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The prosecution lawyer, John Durham, concluded that the FBI should never have investigated the alleged links between the campaign of former President Donald Trump and Russia, during the 2016 elections. According to the prosecutor, the US investigation department used information “unanalyzed and not corroborated” to point to the former president.
In strong statements, the prosecutor special John Durham, accused the FBI of not wear “real evidence” in the investigation that he carried out against the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, known as ‘Crossfire Hurricane’.
According to Durham, the office employment many politically biased leads were provided by opponents of Trump and such information was not rigorously verified prior to deploying the investigation.
The determination was made known this Monday, May 15 in a report marking the end of a four-year investigation that began in May 2019, when then-prosecutor general, William Bar appointed Durham as the one in charge of finding possible FBI errors in ‘Crossfire Hurricane’.
Donald Trump was quick to react to the news and published on his social network Truth Social: “WOW!!! After Extensive Investigation, Special Counsel John Durham Concludes The FBI Should Never Have Launched The Trump-Russia Investigation!”
What does the Durham report say?
At exactly 306 pages, the Durham document concludes that US intelligence and security forces had no “real evidence”to launch the investigation.
This shape, the special counsel criticizes the FBI in the report: “Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the Department and the FBI failed in their important mission of strict adherence to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report.“.
The document also calls for the office to treat Trump investigations differently than other inquiries such as those of his political rival, Hillary Clinton.
Durham points out that the FBI was more cautious about the allegations against Clinton and that, among other examples, the politician and other officials did receive defensive briefings before being flagged as possible targets for investigation. Something that did not happen with Trump. The former president did not receive any of these notices before the office opened the inquiry into four members of his campaign.
For example, he said Clinton and other officials received defensive briefings before they were potential targets for foreign interference, while Trump received no briefings before the FBI opened investigations into four members of his campaign.
“The Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict adherence to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report (…) Senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information they received, especially information from politically affiliated individuals and entities“reads the document.
Durham also chided the fact that the bureau decided to go ahead with ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ despite a lack of information. According to him, FBI agents “ignored information” exonerating key people in the case and yet they did not exclude them from the process.
Senior bureau officials who once oversaw the investigation, and who have since left the agency, defended themselves by saying they had a “duty to investigate allegations that Russia, a strategic adversary of the United States, was trying to get leverage with Trump, who had no government experience.”
For his part, he FBI responded to the report published this monday and He assured that “dozens of corrective measures” have already been implementedwhich will not be reflected in the short term.
“If those reforms had been in place in 2016, the errors identified in the report could have been avoided. This report reinforces the importance of ensuring that the FBI continues to do its job with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism that the American people deserve and rightly expect.“the FBI said in a statement.
What’s next now?
Washington political analysts point out that this scenario, which obviously favors Trump’s reputation, could be used by the magnate as a shield to strengthen himself ahead of the 2024 elections.
However, the former president, who wants the White House once again, must still face criminal charges in New York and two federal investigations by special counsel Jack Smith, looking at both Trump’s withholding of classified records, as well as his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Meanwhile, the Republican Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, posted on Twitter his official invitation to prosecutor Durham to testify on his report next week.
With AP, Reuters and local media
