A review of the FBI’s investigation into alleged links between Donald Trump and the Russian government during the 2016 presidential election found the agency exhibited “serious lack of analytical rigour”.
The conclusion came in a 306-page report released on Monday by John Durham, a special counsel appointed by the Trump administration to assess the FBI’s probe into allegedly illicit co-ordination between Moscow and the former president. The report found that when the agency launched the probe in 2016, neither US intelligence nor law enforcement had “any actual evidence” of collusion.
However, the report did not recommend further legal action be taken. Durham’s office has already brought three criminal cases in connection with its probe, which resulted in one guilty plea and two acquittals.
The report comes as the US gears up for the 2024 presidential election, with Trump launching a new bid for the White House against incumbent Joe Biden.
Trump on Monday told Fox News “there must be a heavy price to pay” by Democrats and former FBI director James Comey for launching probes into his alleged collusion with Russia, efforts he described as a “treasonous charade”.
Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, said in a tweet that he had reached out to the Department of Justice to have Durham testify next week.
Durham’s probe began after the conclusion of a separate investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. Mueller failed to find that members of the Trump campaign had conspired with Moscow.
William Barr, the US attorney-general at the time, in 2019 directed Durham to conduct a review of the origins of the Russia probe, which morphed into a criminal investigation.
The FBI’s counter-intelligence response to Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 election began after the Australian government shared information that a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser had told one of its diplomats that Moscow had information about Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee. In his report, Durham said that the full Trump-Russia investigation was launched without US authorities ever speaking to people who had provided that information.
The report also claimed there was bias at the FBI, with information contradicting the premise that Trump or his associates had colluded with Russia “ignored or simply assessed away”. Failure to analyse these facts was “extremely troublesome”, it said.
Durham added that some individuals directly involved in the probe had expressed “open disdain” for Trump and had stated they would stop him from taking office.
According to the report, the “speed and manner” in which the FBI opened the probe “reflected a noticeable departure” from its previous approach towards potential foreign interference directed at the Clinton campaign. The FBI had instead “moved with considerable caution” when weighing other probes with potential impact on the 2016 election, it said.
In a statement responding to the report, the FBI said its current leadership “already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time”. Those reforms included expanding internal oversight and reviewing policies on confidential sources.
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