Republicans demand John Durham explain why key FBI top brass DECLINED to cooperate with his probe

Republican Senators Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley are urging Special Counsel John 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 agency’s covert investigation between Trump and Russia.

Durham released a damning report last week finding that the Justice Department and FBI had no basis to launch the Trump-Russia probe known as Crossfire Hurricane and “failed to fulfill their mission of strict adherence to the law.” come’.

Durham — who was appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr in 2019 to investigate misconduct related to Crossfire Hurricane — concluded four years later that the FBI had opened the flawed investigation “based on raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated information’.

He 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 involved FBI officials—but notably some of the FBI’s top executives at the time refused to participate. to work. 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.

They also want to know if any other FBI personnel have refused to cooperate.

The requested information will be sought on May 30.

Durham will testify before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on June 20.

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.”