Special counsel John Durham releases report on Trump-Russia probe

Special counsel John Durham released his final report on Monday in which he casts doubt about the FBI’s decision to launch a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

Here are the takeaways from the special counsel’s report:

Durham finds FBI rushed to investigate Trump: The special counsel’s office “conducted more than 480 interviews,” and “obtained and reviewed more than one million documents consisting of more than six million pages,” while also issuing 190 grand jury subpoenas, according to the report.

The Durham report, however, relies on many public findings — including problems with the investigation that were detailed in a 2019 investigation by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz — to question the bureau’s decision to open a full investigation, one the watchdog found to be legal and unbiased.

And while Durham acknowledges the FBI did have reason to open a preliminary review or investigation, he accuses the bureau of failing to uphold its “important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report.”

Claims FBI had no real evidence of collusion before launching probe: Durham concluded that federal investigators did not have “any actual evidence of collusion” between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia before launching a yearslong probe into the matter.

That finding was at the core of Durham’s most scathing criticism of the FBI’s decision to launch a full investigation.

Durham knocked the FBI for failing to take several steps before launching the Trump campaign investigations, such as interviewing relevant witnesses, reviewing its own intelligence databases or using “any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence.”

He suggested that if the FBI had taken those steps, it would have found that US intelligence agencies did not have any evidence tying Trump to Russian leadership officials.

FBI failed to corroborate Steele dossier allegations: The report is critical of the Steele dossier, the explosive document that had been used by the FBI to bolster its case for probable cause to secure surveillance warrants against a former Trump campaign adviser.

Crossfire Hurricane investigation “did not and could not corroborate any of the substantive allegations” contained in the controversial Steele dossier, which was used by the FBI to obtain a FISA warrant, Durham found.

Witness testimony exposed the FBI’s overreliance on the dossier as it sought court approval to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser in 2016. Other FBI officials described rookie mistakes that undercut the bureau’s brief inquiry into a possible Trump-Russia internet backchannel. At closing arguments during one of last year’s trials, Durham told jurors that “the FBI failed” on many occasions.

Read more about the report.

Special counsel John Durham concluded that the FBI should have never launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump's campaign associates and Russia during the 2016 election. 

The bureau does have a distinction between the types of investigations it can launch — and having a full probe allowed agents to use broader surveillance tools when looking into the Trump team Russia. 

Here's the difference between a full FBI investigation — which Durham has criticized in the Trump-Russia probe — and a preliminary investigation. 

A preliminary investigation requires a lower threshold to open than a full investigation, and for that reason also means the agents can’t use more invasive tools like Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants and other court authorized surveillance. 

Specifically, according to the FBI's Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, during a preliminary investigation:

A full investigation is more extensive and agents have access to more tools. During a full investigation: 

Bottom line, if the FBI had opened the investigation into the Trump-Russia probe as a preliminary vs. a full one, they would not have been permitted to use the host of FISA tools that ultimately became the subject of scrutiny by Durham, the Trump team, and DOJ's inspector general. Opening the case as a preliminary investigation would have also limited the amount of information the FBI could collect as it sought to uncover potential ties between members of the Trump team and Russia. 

Former President Donald Trump responded to special counsel John Durham’s report that concluded that the FBI should never have launched a full-blown investigation into connections between his campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. 

Durham was appointed special counsel under former Attorney General William Barr to investigate potential misconduct in the Trump-Russia probe. 

Special counsel John Durham, on Monday, released his highly anticipated report surrounding the investigation into Donald Trump's campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

Read the full report here:

Former Attorney General William Barr tapped special counsel John Durham in 2019 to review the origins of the Russia probe, and the scope of Durham’s work grew over the years.

He scrutinized the FBI’s handling of the Steele dossier, leaks of classified information about Trump-Russia contacts, and possible CIA misconduct regarding its analysis of Russian meddling, among other topics.

Largely, his inquiry seemed to always zero in on former President Donald Trump’s political opponents and perceived enemies.

When Durham began his probe, he was seen as an apolitical truth-seeker with a knack for investigating complex cases, including government scandals.

But that reputation waned over the years, especially after Durham took the unprecedented step of publicly rebuking the Justice Department inspector general after the watchdog released a report finding that the FBI’s decision to open the Trump-Russia probe was legally justified and untainted by bias.

Both Barr and Durham were publicly critical of the December 2019 inspector general report on the FBI’s Russia investigation.

That report contained blistering criticisms of FBI’s reliance on an unverified opposition research dossier on Trump and Russia and the FISA warrants that cited the dossier’s allegations, but Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote he did not find “documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions” to open investigations that initially focused on four Trump campaign aides and advisers.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which inherited the initial Russia probe, released a detailed accounting of Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election.

Mueller found no evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, but investigators documented numerous contacts between Trump associates and Russians.

The final Mueller report did not rely on the opposition research dossier.

The FBI has made reforms to the way it obtains warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in light of the inspector general’s report — which led to FBI invalidating two of the four warrants it obtained on the Trump campaign adviser – as well as a follow up investigation revealing widespread problems with FISA court applications.

In congressional testimony in 2020, FBI Director Chris Wray said that the FBI had implemented more than 40 changes aimed at making the FISA process more stringent in response to Horowitz’s report.

