The Durham special counsel investigation (aka Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns) began in 2019 when the U.S. Justice Department designated federal prosecutor John Durham to review the origins of an FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Durham was given authority to examine the government's collection of intelligence about interactions between the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump and Russians, and to review government documents and request voluntary witness statements.
In December 2020, Attorney General William Barr announced that he had elevated Durham's status and authority by appointing him as a special counsel, allowing him to continue the investigation after the end of the Trump presidency.
Durham's investigation followed claims by President Trump and his allies that the FBI Russia investigation, code-named Crossfire Hurricane, was improperly predicated and motivated by political bias. Trump characterized the FBI probe as a "hoax" and "witch hunt" initiated by his political enemies. The FBI investigation had examined contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials and led to the Mueller investigation, which resulted in indictments of 34 individuals and guilty pleas from several Trump associates.
In December 2019 Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his report on Crossfire Hurricane, finding the FBI had an "authorized purpose" to open the investigation and no "documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced" the decision to do so. The report also identified 17 "significant errors or omissions" in the FBI's applications to the FISA court to monitor former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. The report concluded those "fundamental" errors showed a failure of the FBI investigators, managers and supervisors, including senior officials. Attorney General Barr and Durham publicly disagreed with portions of Horowitz's findings, with Barr stating the investigation was launched on "the thinnest of suspicions."
In January 2023, The New York Times reported that concerns had been raised about politicization of Durham's investigation, and that Barr and Durham had sought evidence to support claims the Clinton campaign had promoted the Trump-Russia narrative. These concerns were raised when Durham coined an unproven conspiracy theory he dubbed "Clinton plan intelligence". It alleges that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to falsely link Donald Trump to Russian election interference to distract from her email controversy. The theory was promoted by the Trump administration, based on Russian intelligence material and hacked emails described by journalists and investigators as likely Russian disinformation.
After three-and-a-half-years, Durham indicted three men. One was an FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to altering an email that was included in a June 2017 application for a surveillance warrant on a former Trump campaign aide; he was sentenced to probation. The other two men were tried and acquitted. According to conservative lawyer Andrew C. McCarthy, Durham's prosecution only charged the defendants with lying "about the identity or status of people from whom they were getting information, not about the information itself."
On May 15, 2023, Durham's final 306-page unclassified report was publicly released by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Durham concluded the FBI opened a full investigation based on "raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence" when only a preliminary investigation or assessment was warranted, and that the bureau applied a different standard when evaluating concerns about the Clinton campaign. The report found senior FBI personnel displayed confirmation bias and "a serious lack of analytical rigor toward the information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities." Durham recommended enhanced oversight of politically sensitive investigations.
Background
Crossfire Hurricane was the counterintelligence investigation undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from July 2016 to May 2017 into links between Trump associates and Russian officials.
In April 2019, Attorney General William Barr testified before Congress that he believed "spying did occur" on the Trump campaign and announced he was reviewing the investigation's origins. The following month, Barr appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to conduct the inquiry.
In December 2019, DOJ Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz released his report finding the FBI had an "authorized purpose" when it opened the investigation and "did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced" the decision. However, the IG identified 17 "significant errors and omissions" in FISA applications to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and stated he could not obtain satisfactory explanations for why the errors occurred. The same day the report was released, Barr publicly disagreed with the IG's conclusions, stating the FBI had launched an "intrusive investigation" on "the thinnest of suspicions." Durham issued an unusual public statement the same day disagreeing with "some of the report's conclusions as to predication."
Horowitz referred FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith for criminal prosecution after finding he had altered a CIA email used in a FISA renewal application.Clinesmith had been removed from the special counsel's investigation in February 2018 after the IG discovered anti-Trump text messages he had sent, including "Viva le Resistance."
