Prosecutor ends probe of FBI's Trump-Russia investigation with harsh criticism, but no new charges

[aubiefifty 17,348]

yahoo.com

 

Prosecutor ends probe of FBI's Trump-Russia investigation with harsh criticism, but no new charges

ERIC TUCKER and LINDSDAY WHITEHURST

6–8 minutes

---

WASHINGTON (AP) — A special prosecutor has ended his four-year investigation into possible FBI misconduct in its probe of ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign with withering criticism of the bureau but a meager court record that fell far short of the former president’s prediction he would uncover the “crime of the century.”

The report Monday from special counsel John Durham represents the long-awaited culmination of an investigation that Trump and allies had claimed would expose massive wrongdoing by law enforcement and intelligence officials. Instead, Durham's investigation delivered underwhelming results, with prosecutors securing a guilty plea from a little-known FBI employee but losing the only two criminal cases they took to trial.

The roughly 300-page report catalogs what Durham says were a series of missteps by the FBI and Justice Department as investigators undertook a politically explosive probe in the heat of the 2016 election into whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia to tip the outcome. It criticized the FBI for opening a full-fledged investigation based on "raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence," saying the speed at which it did so was a departure from the norm. And it said investigators repeatedly relied on “confirmation bias,” ignoring or rationalizing away evidence that undercut their premise of a Trump-Russia conspiracy as they pushed the probe forward.

“Again, the FBI’s failure to critically analyze information that ran counter to the narrative of a Trump/Russia collusive relationship exhibited throughout Crossfire Hurricane is extremely troublesome,” the report said. “Crossfire Hurricane” was the FBI code name for its investigation.

The impact of Durham’s report, though harshly critical of the FBI, is likely blunted by Durham’s spotty prosecution record and by the fact that many of the seven-year-old episodes it cites were already examined in depth by the Justice Department’s inspector general. The FBI has also long since announced dozens of corrective actions. Still, Durham’s findings are likely to amplify scrutiny of the FBI at a time when Trump is again seeking the White House as well as offer fresh fodder for congressional Republicans who have launched their own investigation into the purported “weaponization” of the FBI and Justice Department.

The FBI released a letter to Durham outlining changes it has made, including steps to ensure the accuracy of secretive surveillance applications to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists and spies. It also stressed that the report focused on prior leadership.

“Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented. This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect,” the FBI said in a statement.

Durham, the former U.S. Attorney in Connecticut, was appointed in 2019 by Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, soon after special counsel Robert Mueller had completed his investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign had colluded with Russia to move the outcome of the election in his favor.

The Mueller investigation resulted in roughly three dozen criminal charges, including convictions of a half-dozen Trump associates, and concluded that Russia intervened on the Trump campaign’s behalf and that the campaign welcomed the help. But Mueller’s team did not find that they actually conspired to sway the election, creating an opening for critics of the probe — including Barr himself — to complain that it had been launched without a proper basis.

The original Russia investigation was opened in July 2016 after the FBI learned from an Australian diplomat that a Trump campaign associate named George Papadopoulos had claimed to know of “dirt” that the Russians had on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of hacked emails.

But revelations over the following months laid bare flaws with the investigation, including errors and omissions in Justice Department applications to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page, as well as the reliance by the FBI on a dossier of uncorroborated or discredited information compiled by an British ex-spy, Christopher Steele.

Durham’s team delved deep into those mistakes, finding that investigators did not corroborate a “single substantive allegation” in the so-called Steele dossier and ignored or rationalized what it asserts was exculpatory information that Trump associates had provided to FBI confidential informants.

Durham’s mandate was to scrutinize government decisions, and identify possible misconduct, in the early days of the Trump-Russia probe. His appointment was cheered by Trump, who in a 2019 interview with Fox News said Durham was “supposed to be the smartest and the best.” He and his supporters hoped it would expose a “deep state” conspiracy within the top echelons of the FBI and other agencies to derail Trump’s presidency and candidacy.

Durham and his team cast a broad net, interviewing top officials at the FBI, Justice Department and CIA. In his first year on the job, he traveled with Barr to Italy to meet with government officials as Trump himself asked the Australian prime minister and other leaders to help with the probe. Weeks before his December 2020 resignation as attorney general, Barr appointed Durham as a Justice Department special counsel to ensure that he would continue his work in a Democratic administration.

