Tag: John Durham

Senate gears up for battle over Barr’s new special counsel

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Attorney General William Barr is setting the stage for a Senate brawl on his way out the door with the appointment of U.S. Attorney John Durham to serve as special counsel well beyond the end of the Trump administration.

The fight over Durham, the federal prosecutor probing the origins of the 2016 Russia investigation, will be in full force once President-elect Joe Biden nominates his pick for attorney general.

Senate Republicans say Biden’s nominee to lead the Justice Department should promise not to terminate Durham, who has been investigating whether the Obama administration improperly targeted the Trump campaign in 2016 when the FBI looked into allegations of collusion between the campaign and Russian officials. Continue reading.

Barr tells Republicans Durham report won’t be ready by election

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Attorney General Bill Barr has begun telling top Republicans that the Justice Department’s sweeping review into the origins of the Russia investigation will not be released before the election, a senior White House official and a congressional aide briefed on the conversations tell Axios.

Why it matters: Republicans had long hoped the report, led by U.S. Attorney John Durham, would be a bombshell containing revelations about what they allege were serious abuses by the Obama administration and intelligence community probing for connections between President Trump and Russia.

  • “This is the nightmare scenario. Essentially, the year and a half of arguably the number one issue for the Republican base is virtually meaningless if this doesn’t happen before the election,” a GOP congressional aide told Axios. Continue reading.

Durham Surprises Even Allies With Statement on F.B.I.’s Trump Case

New York Times logoThe federal prosecutor leading a review of the origins of the Russia inquiry has a reputation for keeping his mouth shut. At a sensitive moment, he didn’t.

WASHINGTON — Whether investigating charges of torture by the C.I.A., rolling up an organized crime network or prosecuting crooked government officials, John H. Durham, the veteran federal prosecutor named by Attorney General William P. Barr to investigate the origins of the Russia inquiry, burnished his reputation for impartiality over the years by keeping his mouth closed about his work.

At the height of the Boston mob prosecution that made his name, he not only rebuffed a local newspaper’s interview request, but he also told his office not to release his résumé or photo.

That wall of silence cracked this month when Mr. Durham, serving in the most politically charged role of his career, released an extraordinary statement questioning one key element of an overlapping investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz.

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John Durham has a stellar reputation for investigating corruption. Some fear his work for Barr could tarnish it.

Washington Post logoWhen the U.S. government needed a prosecutor to ferret out corruption in its own law-enforcement and intelligence ranks, John Durham was its go-to guy. The longtime prosecutor helped exonerate men wrongly convicted on murder charges, exposed an FBI agent tied to one of Boston’s most notorious gangsters and dug into the CIA’s destruction of video tapes thought to show foreign detainees being tortured.

But some of Durham’s actions in his latest high-profile assignment — examining the FBI’s 2016 investigation of President Trump’s campaign — have sparked a debate in Washington about whether he is even-handedly assessing possible wrongdoing, or carrying out a conservative political errand.

Last week, after the Justice Department inspector general released a report concluding the bureau had adequate cause to open the investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, Durham issued a remarkable public statement registering his disagreement.

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Justice Department hasn’t interviewed key Russia probe witnesses

The DOJ’s investigation into the origins of the Russia probe seems to be focusing on the intelligence community’s links with foreign sources.

For months, President Donald Trump’s allies have been raising expectations for prosecutor John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Russia probe, predicting that he will uncover a deep state plot to stage a “coup” against the president.

Durham “is looking at putting people in jail,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News host Sean Hannity in July. Republican Rep. Jim Jordan said Durham is about to unleash “a pile of evidence” that will “debunk” everything House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff has proclaimed for “the last two years.”

“Stuff is going to hit the fan” when Durham is done “investigating the investigators,” said Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera. “If indictments are warranted, U.S. Attorney John Durham will be bringing them,” wrote conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt.

But in the five months since Attorney General Bill Barr tapped Durham to investigate the origins of the Russia probe, and whether any inappropriate “spying” occurred on members of the Trump campaign, he has not requested interviews with any of the FBI or DOJ employees who were directly involved in, or knew about, the opening of the Russia investigation in 2016, according to people familiar with the matter.

View the complete October 5 article by Natasha Bertrand on the Politico website here.