Durham Defends His Report to Raging Democrats
CV NEWS FEED // Special Counsel John Durham testified under fire on Wednesday that the FBI ignored intelligence of Hillary Clinton’s involvement in falsely tying former President Donald Trump to Russia in 2016.
Durham testified before the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI failed to “sufficiently scrutinize information it received” and did not “apply the same standards to allegations it received about the Clinton and Trump campaigns.”
This is Durham’s first testimony at Capitol Hill weeks after releasing a report on Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. The yearslong investigative report found that the Justice Department and the FBI never should have launched the Trump-Russia investigation in the first place.
“The FBI was too willing to accept and use politically funded and uncorroborated opposition research, such as the Steele dossier,” Durham said. “The FBI relied on the dossier and FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] applications, knowing there was likely material originating from a political campaign or political opponent.”
The report stated that the FBI was given the information, but failed to take action or inform the proper authorities within the organization.
Durham added that the FBI “did so even after the president of the United States, the FBI and CIA directors and others received briefings about intelligence suggesting that there was a Clinton campaign plan underway to stir up a scandal tying Trump to Russia.”
“We interviewed the first supervisor of the Crossfire investigation, the operational person,” Durham said. “We showed him the intelligence information and he indicated he had never seen it before.”
“Whether or not the Clinton plan intelligence was based on reliable or unreliable information, or was ultimately true or false, it should have prompted FBI personnel to immediately undertake an analysis of the information and to act with far greater care and caution when receiving, analyzing, and relying upon materials of partisan origins, such as the Steele Reports, and the Alfa Bank allegations,” Durham’s report stated.
At the hearing, Durham maintained that his report was not based on or influenced by any political ties.
“To me, it matters not whether it was a Republican campaign or a Democrat campaign,” he stated. “The law ought to apply to everybody in the same way.”
“Democrats used the hearing to slam Durham, and some even called him a ‘political hack,’” Fox News reported.
“Your reputation will be damaged, because everybody’s reputation who gets involved with Donald Trump is damaged,” said Rep. Steve Cohen, D-TN. “He’s damaged goods, there’s no good dealing with him, because you will end up on the bottom of a pyre.”
“My concern about my reputation is with the people who I respect, and my family, and my Lord,” Durham responded, “and I’m perfectly comfortable with my reputation with them, sir.”