The slow pace of the probe irked Trump, who berated Barr before he left office about the whereabouts of a report that would not be released for several more years. By the end of the Trump administration, only one criminal case had been brought, while the abrupt departure of Durham’s top deputy in the final months of Trump’s tenure raised questions about whether the team was in sync.

Despite expectations that Durham might charge senior government officials, his team produced only three prosecutions. A former FBI lawyer pleaded guilty to altering an email the FBI relied on in applying to eavesdrop on an ex-Trump campaign aide. Two other defendants — a lawyer for the Clinton campaign and a Russian-American think tank analyst — were both acquitted on charges of lying to the FBI.

_____

[aubiefifty 17,348]

The Mueller investigation resulted in roughly three dozen criminal charges, including convictions of a half-dozen Trump associates, and concluded that Russia intervened on the Trump campaign’s behalf and that the campaign welcomed the help.

 

 

the above is proof the russians DID get involved. so lets remember this the next time someone hollers about the russian hoax. they did in fact meddle in the election.

[I_M4_AU 8,149]

You forgot the next sentence, it started with BUT.

53 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

But Mueller’s team did not find that they actually conspired to sway the election, creating an opening for critics of the probe — including Barr himself — to complain that it had been launched without a proper basis.

 

[I_M4_AU 8,149]

Even Tapper of CNN says to a degree it does exonerates Trump.

 

I still don’t want Trump to win the nomination, but this is a devastating report.  The way the FBI acted, coordination with the Democrat leaders, was really a threat to democracy.  They (the FBI and Dem leaders) haven’t learned their lesson as they censored the Hunter Laptop during the last election.

[GoAU 1,631]

4 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

the above is proof the russians DID get involved. so lets remember this the next time someone hollers about the russian hoax. they did in fact meddle in the election.

Proving they tried to get involved, and that the involvement was coordinated with Trump are two very different things.  
 

 

[SaltyTiger 8,011]

4 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

meddle

Ok

[DKW 86 7,507]

11 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

The Mueller investigation resulted in roughly three dozen criminal charges, including convictions of a half-dozen Trump associates, and concluded that Russia intervened on the Trump campaign’s behalf and that the campaign welcomed the help.

 

 

the above is proof the russians DID get involved. so lets remember this the next time someone hollers about the russian hoax. they did in fact meddle in the election.

Yes, they most certainly did. To the tune of a whopping $1.3M. BTW, HRC outspent trump by $500M. So, for the record, yes, they did intervene. Did it sway enough voters to win? Almost certainly not. 

HRC was a lousy and lazy campaigner that rightly saw trump as the worst nominee since McGovern and ran a sloppy, mismanaged, directionless campaign that cost her the WH and America its own mind.

[aubiefifty 17,348]

3 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Yes, they most certainly did. To the tune of a whopping $1.3M. BTW, HRC outspent trump by $500M. So, for the record, yes, they did intervene. Did it sway enough voters to win? Almost certainly not. 

HRC was a lousy and lazy campaigner that rightly saw trump as the worst nominee since McGovern and ran a sloppy, mismanaged, directionless campaign that cost her the WH and America its own mind.

i agree with that. what i am saying is there was some russian crap going on like but they did try to help trump so they did interfere. calling people stupid when it happened is a bad look bro. it does not matter if they helped trump or screwed hillary it still happened.

[homersapien 11,633]

19 hours ago, GoAU said:

Proving they tried to get involved, and that the involvement was coordinated with Trump are two very different things.  
 

 

Different legally maybe.

But the fact Trump's campaign solicited and welcomed that help - from Russia no less - is significant enough. As far as I know it's unprecedented. 

That's the sort of thing that a candidate for president should report, not welcome.

It certainly reveals a total disdain for American values and American democracy and most certainly warrants impeachment. 

(And Russia didn't just try to interfere, they did interfere.)

