Titled a "Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns," Durham's 316-page report systematically covers the FBI's effort in 2016 and early 2017 to investigate the possibility that Donald Trump's presidential campaign had connections to the Russian government.
His probe was launched after the release of another special counsel's report, that by Robert Mueller, failed to find evidence of such collusion, but revealed much about the FBI's surveillance of Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign team. Both probes were ordered by then-US President Donald Trump.
The report finds that the FBI failed to live up to its standards and failed “to critically analyze information that ran counter to the narrative of a Trump/Russia collusive relationship throughout Crossfire Hurricane is extremely troublesome," referring to the FBI's codename for the Russiagate probe.
"These examples are also markedly different from the FBI' s actions with respect to other highly significant intelligence it received from a trusted foreign source pointing to a [Hillary] Clinton campaign plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin so as to divert attention from her own concerns relating to her use of a private email server," Durham wrote.
"Unlike the FBI's opening of a full investigation of unknown members of the Trump campaign based on raw, uncorroborated information, in this separate matter involving a purported Clinton campaign plan, the FBI never opened any type of inquiry, issued any taskings, employed any analytical personnel, or produced any analytical products in connection with the information."
"FBI records prepared by [agent Peter] Strzok in February and March 2017 show that at the time of the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI had no information in its holdings indicating that at any time during the campaign anyone in the Trump campaign had been in contact with any Russian intelligence officials," Durham wrote. Strzok was the deputy assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division in 2016 and 2017 and led the Russiagate investigation.
Still, Durham's four-year investigation has not resulted in any prosecutions of FBI officials for surveilling Trump's campaign, soliciting help from private investigators with questionable reputations, or misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in seeking warrants to do so. Michael Sussman, a former lawyer for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, was charged with lying to the FBI but acquitted in May 2022.
In response to the release of Durham's report, Trump posted on social media that it said, "in other words, the American Public was scammed, just as it is being scammed right now by those who don’t want to see GREATNESS for AMERICA!"