Investigation into origins of FBI's "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation
On October 24, 2019, it was reported that what had been a review of the Russia investigation was now a criminal probe into the matter. The Justice Department could now utilize subpoena power for both witness testimony and documents. Durham also had at his disposal the power to convene a grand jury and file criminal charges, if needed. The New York Times reported in January 2023 that Durham and Barr, contrary to their better knowledge, allowed the media and public to infer that it was crimes committed by the intelligence community against Trump that were the object of this investigation. Instead, Italian authorities had given them evidence of alleged financial crimes by Trump himself: "Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump." Durham never charged Trump. In December 2020, Barr revealed to Congress that on October 19 he had secretly appointed Durham to be special counsel, allowing him to continue the investigation of the origins of the FBI probe into Russian interference after the Trump administration ended. The Justice Department said the appointment was kept secret to avoid interfering with the impending 2020 election.
The New York Times reported on November 22, 2019, that the Justice Department inspector general had made a criminal referral to Durham regarding Kevin Clinesmith, an FBI attorney who had altered an email during the process of acquiring a wiretap warrant renewal on Carter Page, and that referral appeared to be at least part of the reason Durham's investigation was elevated to criminal status. On August 14, 2020, Clinesmith pleaded guilty to a felony violation of altering an email used to maintain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants. He changed an email to falsely add a claim that Page was "not a source" for the CIA, to a statement by the CIA liaison that Page had a prior operational relationship with the CIA from 2008 to 2013. The Page warrants began in October 2016, months after the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened, so Clinesmith's action and indictment were unrelated to the original basis of Durham's investigation into the origins of the FBI investigation.
The day Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz released his report on the 2016 FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which found the investigation was properly predicated and debunked a number of conspiracy theories regarding its origins, Durham issued a statement saying, "we do not agree with some of the report's conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened." Many observers inside and outside the Justice Department, including the inspector general, expressed surprise that Durham would issue such a statement, as federal investigators typically do not publicly comment on their ongoing investigations. Barr also released a statement challenging the findings of the report, later asserting on Fox News that the investigation had been opened "without any basis" and that "what happened to [Trump] was one of the greatest travesties in American history." Horowitz testified to the Senate that prior to release of the report he had asked Durham for any information he had that might change the report's findings, but "none of the discussions changed our findings." The Washington Post reported that Durham could not provide evidence of any setup by American intelligence. In particular, neither Durham nor Horowitz found cause to believe an allegation by former Trump campaign advisor George Papadopouloswhose actions had triggered the opening of Crossfire Hurricanethat he had been set up by Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud, whom Papadopoulos alleged was a Western intelligence operative. Mifsud was an Italian resident, and Barr and Durham asked Italian officials about him during a trip to Italy, but the officials said they had no involvement in the matter. Mifsud has been claimed to be an intelligence agent by various sources. Former FBI Director James Comey has described Mifsud as a "Russian agent".
The New York Times reported in December 2019 that Durham was examining the role of former CIA director John Brennan in assessing Russian interference in 2016, requesting emails, call logs and other documents. Brennan had been a vocal critic of Trump and a target of his accusations of a conspiracy against him. The Times reported Durham was specifically examining Brennan's views of the Steele dossier and what he said about it to the FBI and other intelligence agencies. Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had testified to Congress that the CIA and other intelligence agencies did not rely on the dossier in preparing the January 2017 intelligence community assessment of Russian interference, and allies of Brennan said he disagreed with the FBI view that the dossier should be given significant weight, as the CIA characterized it as "internet rumor". The Times reported in February 2020 that Durham was examining whether intelligence community officials, and specifically Brennan, had concealed or manipulated evidence of Russian interference to achieve a desired result. FBI and NSA officials told Durham that his pursuit of this line of inquiry was due to his misunderstanding of how the intelligence community functions. Durham interviewed Brennan for eight hours on August 21, 2020, after which a Brennan advisor said Durham told Brennan he was not a subject or target of a criminal investigation, but rather a witness to events.
The New York Times reported in September 2020 that Durham had also sought documents and interviews regarding how the FBI handled an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The FBI had investigated the Foundation and other matters related to Hillary Clinton, but had found no basis for prosecution, nor did John Huber, a U.S. attorney appointed by Trump's first attorney general Jeff Sessions, after a two-year investigation ending in January 2020.
On November 2, 2020, the day before the presidential election, New York magazine reported that: