Special counsel John Durham testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee that there was no information in the Steele dossier that was “corroborated by the FBI” on June 21.
Lacking legitimate evidence, the FBI nonetheless investigated both the Trump campaign and the Trump administration while ignoring the Clinton email scandal — damaging the public’s trust in the Department of Justice. (READ MORE: The Durham Report’s Missing Piece)]
“There is not a single substantive piece of information and the [Steele dossier] that has ever been corroborated by the FBI or, to my knowledge anyone else.” – Special Counsel John Durham pic.twitter.com/tOas1baCyU
— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) June 21, 2023
“Indeed, based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the instant investigation, neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” the Durham report, which was published last month, states.
The FBI spearheaded the investigation — Crossfire Hurricane — after British intelligence agent Christopher Steele published the Steele dossier, which contained “unverifiable” allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 election cycle, according to the New York Times.
Former Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham as special counsel to investigate these allegations.
“As our report details, 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 applications knowing that there was likely material originating from a political campaign, a political opponent.”
Then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton led the political opposition in an effort to distract from her email server scandal, according to Fox News reporter Brooke Singman.
“The Clinton campaign and the DNC funded the dossier through the law firm Perkins Coie, where both Elias and Sussmann were employed at the time,” Singman said.
The Durham report notes that the firm “was then serving as general counsel to the Clinton campaign” and that Sussman provided FBI general counsel James Baker with “purported data and ‘white papers’ that allegedly demonstrated a covert communications channel between the Trump Organization and a Russia-based bank, Alfa Bank.”
The Clinton campaign paid Sussmann for his work on the bank, the report said. Furthermore, Sussmann provided media outlets such as the New York Times with data and allegations of collusion between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.
The Durham report concluded that Crossfire Hurricane needed more substantive evidence prior to opening the investigation.
“Viewing the facts in a light most favorable to the Crossfire investigators, it seems highly likely that, at a minimum, confirmation bias played a significant role in the FBI’s acceptance of extraordinarily serious allegations derived from uncorroborated information that has not been subjected to the typical exacting analysis employed by the FBI and other members of the Intelligence Community,” the Durham report states.
The release of the Durham report is a wake-up call for Americans across the country. The weaponization of the DOJ is another instance in a long train of abuses and usurpations, where “neutral” institutions prove that they are, in fact, not really neutral. The elites’ understanding of justice boils down to the inverse of the golden rule: “Rules for thee but not for me.”
Elizabeth Crawford is a rising senior at Hillsdale College studying politics. A member of The American Spectator’s 2023 intern class, Elizabeth enjoys drinking good tea and plans to pursue a career in journalism.
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