Special counsel John Durham scrutinized the FBI’s handling of the dossier, leaks of classified information about Trump-Russia contacts and possible CIA misconduct regarding its analysis of Russian meddling, among other topics during the course of his investigation.

But, he only pressed forward with two trials during his probe, both ending in acquittal.

Before the 2020 election, Barr elevated Durham to “special counsel” status, further protecting his position and making it politically difficult for the Biden-run Justice Department to control or shut down the investigation.

During the trials, Trump and his allies continued to make bold predictions about what would be uncovered in the probe, particularly after Durham released vague allegations through court filings. Trump last year told Fox News that Durham was exposing the “crime of the century.”

His case against Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann ended with an acquittal in May. Durham charged Sussmann with lying to a top FBI official in September 2016 while passing along a tip about Trump’s ties to Russia. Sussmann’s lawyers accused Durham of bullying witnesses into changing their story and cherry-picking evidence to fuel claims of an anti-Trump conspiracy. After his acquittal, Sussmann said he was “falsely accused” by Durham.

In October, Durham personally oversaw his trial against Trump-Russia dossier source Igor Danchenko, who was charged with lying to the FBI about his sub-sourcing. Durham handled most of the arguments and witness questioning, but things quickly got off the rails.

He attacked his own witnesses when they helped the defense, and the judge threw out one of the five charges mid-trial. The Virginia jury reached “not guilty” verdicts on all remaining counts.

John Durham, the special counsel who led the investigation into potential misconduct in the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe, has made a career of investigating high-profile public corruption.

In a 300-plus page report, the Trump administration appointee determined that the FBI should never have launched its investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election, according to the report compiled over three years and released on Monday.

Durham, 73, was appointed to serve as special counsel in October 2020 by then-Attorney General William Barr. He previously was the Justice Department’s top prosecutor in Connecticut — a position he was appointed to in 2017 and left in 2021.

Durham became a lawyer in 1975. He is known for having handled high-profile, sensitive investigations in both Democratic and Republican administrations during his decadeslong career with the Justice Department.

He was appointed by then-Attorney General Janet Reno in 1999 to investigate corruption surrounding the use of FBI informants in Boston, and later by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate the CIA’s destruction of videotapes of detainee interrogations in 2008. Durham closed the latter probe without bringing any charges.

In addition to his work as a special prosecutor, Durham has extensive experience as a trial lawyer. He went after gangs in New Haven, prosecuted mob figures, and secured a guilty plea from former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, a Republican who admitted to corruption.

Though the new special counsel report levies criticism after criticism of how the FBI handled the Trump-Russia probe, John Durham is not recommending "any wholesale changes" to the agency's — or Justice Department — guidelines or policies. 

The report, Durham writes, is meant to capture the findings of the special counsel investigation and to "assist the Attorney General in determining how the Department and the FBI can do a better, more credible job." 

Durham however did float a proposal to create a career position for a nonpartisan FBI lawyer or agent who would be tasked with challenging steps taken in "politically sensitive investigations,” including surveillance warrant applications.

Durham said he was not proposing any changes to FBI policies in a conclusion to the report’s executive summary, where he claimed that the FBI "failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law." 

The report asserts that “the answer is not the creation of new rules but a renewed fidelity to the old.” 

His report says there is a need for the FBI to recognize that there was a "lack of analytical rigor, apparent confirmation bias, and an over-willingness to rely on information from individuals connected to political opponents." 

The FBI agents who worked on the surveillance applications for the Trump campaign aide Carter Page, Durham claims, showed "cavalier attitude towards accuracy and completeness," as they allegedly disregarded requirements for renewing the warrants. 

FBI personnel, Durham writes, displayed a "serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities," and that information contributed to both the launch the FBI's initial probe and the opening of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. 

"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,” Durham writes. 

Even if hindsight is clearer, the report says, "much of this also seems to have been clear at the time." 

Using harsh language, special counsel John Durham claims in his report that the FBI deviated from his previous approach to foreign election interference matters in how it opened, with the Trump appointed-prosecutor touting how the FBI treated matters related to former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic White House nominee Hillary Clinton. 

Durham zeroed in on former FBI Deputy Director Andre McCabe and Peter Strzok, the ex-deputy director of the counter-intelligence division, 

"Strzok, at a minimum, had pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump," Durham wrote, while quoting in a footnote previously known texts between Strzok and Lisa Page, then an FBI attorney. 

Durham knocked the FBI for failing to take several steps before launching the Trump campaign investigations, such as interviewing relevant witnesses, reviewing its own intelligence databases, for or using "any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence.” 

Durham suggested that if the FBI had taken those steps, it would have found that US intelligence agencies did not have any evidence tying Trump to Russian leadership officials. 

The report cites for comparison examples of how the FBI approached investigations concerning Hillary Clinton. Durham points to specifically to "highly significant intelligence” the FBI “received from a trusted foreign source pointing to a Clinton campaign plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin so as to divert attention from her own concerns relating to her use of a private email server." 

"Unlike the FBI's opening of a full investigation of unknown members of the Trump campaign based on raw, uncorroborated information, in this separate matter involving a purported Clinton campaign plan, the FBI never opened any type of inquiry, issued any taskings, employed any analytical personnel, or produced any analytical products in connection with the information," the report said.