(GoRealNewsNow.com) – Late yesterday, U.S. Special Counsel John Durham revealed in a 300-page report that the FBI didn’t have sufficient evidence for an investigation into the 2016 presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump.
Durham was appointed Justice Department Special Counsel in May 2019 by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the FBI’s 2016 “Crossfire Hurricane” probe, more widely known as the “Trump – Russia Collusion” investigation.
Before Durham, the FBI probe into whether the 2016 Trump campaign had contacts with Putin’s Russia was examined by then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who, in March 2019, concluded there was no criminal conspiracy between Trump and Moscow.
According to Durham’s new 306-page document, the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement had no “actual evidence” of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia, invalidating the grounds to start the Crossfire Hurricane probe.
The DOJ’s Special Counsel also concluded that the FBI treated the investigation against Trump “differently from other politically sensitive investigations, including several involving Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton,” Reuters reports, as cited by Newsmax.
Durham established that Clinton and others received defensive briefings about the efforts of foreign interference. Still, Trump was not given any such briefing even though the FBI later moved to open probes into four of his campaign officials.
“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,” the Special Counsel discovered.
“Senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information from politically affiliated persons and entities,” he wrote.
The FBI reacted to his new report by pointing out that it had resorted to “dozens of corrective actions.”
“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,” said the federal law enforcement agency.
“Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented. This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect,” the FBI added.
Former President Donald Trump has been “impressed” by Durham’s report as he thought it vindicated him, Newsmax reports.
The 45th president of the United States has been maintaining that the accusations of colluding with Russia were a “politically motivated hoax” and part of the left’s wider “witch-hunt” against him.
He reportedly accepted Durham’s findings as confirming his claims.
The Democratic Party has reacted negatively to the Special Counsel’s new report, calling it “a weak and unconvincing political rehash of old claims.”
“Durham’s findings are likely to become political fodder for Trump, who is planning to run for re-election in 2024 despite facing criminal charges in New York and two federal investigations by Special Counsel Jack Smith that are looking both at Trump’s retention of classified records and his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election,” Reuters forecasts.
