Special Counsel John Durham who has been investigating the origins of the infamous Trump-Russia investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, found that essentially, former president Barack Obama's FBI Director James Comey, the Democrat National Convention(DNC) and the Department of Justice colluded with Hillary Clinton to target and undermine then incoming president Donald Trump. Durham gave his final 300-page report to the DOJ, which released it Monday afternoon.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller completed his controversial and costly investigation into a possible Trump-Russia connection in April 2019, which yielded no evidence of criminal conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 election.
Mueller's probe was preceded by corrupt Obama era FBI's controversial investigation into the Trump campaign. Then Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton plotted to tie her then-opponent Trump to Russia in an effort to distract from the investigation into her use of a private email server and mishandling of classified information.
Durham found that the DOJ and FBI "failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law" when it launched the Trump-Russia investigation.
"Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report," the report said.
Durham said his investigation also revealed that "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 is referring to past FBI leadership in his report – specifically former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Three people were indicted as part of Durham's investigation: former Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann in September 2021, Igor Danchenko in November 2021 and Kevin Clinesmith in August 2020.
Sussmann and Danchenko were found to be not guilty. Clinesmith pleaded guilty and served community service time.
The report said Clinesmith "committed a criminal offense by fabricating language in an email that was material to the FBI obtaining a FISA surveillance order."
"In other instances, FBI personnel working on that same FISA application displayed, at best, a cavalier attitude towards accuracy and completeness," it said.
"FBI personnel also repeatedly disregarded important requirements when they continued to seek renewals of that FISA surveillance while acknowledging – both then and in hindsight – that they did not genuinely believe there was probable cause to believe that the target was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of a foreign power, or knowingly helping another person in such activities," the report continued. "And certain personnel disregarded significant exculpatory information that should have prompted investigative restraint and re-examination."
The FBI "failed to act" on a "clear warning sign" that the bureau was the "target" of a Hillary Clinton-led effort to "manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes" ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Durham found.
Durham found that then-CIA Director John Brennan "realized the significance" of the intelligence that Clinton was stirring up a plan to tie Trump to Russia—so much so, he "expeditiously" briefed then-President Barack Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden, and other top national security officials.
But nothing came of that briefing or of his subsequent referral of the information to the FBI, according to Durham’s final report.
"The aforementioned facts reflect a rather startling and inexplicable failure to adequately consider and incorporate the Clinton Plan intelligence into the FBI’s investigative decision-making in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation," the report states.
"Indeed, had the FBI opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation as an assessment and, in turn, gathered and analyzed data in concert with the information from the Clinton Plan intelligence, it is likely that the information received would have been examined, at a minimum, with a more critical eye," the report continued.
Durham found, after years of investigating, that the FBI did not have any actual evidence to support the start of that investigation.
But on July 28, 2016, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed Obama on a plan from one of Hillary Clinton's campaign foreign policy advisers "to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service." Biden, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former FBI Director James Comey, and former ODNI James Clapper were in the Brennan-Obama briefing, the report says.
After that briefing, the CIA properly forwarded that information through a Counterintelligence Operational Lead (CIOL) to then-FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok, with the subject line: "Crossfire Hurricane."
The CIOL stated: "The following information is provided for the exclusive use of your bureau for background investigative action or lead purposes as appropriate."
"Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date," the memo continued. "An exchange [REDACTED] discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server."
Durham interviewed a number of Clinton campaign officials, including then-foreign policy advisor, now-Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Sullivan, when asked about the Clinton Plan intelligence, said he had not seen the reporting, and called it "ridiculous."
"Although the campaign was broadly focused on Trump and Russia, Sullivan could not recall anyone articulating a strategy or 'plan' to distract negative attention away from Clinton by tying trump to Russia, but could not conclusively rule out the possibility," the report states.
Durham, in his report, said the FBI "failed to act on what should have been—when combined with other incontrovertible facts— a clear warning sign that the FBI might then be the target of an effort to manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes during the 2016 presidential election."
"Whether or not the Clinton plan intelligence was based on reliable or unreliable information, or was ultimately true or false it, it should have prompted FBI personnel to immediately undertake an analysis of the information and to act with far greater care and caution when receiving, analyzing, and relying upon materials of partisan origins, such as the Steele Reports, and the Alfa Bank allegations," Durham’s report states.
Durham also said the FBI "should have disseminated the Clinton Plan intelligence more widely among those responsible for the Crossfire Hurricane investigation so that they could effectively incorporate it into their analysis and decision-making and their representations to the OI attorneys, and, ultimately, the FISC."
The anti-Trump Steele dossier was also linked to the Clinton campaign.
The dossier contained allegations of purported coordination between Trump and the Russian government. It was authored by Christopher Steele, an ex-British intelligence officer.
The Clinton campaign and the DNC funded the dossier through the law firm Perkins Coie, where both Elias and Sussmann were employed at the time.
The Justice Department inspector general revealed that the unverified anti-Trump dossier helped serve as the basis for controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants obtained against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
And the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian election interference revealed that the dossier had, at the time, only "limited corroboration." CIA officials at the time pushed back, arguing the dossier should not be included in the assessment, casting it as simply "internet rumor."
The FBI’s investigation was handed off to Special Counsel Robert Mueller after Trump was elected. Mueller was appointed on May 17, 2017. But Mueller’s team, like the FBI, did not investigate the allegations linked to Clinton-affiliated individuals.
"Whether these failures by U.S. officials amounted to criminal acts, however, is a different question," Durham’s report states.
"Although the evidence we collected revealed a troubling disregard for the Clinton Plan intelligence and potential confirmation bias in favor of continued investigative scrutiny of Trump and his associates, it did not yield evidence sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any FBI or CIA officials intentionally furthered a Clinton campaign plan to frame or falsely accuse Trump of improper ties to Russia," the report states.
Durham said his team also was not able to find sufficient evidence to prove that the "omission" of the Clinton Plan intelligence from applications to the FISC "was a conscious or intentional decision, much less one intended to influence the Court’s view of the facts supporting probable cause."
"In sum, the government’s handling of the Clinton Plan intelligence may have amounted to a significant intelligence failure and a troubling instance in which confirmation bias and a tunnel-vision pursuit of investigative ends may have caused government personnel to fill to appreciate the extent to which uncorroborated reporting funded by an opposing political campaign was intended to influence rather than inform the FBI," the report states.
Read Special Counsel John Durham's final report
Durham Report.pdf