After more than three years of investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia "collusion" probe, the US Justice Department released Special Counsel John Durham's 306-page report to the public on Monday.
"Neither US 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," stated the special counsel.
On May 13, 2019, then-Attorney General William Barr tapped Durham, the United States attorney for the District of Connecticut, to look into the origins of the Trump-Russia inquiry, dubbed Operation Crossfire Hurricane, which was launched by the FBI on July 31, 2016. Then-President Donald Trump, who has for years denounced the bureau's probe as a "witch hunt", hailed the development.
In 2019, Durham expressed his dissent with regard to Inspector General Michael Horowitz's conclusion that the FBI's Operation Crossfire Hurricane was well-predicated. Durham announced that his office had "advised the inspector general that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened."
He explained that, unlike Horowitz, his "investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department" and has instead obtained "information from other persons and entities, both in the US and outside of the US."
On October 19, 2020, Durham was appointed to serve as a special counsel to conduct the so-called "investigation of investigators."
During his probe, the special counsel charged and convicted FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted to doctoring an email to state that Trump aide Carter Page had never been a CIA asset (which was not true) in order to push ahead with spying on Team Trump.
Durham also brought charges against Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann and Brookings Institution scholar Igor Danchenko, the primary subsource for ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele, the author of the "dirty dossier," for lying to the FBI.
Durham lost the latter two cases, but managed to shed light on the Clinton campaign's active role in peddling and disseminating the Trump-Russia "collusion" narrative, something that was proven to have no evidentiary basis by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team.
Crossfire Hurricane Opened Hastily on Uncorroborated Leads
In his 306-page report, Durham nailed the FBI for relying on evidence provided by the 2016 campaign of then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, including the uncorroborated Steele dossier, which had all the earmarks of political bias.
Even though these leads were "provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump's political opponents" the bureau failed to "examine or question these materials and the motivations of those providing them," according to Durham.
"Our investigation also revealed that senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically-affiliated persons and entities. This information in part triggered and sustained the Crossfire Hurricane and contributed to the subsequent need for Special Counsel Mueller's investigation," the special counsel wrote.
Moreover, the FBI did not interview the people who provided the information used to open the Crossfire Hurricane probe. In particular, the bureau hastened to open the initial probe based on uncorroborated evidence from Australia, the special counsel wrote, referring to Australian official Alexander Downer, the agency's source.
Neither did the bureau manage to corroborate any of the claims in the notorious Steele dossier. What's more, former British intelligence officer Steele couldn’t corroborate any of those claims, either, despite being offered a hefty sum of money by the FBI to do so. Steele's source – Brookings Institution scholar Igor Danchenko – compiled the claims for the dossier. However, like Steele, Danchenko couldn’t confirm any of the assumptions outlined in the document when questioned by the FBI, according to the special counsel.
"Rather, Danchenko characterized the information he provided to Steele as ‘rumor and speculation’ and the product of casual conversation," the report reads.
Furthermore, it turned out that Charles Dolan, a Democratic operative who has held multiple positions with the Democratic National Committee (DNC), could be the source behind one of the most outlandish rumors in the dossier, i.e. the fake story that Trump had been filmed with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel.
Dual System of Justice: Treating Hillary With Kid Gloves
Durham has also drawn attention to what he described as a dual system of justice: he pointed out that the FBI never opened a probe into the Hillary Clinton campaign, despite having the intelligence that the then-Democratic presidential nominee had allegedly authorized a campaign of smearing Trump as a Russian stooge.
In July 2016, CIA Director John Brennan briefed then-President Obama on intercepted intelligence saying that Hillary Clinton was going to cook up a scandal by tying her presidential rival Donald Trump to the Kremlin and alleged "Russian hackers" as a distraction from the controversy surrounding her private email server and mishandling of classified information.
"The FBI's actions with respect to other highly significant intelligence it received from a trusted foreign source pointing to a 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," the report said.
"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," the document continued.
Durham pointed out that this lack of action was despite the fact that the significance of the Clinton plan intelligence was such that Brennan decided to brief Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and other senior government officials about it within days of its receipt.
"It was also of enough importance for the CIA to send a formal written referral memorandum to [FBI] Director [James] Comey and the Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division Peter Strzok for their consideration and action," the special counsel wrote.
FBI Operatives Threw Agency's Rules Down the Drain
The special counsel went on lambasting FBI operatives for neglecting the bureau's rules and maintaining apparent political bias towards then-presidential candidate Trump.
In particular, Strzok, who led the Crossfire Hurricane team and expressed disdain for Trump in his chatter with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, went around the counterintelligence chief of the FBI, Bill Priestap to keep the investigation going by getting the approval of then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
According to the report, Priestap revealed instances when Strzok shared information directly with McCabe (before Priestap could provide the information to McCabe himself) and used to disagree and go around him together with then-FBI lawyer Page. McCabe and Strzok were fired from the FBI in March and August 2018, respectively; Page resigned from the bureau in May 2018.
Much in the same vein, the bureau issued error-ridden applications to surveil Trump campaign associate Carter Page, as per the report. FBI agents applied to renew the FISA court warrants on Page despite acknowledging that they had no probable cause to do so.
"The FBI personnel also repeatedly disregarded important requirements when they continued to seek renewals of that FISA surveillance while acknowledging – then and in hindsight – that they did not genuinely believe there was probable cause to believe that the target was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of foreign power," the report says.
16 February 2023, 17:46 GMT
Three Individuals Spied on Trump Campaign
According to the report, the bureau used three “confidential human sources,” to spy on and record Trump campaign advisers, including Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and an unnamed senior foreign policy adviser.
Durham's team found that the FBI failed to disclose exculpatory statements, which were contained in recordings of Page and Papadopoulos, to the Justice Department (DOJ) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In particular, Page’s taped statements discredited some odious claims in the Steele dossier, but the FBI failed to act on those leads, as per the special counsel.
Eventually, FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who was found guilty of doctoring an email in order to renew a warrant to spy on Page, was convicted.
'FBI Failed to Uphold Its Mission of Strict Fidelity to Law'
Having condemned the bureau for not upholding its own standards, the special counsel noted that he "does not recommend any wholesale changes in the guidelines and policies that the Department and the FBI now have in place." According to him, "the answer 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’ aren’t engrained in the hearts and minds of those sworn to meet the FBI’s mission of ‘Protecting the American People and Upholding the Constitution of the United States'," the special counsel wrote.
"Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we concluded the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report," Durham emphasized.
Reaction to Durham's Report
The release of the much-anticipated Durham report prompted a lively debate across the US political spectrum.
“Wow! After extensive research, Special Counsel John Durham concludes the FBI never should have launched the Trump-Russia Probe!” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social in the aftermath of the report's publication. “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!”
For his part, House Judiciary Committee Republican Chairman Jim Jordan tweeted about his plan to summon Special Counsel Durham for testimony next week.
The US mainstream press – that used to enthusiastically promote the Trump-Russia collusion hoax – expressed skepticism over Durham's work, claiming that his investigation ended as it began: "pointing to trees to obscure the forest." The US media summed up that the probe included several unsuccessful efforts to bring criminal charges against people "loosely linked to the Russia probe", insisting that Durham's final report contained no dramatic demonstration that IG Horowitz, who claimed that the FBI probe was well predicated, got something wrong.
As for the FBI, it rushed to announce that it had already made necessary corrections to fix errors exposed by the special counsel in his recent report.
"The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time. Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented," the FBI's official statement said.