OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A report published Wednesday provided a major update regarding Special Counsel John Durham’s ongoing investigation.
Appointed towards the end of the Trump administration to look into the origins of the FBI’s so-called “Russiagate” probe into the former president’s 2016 campaign, Durham’s inquiry appears to be wrapping up.
“When John Durham was assigned by the Justice Department in 2019 to examine the origins of the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, President Donald Trump, and his supporters expressed a belief that the inquiry would prove that a ‘deep state’ conspiracy including top Obama-era officials had worked to sabotage him,” The New York Times reported.
“Now Durham appears to be winding down his three-year inquiry without anything close to the results Trump was seeking. The grand jury that Durham has recently used to hear evidence has expired, and while he could convene another, there are currently no plans to do so, three people familiar with the matter said,” the Times noted further.
The paper went on to report that Durham and his team are currently preparing a final report that should be completed by the end of the year, while one of his lead prosecutors is leaving the team to take a position with a prominent law firm.
By any definition, Durham’s investigation has been a disappointment for Trump supporters, as the Times notes further:
Over the course of his inquiry, Durham has developed cases against two people accused of lying to the FBI in relation to outside efforts to investigate purported Trump-Russia ties, but he has not charged any conspiracy or put any high-level officials on trial. The recent developments suggest that the chances of any more indictments are remote.
After Durham’s team completes its report, it will be up to Attorney General Merrick Garland to decide whether to make its findings public. The report will be Durham’s opportunity to present any evidence or conclusions that challenge the Justice Department’s basis for opening the investigation in 2016 into the links between Trump and Russia.
It’s not likely the Biden administration would have allowed any high-profile former FBI or Justice Department officials or Democrats like Hillary Clinton to be charged in connection with ‘Russiagate’ in the first place, let alone prosecuted.
And regarding the Times’ assertion that no grand conspiracy was unveiled, that is subject to debate, given a Durham court filing on Tuesday.
The filing revealed that the “primary source” behind the discredited “Steele Dossier” used by the FBI to kick off the investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign was a paid asset of the bureau for years.
Durham revealed that the source, Igor Danchenko, was a paid “confidential human source in the investigation of” Trump’s campaign, though the FBI “had prior concerns that the businessman was tied to Moscow’s intelligence services,” Just the News’ John Solomon reported.
The filing discloses the connection between the Russian and the FBI for the first time.
“In March 2017, the FBI signed the defendant up as a paid confidential human source of the FBI,” Durham’s unsealed court filing said. “The FBI terminated its source relationship with the defendant in October 2020. As alleged in further detail below, the defendant lied to FBI agents during several of these interviews.”
The ties to the 2016 presidential campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton are becoming clearer as well, Solomon notes:
The revelation means that the FBI first fired former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, the author of the Hillary Clinton-funded dossier, as a human source in November 2016 for having unauthorized contacts with the news media. And it then turned around a few months later and hired Steele’s primary informer to work with the bureau even after determining some of Danchenko’s statements in the Steele dossier were uncorroborated or exaggerated.
Even more stunning, Durham confirmed that the FBI had concerns about Danchenko’s ties to Russian intelligence a decade earlier, opening up a counterintelligence probe on him after learning he was trying to buy classified information from the Obama administration.
“Beginning in or about July 2016 and continuing through December 2016, the FBI began receiving a series of reports from former British government employee Christopher Steele and his firm, Orbis Business Solutions, that contained derogatory information on then-candidate Trump concerning Trump’s purported ties to Russia,” the filing states.
“Earlier that year, Perkins Coie, a U.S.-based international law firm, acting as counsel to the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign, had retained Fusion GPS, a U.S.-based investigative firm, to conduct research on Trump and his associates,” the filing continued.
Durham’s filing appears to be one of the strongest statements in fact thus far from the government admitting there were ties between the Clinton campaign and the FBI’s counter-intel probe into the Trump campaign, known as “Crossfire Hurricane.”
