Washington.- A special counsel has wrapped up his four-year investigation into possible FBI mishandling of its probe into alleged ties between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government, sharply criticizing the security agency but falling far short of the predictions of the ex-president that “the crime of the century” would be uncovered.
The report Monday by special counsel John Durham is the long-awaited conclusion to an inquiry that Trump and his allies said would expose massive wrongdoing by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Instead, Durham’s research yielded disappointing results. Prosecutors managed to get a little-known FBI employee to plead guilty, but lost the only two criminal cases they were able to go to trial.
The roughly 300-page report catalogs what Durham believes were a series of missteps by the FBI and Justice Department when investigators launched a politically explosive investigation in the heat of the 2016 election to determine whether the Trump campaign was colluded with Russia to tip the outcome. He criticized the FBI for opening a full investigation based on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence,” noting that the speed at which it did so deviated from the norm.
Durham stressed that the investigators repeatedly relied on “confirmation bias,” ignoring or rationalizing away evidence that undermined their premise of a Trump-Russia conspiracy when pushing the inquiry.
“Again, the FBI’s failure to critically analyze information that ran counter to the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia exhibited throughout Crossfire Hurricane is extremely problematic,” the report read. “Crossfire Hurricane” was the FBI code name for their investigation.
The impact of the report, while harshly critical of the FBI, will likely be tempered by Durham’s spotty prosecution record and the fact that many of the seven-year episodes it cites have already been thoroughly vetted by the Department’s inspector general. of Justice.
The FBI had also long since announced dozens of corrective actions. Still, the Durham findings are likely to amplify FBI scrutiny as Trump again seeks the White House, and also offer new fodder for congressional Republicans who have launched their own investigation into the alleged “politicization.” the FBI and the Department of Justice.
