A special counsel has ended its four-year investigation into possible FBI misconduct in its 2016 probe into ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign with scathing criticism of the agency, but a meager court record that fell far short of forecast of the former president that he would bring the matter to light. crime of the century.

Monday’s report from Special Counsel John Durham represents the long-awaited culmination of an investigation Trump and allies claimed would uncover massive misconduct by law enforcement and intelligence officials. Instead, Durham’s investigation turned up disappointing results, with prosecutors getting a guilty plea from a little-known FBI employee but losing the only two criminal cases they brought to trial.

The roughly 300-page report catalogs what Durham says were a series of FBI and Justice Department missteps as investigators launched a politically explosive investigation in the heat of the 2016 election to determine whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the outcome. It criticized the FBI for opening a full investigation based on “raw, unanalyzed and unconfirmed intelligence,” saying the speed with which it did so deviated from the norm. And it said investigators repeatedly relied on confirmation bias, ignoring or rationalizing away evidence that undermined their premise of a Trump-Russia conspiracy as they pushed the investigation forward.

Again, the FBI’s failure to critically analyze information that conflicted with the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia shown during Crossfire Hurricane is extremely troublesome, the report said. Crossfire Hurricane was the FBI code name for the investigation.

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impact effect

of Durham’s report, while sharply critical of the FBI, is probably diluted by Durham’s spotty criminal record and by the fact that many of the seven-year-old episodes it cites have already been thoroughly investigated by the Justice Department’s inspector general . The FBI has also long announced dozens of corrective actions. Still, Durham’s findings are likely to bolster oversight of the FBI at a time when Trump is once again seeking the White House, and provide fresh fodder for congressional Republicans who have launched their own investigations into the alleged arming of the FBI and Department of State. Justice.

The FBI has sent a letter to Durham outlining the changes it has made, including steps to ensure the accuracy of secret surveillance applications to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists and spies. It also stressed that the report focused on past leadership.

If those reforms had taken place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been avoided. This report highlights the importance of ensuring that the FBI continues to conduct its work with the rigor, objectivity and professionalism that the American people deserve and rightly expect, the FBI said in a statement.

Durham, the former USA

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attorney in Connecticut, was appointed in 2019 by Trump Attorney General William Barr shortly after Special Counsel Robert

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Muller

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had completed its investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the outcome of the election in its favor.

The Mueller investigation resulted in about three dozen criminal charges, including convictions of half a dozen Trump associates, and concluded that Russia intervened on behalf of the Trump campaigns and that the campaign welcomed the aid. But Mueller’s team failed to discover that they were actually conspiring to influence the election, opening up critics of the investigation, including Barr himself, to complain that it was launched without proper foundation.

The original Russia investigation was opened in July 2016 after the FBI learned from an Australian diplomat that a Trump campaign aide named George Papadopoulos had claimed to know about dirt the Russians had on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the form of hacked emails.

But revelations in the following months exposed flaws in the investigation, including errors and omissions in Justice Department requests to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign tool, as well as the FBI’s reliance on a file containing unconfirmed or discredited information. by a British ex-spy, Christopher Steele.

Durham’s team dug deep into those errors and found that investigators failed to corroborate any substantive allegations in the so-called Steele dossier and ignored or rationalized what it claims to be exculpatory information that Trump associates had provided confidential FBI informants.

Durham’s mandate was to investigate government decisions and identify possible wrongdoing in the early days of the Trump-Russia investigation. His nomination was applauded by Trump, who said in a 2019 interview with Fox News that Durham would be the brightest and the best. He and his supporters hoped it would expose a deep state conspiracy within the top FBI and other agencies to derail Trump’s presidency and candidacy.

Durham and his team cast a wide net, interviewing top officials from the FBI, the Justice Department and the CIA. In his first year on the job, he traveled to Italy with Barr to meet with government officials, as Trump himself asked the Australian Prime Minister and other leaders to help with the investigation. Weeks before stepping down as Attorney General in December 2020, Barr appointed Durham special counsel to the Justice Department to ensure he continued his work in a democratic government.

The slow pace of the investigation irked Trump, who before leaving office advised Barr on the whereabouts of a report that would not be released for several years. By the end of the Trump administration, only one criminal case had been filed, while the abrupt departure of Durham’s top deputy in the final months of Trump’s term raised questions about whether the team was in sync.

Despite expecting Durham to indict senior government officials, his team produced only three prosecutions. A former FBI attorney pleaded guilty to altering an email the FBI relied on when wiretapping a former Trump campaign aide. Two other defendants, a Clinton campaign attorney and a Russian-American think tank analyst, were both acquitted on charges of lying to the FBI.