians, which the special counsel said is false. Danchenko was found not guilty last year.
Durham’s Wednesday testimony pointed to the discovery that Danchenko was investigated by the FBI as a possible “threat to national security” prior to him being relied upon by Steele and prior to him being made a paid FBI informant.