Special counsel John Durham's report on Trump-Russia!~

A one-year study is now complete.

And John Durham, the special counsel, has spent years looking into whether the FBI erred in the Trump-Russia investigation or just disclosed his conclusions.

You may recall that John Durham, the former U.S. attorney for Connecticut, was conducting an investigation on Donald Trump and his supporters.

Later, Attorney General Bill Barr designated him as special counsel.

Durham, according to Trump and his defenders, would clear him, his 2016 campaign, and his aides of any suspicion of wrongdoing.

Regarding the attempts made by the Russian government to sway the 2016 election.

Republican legislators and the president's family shared the phrase and meme "Durham is coming," implying that Durham will result in shocking indictments of those involved.

who is currently looking into Trump.

The shocking indictments never materialized.

Durham did manage to win one small court victory compared to court losses, but President Trump aggressively pressed the special counsel to make his findings public before the 2020 election because he seemed so confident in what Durham would discover.

However, the report is now available.

It is no longer there, and it might not have accomplished everything that some Republicans had hoped it would.

whatever, is.

It is devastating to the FBI and to some extent, Donald Trump is cleared.

Evan Perez, senior judicial correspondent for CNN, please join us.

Evan, what did Durham discover in this study specifically?

Nevertheless, Jake, the overall conclusion of John Durham's four-year study is that the FBI responded swiftly to look into these claims of links between the Trump campaign and Russia, and that they ignored a lot of information that would have convinced them to abandon those claims entirely.

He's implying that there might have been justification for them to launch an initial investigation and evaluation.

These could be incredibly basic studies.

However, what he discovers is that there wasn't sufficient evidence to support the FBI's decision to launch a full-fledged investigation into the Trump Russia ties in 2016.

I'll only share a little of what he writes.

He asserts that it appears quite likely that, at the very least, confirmation bias contributed significantly to the FBI's acceptance of extremely serious claims originating from unverified sources.

information that had not gone through the usual meticulous review that the FBI employs.

He continues by claiming that the FBI purposefully disregarded or dismissed pertinent facts that did not corroborate the thesis of a conspiracy between Trump of Russia and Russia.

The former FBI leadership, James Comey and McCabe, who oversaw many of them along with, many of the measures that the report goes into, Jake, received a lot of pretty harsh criticism here.

However, as you pointed out, there are no additional fees.

There are no accusations against Comey or anyone else.

that the then-President Trump incessantly stated he anticipated them to.

There once existed a Trump I'm sorry, a former outside attorney for the Clinton campaign who was charged but found not guilty.

Once more, a footnote in this passage emphasizes the absence of any criminal charges against members of the Clinton campaign.

Once more, Jake, something the former president claimed he anticipated this investigation would uncover.

It's therefore really intriguing.

First of all, it's important to understand that President Biden allowed the 22 special counsels and one U.S. attorney to continue their work when he assumed office.

In this case, one of them was John Durham, and the other was Hunter's investigation by the Delaware US attorney.

That being the case, this might proceed.

Several quotations from the investigation into Trump and Russia and related intelligence actions is covered in Durham's report, which is based on the analysis of CROSSFIRE storm.

We come to the conclusion that, in relation to certain of the events and activities detailed in the report, the Justice Department and FBI failed to uphold their crucial mandate of strict obedience to the law.

And he claims that there was, quote, a predisposition to launch an inquiry into Trump with reference to particular personnel who were directly involved in the situation.

In essence, he is claiming that there are not criminal charges but that this was unprofessional.

and fell short of FBI and Justice Department requirements.

Jake, what's amazing about this article is that, in all honesty, we know a lot.

One of the reasons Durham was hired was reportedly to go above and beyond what the inspector general of the Justice Department found in their investigation. The inspector general of the Justice Department conducted a 500 page report that was released in late 2019 and that one told us a lot of the findings that Durham is now is now confirming.

And among its many duties was informing us in great detail about the activities of the intelligence community.

In the end, they discovered relatively little within the intelligence community.

