OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
House Republicans are demanding action after Special Counsel John Durham released his long-awaited report this week, saying federal intelligence and agencies have been “weaponized” against political enemies such as former President Donald Trump.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan invited Durham to speak to his panel’s select subcommittee on government weaponization next week. The Ohio Republican is also demanding accountability after he and many Republicans argued the report proves Trump was politically targetted.
“Where’s the accountability for this? Who’s going to be held accountable? These are the questions we’re going to continue to ask,” Jordan said.
Many other Republicans issued similar statements.
“The long-awaited Durham Report confirmed what the American people already know; that individuals at the highest levels of government attempted to overthrow democracy when they illegally weaponized the federal government against Donald J. Trump,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik said, The Hill reported.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said: “They took the entire country through this, impeachment, everything else when we knew the FBI never should have done this from the very beginning.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner said: “The report confirms that FBI personnel repeatedly disregarded critical protections established to protect the American people from unlawful surveillance. Such actions should never have occurred, and it is essential that Congress codifies clear guardrails that prevent future FBI abuses and restores the public’s trust in our law enforcement institutions.”
House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Dan Crenshaw said there “must be consequences” based on the findings of the report.
“This report demonstrates how unelected, subversive actors within the highest levels of our government sought to destroy a duly-elected president they hated. They weaponized a lie – knowing the media would breathlessly regurgitate that lie – in order to take Donald Trump out of the White House,” Crenshaw said.
Durham found the FBI used “uncorroborated intelligence” when it launched its investigation into Trump before the 2016 presidential election and that agents failed repeatedly to maintain “strict fidelity to the law” throughout the probe.
The Daily Caller noted crucial findings in the report about Hillary Clinton:
The report noted that the FBI received intelligence that Hillary Clinton’s campaign approved “a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services,” specifically one that involved “tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee” to distract the public from her email scandals. It notes that President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey were personally briefed on Clinton’s scheme, known as the “Clinton Plan” in the report, by CIA Director John Brennan, who recorded mentioning the plan in his handwritten notes.
The “Clinton Plan” was obtained by the FBI while it was relying on the “Steele Dossier,” a discredited report of lurid allegations of Trump’s personal sexual activity, which the FBI knew was being funded and promoted by the Clinton campaign, according to the report. Durham quotes information from a meeting between the Dossier’s author, former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, and FBI agents, as well as texts between FBI officials, to demonstrate that the agents knew the evidence was connected to Clinton.
Durham’s report also found that the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice wasted little time to investigate Trump and that there was a “notable departure” from the way it resisted efforts to investigate claims against Clinton’s campaign.
Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville declared the alleged targeting of Trump gives many Americans reason to question future elections and government agencies and said people need to go to jail.