Edited May 16, 2023 by homersapien

[homersapien 11,633]

9 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

i agree with that. what i am saying is there was some russian crap going on like but they did try to help trump so they did interfere. calling people stupid when it happened is a bad look bro. it does not matter if they helped trump or screwed hillary it still happened.

DKW's preferred schtick it to brand the whole thing a hoax - which means nothing happened - and he just can't let go of that misscharacterization.  It would threaten his sense of being the only person who is wise enough to see and celebrate the truth:  RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!  

Iconoclasts prefer to deal in the simple and the absolute, not the complicated, even though the latter more often reflects reality.

 

[Auburnfan91 1,408]

1 hour ago, homersapien said:

Different legally maybe.

But the fact Trump's campaign solicited and welcomed that help - from Russia no less - is significant enough. As far as I know it's unprecedented. 

That's the sort of thing that a candidate for president should report, not welcome.

It certainly reveals a total disdain for American values and American democracy and most certainly warrants impeachment. 

(And Russia didn't just try to interfere, they did interfere.)

The whole investigation was based around Trump-Russia collusion. They found no collusion but kept it going to undermine Trump's presidency. The FBI's leadership is politicized. There needs to be house cleaning done to that agency. They've consistently allowed politics to guide their actions.

The Hunter Biden laptop was dismissed as Russian disinformation by intelligence officials in order to help Biden against Trump.

There has been more significant election interference from the FBI than from Russia.

[Auburnfan91 1,408]

Also, Hillary Clinton is the one who falsely accused Trump of Russia collusion and pushed the conspiracy theory to the FBI during the 2016 campaign.

As soon as the FBI found out the origin of the manufactured Steele dossier(Hillary helped pay for it), they expanded the investigation instead of stopping it.

They were willing to allow the public to think the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation, but they treated the Steele dossier very differently. The FBI knew before the 2016 election that most of the dossier couldn't be verified but that didn't stop them from continuing to go after Trump.

[DKW 86 7,507]

2 hours ago, homersapien said:

DKW's preferred schtick it to brand the whole thing a hoax - which means nothing happened - and he just can't let go of that misscharacterization.  It would threaten his sense of being the only person who is wise enough to see and celebrate the truth:  RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!  

Iconoclasts prefer to deal in the simple and the absolute, not the complicated, even though the latter more often reflects reality.

I literally said something happened...Do you ever stop?

You do realize that you are criticizing me FOR ACTING LIKE YOU?

[I_M4_AU 8,149]

 

 

Edited May 17, 2023 by I_M4_AU

[homersapien 11,633]

13 hours ago, Auburnfan91 said:

Also, Hillary Clinton is the one who falsely accused Trump of Russia collusion and pushed the conspiracy theory to the FBI during the 2016 campaign.

As soon as the FBI found out the origin of the manufactured Steele dossier(Hillary helped pay for it), they expanded the investigation instead of stopping it.

They were willing to allow the public to think the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation, but they treated the Steele dossier very differently. The FBI knew before the 2016 election that most of the dossier couldn't be verified but that didn't stop them from continuing to go after Trump.

Well, I guess we're going to find out if the majority of the American people buy into that sort of conspiratorial thinking. 

I don't think they will.

Edited May 17, 2023 by homersapien

[aubiefifty 17,348]

16 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

 

 

i need a link on the obama claim................

[Mikey 16,779]

1 minute ago, homersapien said:

Well, I guess we're going to find out if the majority of the American people buy into that sort of conspiratorial thinking. 

I don't think they will.

Those are facts. There isn't anything to "buy in to".

[homersapien 11,633]

Once artificial intelligence technology gets fully developed and deployed, our democracy will disappear.

Edited May 17, 2023 by homersapien

[homersapien 11,633]

6 minutes ago, Mikey said:

Those are facts. There isn't anything to "buy in to".

Sieg Heil! 

[Mikey 16,779]

Just now, homersapien said:

Sieg Heil! 

The law of the internet: The first person to invoke Hitler has lost. You can go back to your bowl of fruit loops now, and drown your sorrows in veggie-milk.

[aubiefifty 17,348]

7 minutes ago, Mikey said:

The law of the internet: The first person to invoke Hitler has lost. You can go back to your bowl of fruit loops now, and drown your sorrows in veggie-milk.

i need a link to that...................

