Nobody was looking to score points,” Himes said. Jim Himes, the panel’s top Democrat, said after the committee’s meeting that Durham didn’t recommend any changes to existing law but broadly discussed the issues in the report and the handling of politically sensitive investigations. “Rules and laws need to be changed so that these mechanisms cannot be used again in this way to really harm the American public,” he said.Ĭonnecticut Rep. Mike Turner, the panel’s chairman, alleged last week that the FBI “went off the rails” and hurt the justice system’s credibility. Previewing Durham’s private meeting Tuesday with the Intelligence Committee, Ohio Rep. 6 insurrection and the 2020 protests following the killing of George Floyd. The bureau also is facing bipartisan criticism of how it handles intelligence collected electronically under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows spy agencies to collect foreign phone calls and e-mails for their investigations.Ī newly declassified surveillance court opinion found that the FBI had run thousands of unsupported searches of Americans, including queries tied to the Jan. Jordan tweeted that it was a “DOUBLE STANDARD OF JUSTICE.” GOP animosity toward the Justice Department was further fueled by Tuesday’s announcement that President Joe Biden’s son Hunter will likely avoid jail time in a plea deal on tax and gun allegations. Barr gave you as special counsel, your reputation will be damaged as everybody’s reputation who gets involved with Donald Trump will get damaged.”ĭurham responded: “My concern about my reputation is with the people who I respect and my family and my Lord and I’m perfectly comfortable with my reputation with them, sir.” “You had a good reputation, that’s why the two Democrats supported you,” Cohen said, referring to the Democratic senators from Connecticut who had backed Durham’s nomination for U.S. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., tried to portray Durham as a prosecutor lacking legal standing and integrity who was attempting to protect Trump and his campaign for president. And the two cases that Durham’s team took to trial ended in swift jury acquittals. His investigation yielded just one guilty plea from a little-known FBI lawyer, a case referred to his office by the inspector general. There’s a sort of analytical rigor, the discipline in how we investigate criminal matters, that was just absent here in large measure.”ĭemocrats repeatedly steered the hearing back to Durham’s track record, the abrupt and publicly unexplained departure of his top deputy, and the fact that many of his more damning findings were already revealed years earlier in a Justice Department inspector general report. “You would expect that the discipline that would have been followed would have been higher than ever. “It’s so highly sensitive, it could affect the outcome of a presidential election and the future of the nation,” Durham said. He said current and former FBI agents had personally apologized to him for the way the Russia investigation was conducted. He said the errors in the investigation were notable because the inquiry was not a “run-of-the-mill investigation” but instead concerned a “presidential campaign.” He noted that his review found that FBI investigators examining potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia ignored exculpatory evidence, used a largely discredited dossier of opposition research to obtain a surveillance warrant on a former Trump campaign aide, withheld key information from judges and lacked an adequate basis to open a full investigation in the first place. Under questioning from Republicans, he repeated many of the strongest findings of condemnation in his 306-page report and also faced criticism from Democrats over a four-year investigation that produced just one conviction and fell short of Trump’s claims that it would expose “the crime of the century.”ĭurham, who was appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr to review the origins of Trump-Russia investigation, tried to keep the focus of the hearing on his findings. John Durham, the Justice Department special counsel who recently completed his report, testified before the House Judiciary Committee in a hearing that unfolded against the backdrop of a 37-count indictment of Trump on charges he illegally retained classified documents.ĭespite roughly six hours of testimony, the hearing broke little new ground. WASHINGTON (AP) - The special counsel who investigated the FBI’s probe of ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign found himself at the center of a heated political fight as he appeared before a congressional committee Wednesday, with Democrats denouncing his inquiry and Republicans arguing that its findings helped prove an anti-Trump bias within law enforcement.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |