Cases handled by special counsel John Durham have produced a flurry of notable discoveries that shed more light on the sprawling yearslong investigation. Durham so far has three indictments and one guilty plea under his belt, with some indications that there may be more in the pipeline.
Durham was tasked around March-May 2019 with reviewing the 2016-2017 FBI investigation of alleged nefarious ties between candidate and later President Donald Trump and Russia. In October 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham a special counsel. In February 2021, Durham resigned his position as a federal prosecutor after 35 years with the Department of Justice (DOJ), where he handled some of the most prominent investigations of FBI misconduct. At age 72, his current job may just be the last chapter and culmination of his career.
The investigation has led Durham into some of the deep recesses of the D.C. political machine. As the current record indicates, multiple federal agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, were sicced on Trump and his associates by operatives tied to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the presidential campaign of former State Secretary Hillary Clinton. The FBI launched a sprawling investigation into Trump’s campaign with some of the FBI officials most deeply involved in the probe privately expressing strong animus against Trump and preference for Clinton.
A stream of leaks from the federal bureaucracy facilitated an avalanche of misinformation that to this day has many Americans convinced that Trump was secretly in cahoots with Moscow. The pale of the media frenzy as well as the FBI probe—which was taken over in May 2017 by a special counsel, former FBI head Robert Mueller—hamstrung Trump’s foreign policy toward Russia. The repercussions are still felt today, some experts have argued.
Mueller ultimately concluded that no Trump-Russia collusion to sway the 2016 election could be established. Durham is looking at both the origin of the Russia probe as well as how it was conducted before Mueller took over.
In stark contrast to the Mueller probe, there’s been a dearth of leaks from Durham’s team.
By Petr Svab