[homersapien 11,633]

6 minutes ago, Mikey said:

The law of the internet: The first person to invoke Hitler has lost. You can go back to your bowl of fruit loops now, and drown your sorrows in veggie-milk.

Hmmmmmmmmm -  Fruuuit Loooops. 

(Don't you have a capitol to invade or maybe a torch light parade to organize?)

 

[aubiefifty 17,348]

be careful i bet mikey wears a murder patch..............

[I_M4_AU 8,149]

57 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

i need a link on the obama claim................

Then-Obama CIA Director John Brennan briefed Obama and others on the intelligence, and Durham noted that “it was also of enough importance for the CIA to send a formal written referral memorandum” in early September 2016 to since-fired FBI Director James Comey and then-FBI special agent Peter Strzok for their consideration and action, asking them to look into claims that Clinton had approved a plan concerning Trump and Russia “as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/joe-biden-briefed-clinton-plan-tie-trump-russia-durham-report-concludes

Like many others, you will never admit the Democratic Party manipulated the public into thinking Trump was a Russian asset and did so for three years.  This based on a lie AND THEY KNEW IT.  It’s water under the bridge now, isn’t it?  No harm no foul, right?  It seems to be ok as long as your side does it.

[aubiefifty 17,348]

1 minute ago, I_M4_AU said:

Then-Obama CIA Director John Brennan briefed Obama and others on the intelligence, and Durham noted that “it was also of enough importance for the CIA to send a formal written referral memorandum” in early September 2016 to since-fired FBI Director James Comey and then-FBI special agent Peter Strzok for their consideration and action, asking them to look into claims that Clinton had approved a plan concerning Trump and Russia “as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/joe-biden-briefed-clinton-plan-tie-trump-russia-durham-report-concludes

Like many others, you will never admit the Democratic Party manipulated the public into thinking Trump was a Russian asset and did so for three years.  This based on a lie AND THEY KNEW IT.  It’s water under the bridge now, isn’t it?  No harm no foul, right?  It seems to be ok as long as your side does it.

 

6 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

Then-Obama CIA Director John Brennan briefed Obama and others on the intelligence, and Durham noted that “it was also of enough importance for the CIA to send a formal written referral memorandum” in early September 2016 to since-fired FBI Director James Comey and then-FBI special agent Peter Strzok for their consideration and action, asking them to look into claims that Clinton had approved a plan concerning Trump and Russia “as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/joe-biden-briefed-clinton-plan-tie-trump-russia-durham-report-concludes

Like many others, you will never admit the Democratic Party manipulated the public into thinking Trump was a Russian asset and did so for three years.  This based on a lie AND THEY KNEW IT.  It’s water under the bridge now, isn’t it?  No harm no foul, right?  It seems to be ok as long as your side does it.

you are not interested in the truth. you want to imply trump and company did nothing altho mueller said they needed to keep investigating. this is a little old but it is a refresher on why things happened.

 

Donald Trump Asked For Russian Help In The Election 1 Year Ago Today

Akbar Shahid Ahmed

7–9 minutes

---

WASHINGTON ― On July 27, 2016, Donald J. Trump stood behind a lectern in a Miami suburb and asked the Russian government to intervene in the 2016 election.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump told a crowded press conference, referring to messages his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, kept on a private server and deleted. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Twelve months later, top U.S. intelligence officials have said Russian state-backed entities did something similar to what Trump asked for: They hacked and released internal Democratic Party emails to embarrass Clinton and aid Trump. The leaked materials dominated media coverage for weeks, notably in the lead-up to Election Day itself.

What’s unclear ― and currently under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and three congressional committees ― is whether Trump and his campaign were involved in that foreign interference effort.

Trump himself says the remark last year was sarcastic, and there is no proof yet of criminal collusion. But a pile of evidence that’s drawn attention since he made the comment shows a pattern of open cooperation. And the latest big story about Trump-Russia contacts ― regarding a June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr., other campaign aides and a well-connected Russian lawyer ― proves there was a willingness in the Trump camp to accept Russian help even before Trump’s statement.

