Special Counsel John Durham, in a report that is devastatingly critical of the FBI, the Department of Justice and others who conspired to create a "Russia collusion" investigation into President Trump when he was a candidate in 2016, says there was no evidence to support that collusion.
In fact, the nation now knows from the evidence that members of the Deep State in Washington worked with Democrats in the Hillary Clinton campaign to create claims of collusion against Trump.
Durham was assigned to review how those claims came to be, after Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent years of time, millions of dollars, and a good share of Trump's first term, finding no evidence of that collusion.
Durham's report said the agenda before there were claims regarding comments by George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, "the government possessed no verified intelligence reflecting that Trump or the Trump campaign was involved in a conspiracy or collaborative relationship with officials of the Russian government. Indeed, based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the intant investigation, 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."
That investigation by the FBI was slated for termination when FBI agents, including one who boasted they would make sure that Trump never was elected president, demanded that it be continued, even without evidence.
That agent, Peter Strzok, "had pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump. The matter was opened as a full investigation without ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information. Further, the FBI did so without (i) any significant review of its own intelligence databases, (ii) collection and examination of any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities, (iii) interview of witnesses essential to understand the raw information it had received or (iv) using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence."
The report announced no further charges, the apparent punishment being the massive shaming by being named in the blast at the incompetencies of the FBI and DOJ.
Shortly after the report appeared, Trump released a statement calling for former FBI Director James Comey and Democrats to be held to account for their collusion and conspiracies that resulted in the years-long investigations.
"I, and much more importantly, then American public have been victims of this long-running and treasonous charade started by the Democrats — started by Comey," he said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "There must be a heavy price to pay for putting our country through this."
He said Durham's report took a long time because he is "thorough." But he said the result is "unequivocal and an absolute disaster in terms of justice. … The national security implications of what they did are very grave."
Had ordinary procedures been followed, instead of a "get-Trump" agenda, the FBI would have found immediately that "their own experienced Russia analysts had no information about Trump being involved…"
Durham found that instead of providing a "defensive briefing" to Trump, as would have been normal, the FBI launched immediately into its pursuit of special court permission to spy on the campaign. To obtain that permission, the FBI made up stories and presented them to the courts as fact.
Additionally, the FBI was unable to corroborate "any of the substantive allegations contained in the Steele reporting, which was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
The Washington Examiner said Durham concluded the DOJ and FBI "failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law."
Durham also said "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 Crossfire Hurricane and contributed to the subsequent need for Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation," the report said. "In particular, there was significant reliance on investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump's political opponents."
"The Department did not adequately examine or question these materials and the motivations of those providing them, even when at about the same time the Director of the FBI and others learned of significant and potentially contrary intelligence," the report said.
Durham indicted three people as part of his investigation: former Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann in September 2021, "source" Igor Danchenko in November 2021 and FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith in August 2020.
In trials in the highly politicized Washington atmosphere, where members generally oppose Trump by massive numbers, Sussmann and Danchenko were found to be not guilty. Clinesmith pleaded guilty and served community service time.
Author: Bob Unruh