No surprises here, right down to the complete lack of consequences for those involved. Special counsel John Durham finished his investigation with a report that condemns the FBI, the Obama administrat.
No surprises here, right down to the complete lack of consequences for those involved. Special counsel John Durham finished his investigation with a report that condemns the FBI, the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton, and House Democrats for flogging a made-up political attack for nearly three years based on nothing at all. And in keeping with the grand American tradition of special counsels, Durham will do nothing significant to discourage politicization in the future.
Other than issue a lengthy report, of course, but at least Durham names names:
As set forth in greater detail in Section IV, the record in this matter reflects that upon receipt of unevaluated intelligence information from Australia, the FBI swiftly opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. In particular, at the direction of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Peter Strzok opened Crossfire Hurricane immediately. 22 Strzok, at a minimum, had pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump. 23 The matter was opened as a full investigation without ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information. Further, the FBI did so without (i) any significant review of its own intelligence databases, (ii) collection and examination of any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities, (iii) interviews of witnesses essential to understand the raw information it had received or (iv) using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence. Had it done so, again as set out in Sections IV.A.3.b and c, the FBI would have learned that their own experienced Russia analysts had no information about Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials, nor were others in sensitive positions at the CIA, the NSA, and the Department of State aware of such evidence concerning the subject. In addition, FBI records prepared by Strzok in February and March 2017 show that at the time of the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI had no information in its holdings indicating that at any time during the campaign anyone in the Trump campaign had been in contact with any Russian intelligence officials. 24
In other words, Durham found not just a rush to judgment but an eagerness to break FBI rules and procedures to open its investigation. Durham rips McCabe and Strzok for using a completely new and unjustifiably low standard for such investigations, especially compared to a real issue of foreign influence involving the Hillary Clinton campaign:
The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign.
