Two top House committees will hold direct hearings this week from special counsel John Durham following the release of his scathing report that found no basis for the Justice Department and FBI to launch a Trump-Russia investigation.
Durham was appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr in 2019 to look into misconduct related to the ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ investigation into the now-excluded Trump-Russia collusion allegations and four years later concluded that the FBI had opened the flawed investigation on a ‘raw’ basis. , unanalyzed, and unproven intelligence.’
On Tuesday, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) held a closed-door hearing with Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, Durham. The House Judiciary Committee, led by Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, will host Durham in a public setting on Wednesday.
As part of the closed-door hearing, Turner told Newstimesuk.com that the committee plans to work with Durham to identify legislative solutions to address procedural issues within the judiciary.
Durham — who was appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr in 2019 to look into misconduct related to the Crossfire hurricane — concluded that the FBI had launched an investigation based on ‘raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence.’
Turner said the aspect of Durham’s report he found ‘most disturbing’ is that it ‘concerns wrongdoing at the FBI, the Justice Department and the intelligence community.
‘I have had a personal conversation with John Durham that our aim… is not just to go through his report and the issues he has identified, but to get his recommendations on where changes need to happen.’
Turner said it’s important to promote solutions now because the committee is in the process of renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — which must be renewed by the end of the year.
He added that another top concern is that the DOJ and FBI have used opposition research into political campaigns ‘to politicize government operations to negatively influence an opposing candidate.’
He hopes to work with Durham and the committee to put a remedy in place as soon as possible before the next election.
‘It’s not just about bad people being in positions of power who have corrupted those positions. It is also that we need to change the rules and laws, so that these methods cannot be used again in this way to do real harm to the American public.’
The hearings come days after the FBI is investigating Biden for allegedly misusing classified documents and Trump appeared in court in Miami and was arrested on 37 federal counts related to the files found at Mar-a-Lago.
Republican senators Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley are also pressing Durham for answers about why top FBI officials — including former Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe — refused to cooperate with his probe into the agency’s opening of a probe into Trump-Russia collusion.
Durham issued 2,800 subpoenas, executed 500 search warrants and conducted hundreds of interviews with key officials, including Hillary Clinton and her campaign aides, Trump campaign officials and hundreds of FBI officials involved — but notably some top FBI officials refused to cooperate. did With Durham’s Inquiry.
Durham did not interview James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Bill Priestap, Kevin Kleinsmith – who was convicted by Durham of illegally altering an email – and Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, who Republican senators called ‘odd’.
‘As we continue to review the report, we note that several high-level former government officials directly involved in the Crossfire Hurricane have refused or partially refused to cooperate with your investigation,’ Johnson, R-Wis. And Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote a letter to Durham last month.
Senators pointed to a footnote in the report that said “certain personnel” in the FBI’s counterintelligence division “refused to cooperate” with the investigation.
FBI leadership intervened ‘to urge those individuals to agree to be interviewed,’ the report further noted.
‘It seems odd that individuals would be allowed to avoid fully cooperating with your office, especially given your power to compel testimony and records,’ they wrote.
Republicans are pressing Durham to provide information on whether he has issued subpoenas to those specific individuals and whether the DOJ has ‘impeded’ any of his office’s investigative practices.
Durham is set to testify before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on June 20
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, confirmed to Newstimesuk.com that he will request Durham to appear before his committee.
While Durham’s report does not recommend any ‘wholesale changes’ to the Judiciary’s guidelines or policies, it says there is a ‘continuing need’ for agencies to recognize a lack of ‘analytical rigour’ and clear ‘confirmation bias’.
The FBI responded to the report in a statement to Newstimesuk.com saying it now has ‘corrective steps’ that could prevent ‘missteps in 2016’.
‘The conduct examined by Special Counsel Durham in 2016 and 2017 is because current FBI leadership has already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have been in place for some time now,’ the FBI told Newstimesuk.com.
‘If these reforms had been made in 2016, the mistakes identified in the report could have been prevented. This report reinforces the importance of ensuring that the FBI continues its work with the rigor, objectivity and professionalism that the American people deserve and rightly expect.’
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