John Durham will take center stage to testify in Congress over damning report on the FBI
Two top House committees will hear directly from Special Counsel John Durham following his release damning report last week that showed the Justice Department and FBI had no basis to launch the Trump-Russia probeknown as Crossfire Hurricane, and “failed to live up to their mission of strict adherence to the law.”
Durham was appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr in 2019 to investigate misconduct related to Crossfire Hurricane, concluding four years later that the FBI opened the flawed investigation “based on raw, unanalyzed and unconfirmed information ‘.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) headed by Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, announced this week that it will hold a hearing with Special Counsel John Durham on Tuesday, June 20.
The House Judiciary Committee will receive Durham the following day, Wednesday, June 21.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, had confirmed to DailyMail.com that he would request Durham to appear before his committee.
He wrote a letter to the Justice Department last week about his demand, and DOJ reportedly agreed not to stand in the way of Durham coming to Capitol Hill.
Durham — who was appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr in 2019 to investigate misconduct related to Crossfire Hurricane — concluded that the FBI opened the investigation “on the basis of raw, unanalyzed and unconfirmed information.”
Republican Senators Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley are also urging Durham to provide answers about why top FBI officials — including former director James Comey and deputy director Andrew McCabe — refused to cooperate with his investigation into the opening of the covert investigation between Trump and Russia.
Durham issued 2,800 subpoenas, executed 500 search warrants, and conducted hundreds of interviews with key officials, including Hillary Clinton and her campaign aides, Trump campaign officials, and hundreds of FBI officials involved — but a few of the FBI’s top executives, in particular, refused to participate at the time. working with the Durham probe.
Durham did not interview James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strozk, Bill Preistap, Kevin Clinesmith – who was convicted by Durham of illegally modifying an email – and Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson, whom Republican senators call “weird.”
“As we continue to review the report, we noticed that several former high-level government officials directly involved with Crossfire Hurricane either declined or partially refused to cooperate with your investigation,” Johnson, R-Wis., and Grassley, R- Iowa, wrote in a letter to Durham on Tuesday.
The senators point to a footnote in the report stating that “some personnel” of the FBI’s counterintelligence division “refused to cooperate” with the investigation.
The FBI leadership intervened to “encourage those individuals to agree to be interviewed,” the report also notes.
“It seems strange that individuals would be allowed to avoid full cooperation with your office, especially given your authority to coerce testimony and documents,” they write.
The Republicans are urging Durham to provide information on whether Durham subpoenaed those specific individuals and whether DOJ “impeded” any of his agency’s investigative practices.
Durham will testify before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on June 20
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, had confirmed to DailyMail.com that he would request Durham to appear before his committee
While Durham’s report does not recommend “wholesale changes” to Justice Department guidelines or policies, it says there is an “ongoing need” for the agencies to acknowledge the lack of “analytical rigor” and apparent “confirmation bias.”
The FBI responded to the report in a statement to DailyMail.com, saying “corrective actions” have now been taken that would have prevented “missteps in 2016.”
“The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham investigated was the reason the current FBI leadership has already taken dozens of corrective actions, which have been in effect for some time now,” the FBI told DailyMail.com.
If those reforms had taken place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been avoided. This report underscores the importance of ensuring that the FBI continues to do its job with the rigor, objectivity and professionalism that the American people deserve and rightly expect.”