Special counsel Durham finally explains why IG Horowitz was wrong to claim that FBI was justified to investigate Trump
Even as the dust is starting to settle over last week’s Durham Report revelations, it will take weeks, months, and perhaps even years to fully take in every aspect of the FBI’s scheme against President Donald Trump. However, there’s little doubt that the report’s most crucial finding concerns the tip that led the FBI to open its investigation into the Trump campaign.
Until last week, the official story was that a Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, got drunk in a London bar and told an Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, about a secret plot between Russia and the Trump campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race by anonymously releasing her emails. According to the official narrative, Downer took Papadopoulos’s information to the U.S. embassy in London, which then informed the FBI.
That tale about a drunken encounter at a London bar quickly became an unquestioned truism by sheer force of repetition in the media. It even became the central plot point in “The Comey Rules” TV miniseries, which depicted the official narrative of the alleged Trump–Russia collusion plot.
While Papadopoulos has always denied the story, the first official hint that something was amiss came when Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his December 2019 report into the FBI’s handling of its investigation of the Trump campaign.
At the time, U.S. Attorney General William Barr and then-federal prosecutor John Durham both issued statements that disagreed with Horowitz on the issue of predication of the investigation into then-candidate Trump and his campaign.
Horowitz determined that the FBI had properly opened the investigation.
“We concluded that the FFG information [Australian diplomat’s tip] … describing a first-hand account from an FFG employee of a conversation with Papadopoulos, was sufficient to predicate the investigation,” he said.
Barr issued a statement saying the grounds for opening the investigation “were insufficient to justify the steps taken.”
Durham said he had advised Horowitz that he didn’t agree with “some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”
However, while it was clear that the disagreement centered on whether what the Australian diplomat said was sufficient to open a full investigation, neither Barr nor Durham provided any details.
But now, after a 3 1/2-year wait, Durham’s report finally sheds light on the details of the dispute.
In what’s arguably the most important sentence of the entire 308-page report, Durham said, “According to [Alexander] Downer, Papadopoulos made no mention of Clinton emails, dirt or any specific approach by the Russian government to the Trump campaign team with an offer or suggestion of providing assistance.”
In one sentence, Durham crushed the FBI’s justification for the bureau’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. There was no mention of Clinton’s emails, no mention of any dirt, and no mention of an offer from Russia. The official narrative, which the FBI used not only to open the investigation but also to obtain FISA warrants on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, to push Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel, and to pressure Congress into investigating Trump, was plain false.
By Hans Mahncke