And certainly not to confirm their suspicions that a group of FBI and other officials was involved in the anti-Donald Trump plot by the intelligence community.

That seems to have been unsuccessful in this investigation.

And so, have a look, there's a lot in here that should force the FBI to revisit and respond to some additional queries, including some of the improvements they claim to have done to ensure that anything similar never occurs again.

But the truth is that, after a four-year inquiry, what we see here doesn't really tell us all that much more than what we already knew.

You know, the inspector general looked into many of these things a few years ago and made 17 disturbed, very significant, troubling findings that

The FBI, they said, needed to be fixed.

Yeah.

Another point is made by Rachel Cohen, the spokesperson and communications director for Mark Warner, the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Intelligence. This context is crucial because it explains why it took the Senate Intelligence Committee three and a half years to examine millions of documents and speak with hundreds of witnesses.

She posted this on Twitter and came to the conclusion that the FBI had good reason to be concerned in 2006.

She also mentions that Republicans were in charge of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time.

Again, both of these statements about former North Carolina senator Richard Burr may be true.

The same time It's possible that the FBI had valid reasons to be concerned at the time, but it's also plausible that some agents got ahead of themselves and weren't acting with the appropriate level of professionalism. Exactly, I agree.

One of the conclusions you draw from this report is that there was ample justification for the Justice Department and the FBI to look into the Trump campaign. Durham made a very highly unusual statement in 2019 in which he expressed his disagreement with this conclusion, which surprised me to hear him say.

He reportedly objected to that.

Durham claims in the report for today

stated he believes there is justification for the FBI to at least look into some of the first tips that resulted in what became into a hurricane.

He's asserting that there was at least a preliminary basis for an FBI investigation.

What he doesn't perceive, according to this article, Jake, is the need for a thorough inquiry.

If you recall, the former president frequently asserted that he would discover proof of deep state eavesdropping. This is one of the curious things that struck out to me.

There is a section in this article that discusses a secret human source, who is effectively a spy, who was assigned to attend a fundraiser for the Clinton campaign.

Let me say that again.

A Clinton campaign fundraiser due to FBI intelligence that suggested someone might have claimed that a foreign government might anticipate some favors from a Clinton presidency.

There you have it, then.

The report by John Durham claimed that the FBI had been eavesdropping on the Clinton campaign.

Has the FBI addressed the Durham report in any way?

They possess the The FBI's director, Christopher Wray, recently released a statement in which he said that many of the adjustments the agency has taken will ensure that incidents like this don't occur again.

And Jake, the FBI wants to emphasize that a significant portion of the leadership and participants are participating.

They were fired from the FBI for actions that are subject to some fairly scathing criticism in this report. Right.

And as is well known, President Trump picked the current FBI director; nevertheless, it hasn't prevented him from bashing Christopher Wray.

I appreciate you, Evan Perez.

Bring in CNN's Sara Murray and former federal prosecutor Ellie Honig.

So, here it all is.

300 pages or more.

The FBI, in Durham's opinion, should never have opened a full-fledged investigation into any possible ties between Trump and his campaign associates and the Russian government, or any allegations of such ties. That is the crux of his findings, Ali.

What is your reaction?

Well, Jake, that conclusion comes as no surprise.

It was essentially a foregone conclusion from the beginning.

Let's recall how, in the middle of 2019, John Durham became a special counsel.

When Mueller's investigation was finished, Donald Trump was frequently tweeting in all uppercase, "Investigate the investigators."

Bill Barr then appointed John Durham to conduct this probe shortly after.

Additionally, there was a crucial and, in my opinion, eye-opening event in December 2019 when the inspector general of the DOJ concluded that, indeed, the FBI had made a number of mistakes, some of which Durham also capitalizes on.

However, there was sufficient justification to launch an investigation.

John Durham immediately issued a public statement stating that he disagreed with that.

Three and a half seconds ago long ago, Jake.

Durham's conclusions are therefore neither valid nor invalid, but it comes as no surprise that he has reached the conclusions that he has.