Special Counsel Accuses FBI of Flaws in Trump-Russia Investigation, But Rules Out a Plot
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The investigation into possible contacts between Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign with Russia has come to an end after four years of investigation.
After four years of investigation, special counsel John Durham found no evidence that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI are conspiring in a deep state plot to investigate Donald Trump's ties to Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign, However, it found that the FBI's handling of key aspects of the case was lacking.
The Reuters agency reported that Durham indicated in a report that the FBI lacked evidence to investigate Trump's presidential campaign and relied on advice provided by Trump's political opponents to push the investigation forward.
The roughly 300-page report came to light when the Justice Department inspector issued his own report that raised similar concerns, but ultimately concluded that the FBI's investigation of Trump was warranted.
However, the Durham report was even more scathing, asserting that the FBI acted quickly on “a vague lead” about possible contacts between a Trump campaign aide and Russian officials in July 2016 based on “crude evidence, not analyzed and not corroborated” in a “departure from how the Hilary Clinton campaign was approached”.
“The Department and the FBI failed in their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in relation to certain events and activities described in this report”, wrote Durham.
And he added that “senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information they received, especially information from politically affiliated individuals and entities.”
In this new 306 report, Durham concluded that US intelligence and law enforcement did not possess any real evidence of confusion between the Trump campaign and Russia prior to launching Cross Hurricane.
The aforementioned agency indicated that the report was delivered to Congress on Monday without censorship after it was delivered to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday.
This report seems to come as a “glove to the finger” to Trump, who could use it to his advantage to give Joe Biden's campaign a low blow.
In May 2019, then-US Attorney General in the Trump Administration, William Barr, asked prosecutor John Durham to review the FBI investigation into Trump's 2016 ties to Russia.