In March testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, former FBI agent Clint Watts explained that the Trump team and Moscow-linked media, including the site Wikileaks, spent months amplifying each other’s sharing of false information and conspiracy theories, helping the Kremlin get more bang for its buck.

“Part of the reason active measures [by Russia] have worked in this U.S. election is because the commander-in-chief has used Russian active measures at times against his opponents,” Watts said. He described Trump’s Oct. 11 promotion of a fake news report published on Russia’s Sputnik News, and how former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort pushed a different false story that Watts traced back to Russian sources.

“He denies the intel from the United States. He claims that the election could be rigged,” Watts said. “They parrot the same lines.”

Trump’s source for his October statement (actually made on October 10) remains unclear: whether he or someone on his team saw the erroneous Sputnik report, or viral tweets making the claim in the hours before Sputnik posted its story, or some other source. Sputnik deleted its article shortly after publication, and investigative website Bellingcat noted pro-Trump social media had spread the claim widely.

The Russian social media influence campaign also spent time trying to boost disaffection among supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), targeting a constituency Trump repeatedly reached out to, Watts noted.

A few days after that hearing, the popular blog Lawfare shared a similar assessment in a post titled “Of Course There’s Evidence Trump Colluded With Russian Intelligence.” They provided an appendix listing the many, many times candidate Trump praised the leaks and denied growing U.S. intelligence suggesting Russia was behind them ― something he has continued to do as president.

And in May, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, issued a reminder that there’s more than enough smoke to suggest a fire.

″What we do not have right now is conclusive proof that President Trump’s team colluded with the Russian government. But a lack of conclusive proof is not the same thing as a lack of evidence, and we should not confuse the two,” Smith said in a press release. “There is sufficient evidence to justify the appointment of a special prosecutor, there is enough evidence for Congress to continue investigating, and there is enough evidence that the American people should be deeply concerned about the President’s dealings with Russia. We do the truth a disservice when we blur those two questions, and it is important that we make every effort to keep this distinction clear.”

Smith noted the case of Manafort, who ran Trump’s presidential campaign until the New York Times revealed in August of last year that Ukrainian investigators believed he had received $12.7 million in undisclosed payments from a pro-Russian political party. (The Times has since shown that Manafort was in debt to pro-Russian interests just before he began working for Trump, and Manafort has spoken with Senate investigators about his role in the meeting with the Trump son.)

Smith also mentioned Carter Page, a Trump foreign policy adviser who flew to Moscow last July to deliver a speech slamming the U.S. approach to the world and promoting Russia’s foreign policy. In 2016, a Foreign Intelligence Service Court judge determined that the FBI was probably correct in considering Page a Russian agent. And he cited Roger Stone, who was a Trump adviser for decades and loud promoter of the materials taken from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Smith also noted the multiple undisclosed meetings between Trump officials like Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

It’s also become clearer over time how desperate Trump is to quash the Russia investigation. To that end, he has already fired FBI director James Comey, threatened Mueller and Sessions despite support for them within the GOP, and repeatedly attempted to switch the focus back to Clinton’s alleged wrongdoing.

It’s striking that all this is often still forgotten in coverage and conversations of the affair. In discussing Trump’s links with Russian media election efforts, Lawfare’s writers attempted to explain why this is the case. ”We have collectively discounted this cooperation for two related, and quite perverse, reasons: It was overt and public and it was legal,” they wrote. “The consequence has been that we largely ignore it in discussing the matter.”

Contributing to the confusion is the public fascination with uncovering something secret, the real desperation to find that one damning clue that will explain it all, and the difficulty reporters and the public have in realizing that the traditionally hawkish GOP could now share interests with Moscow.

But the current tendency to forget Trump’s public call on Russia to hack his opponent is a worrying sign. Russian interference is far from over, and Moscow does its best to make its efforts public ― to take advantage of the way open liberal democracies work, and avoid clear incrimination of Russia or its partners, experts on Kremlin strategy argue. Unless Americans gain a better understanding of how this kind of influence works, there’s little reason to believe it will end, no matter how the Trump-Russia case concludes.

This story has been updated to clarify the date of a Trump statement referred to in the testimony of a witness at a Senate hearing, and to add information as to the campaign’s possible sources for that incorrect statement.