Special counsel John Durham has made Donald Trump’s day and made Joe Biden swallow a toad by concluding that the FBI should not have investigated an alleged link between the Republican leader and Russia to interfere in the 2016 elections – which he won – because the agency did not have sufficient basis to investigate and was biased. In a free and excessive translation of such conclusions, Trump has used the Durham report to insist on his lie about the “theft” of the 2020 presidential election and to insist that he is the victim of a deep state conspiracy mounted by the Democrats. .
The 306-page report, the result of almost four years of work, points out that the FBI should never have even launched its investigation into the alleged links between those responsible for the Trump campaign and Moscow to influence the 2016 elections, since the beginning of the investigations was based on “raw, uncorroborated and unanalyzed intelligence information.” The core of such information includes the questioned steele report used to obtain surveillance warrants against a former campaign adviser of the then conservative candidate and of which the Federal Bureau of Investigation could not confirm “not even a substantive accusation.”
The report criticizes the FBI at the time but does not see the need to change its current methods, the result of a reform
“The Department of Justice and the FBI failed to fulfill their mission of strict fidelity to the law,” says Durham, appointed in 2019 by Trump’s Attorney General and Attorney General William Barr, precisely to examine the previous investigation. of the feds about this alleged link between Moscow and the Republican electoral team.
The FBI engaged in an “extremely concerning lack of analytical rigor.” And his performance was “gravely flawed,” especially when he “willfully dismissed or ignored” data that did not support preliminary theories of Trump-Russia collusion.
But, although it leaves the FBI of the time in such a bad place, the report does not add new to the interim reports already issued by the prosecution and, above all, “does not recommend any general change in the guidelines and policies that the Department of Justice and the FBI now have to ensure proper and responsible conduct in the manner of their counterintelligence activities.” This supports what the current heads of the Office indicated in response to the main conclusions of the report. “The FBI’s conduct in 2016 and 2017 examined by Durham – the federal agency has indicated – were the reason why the current leadership applied dozens of corrective actions that are still in force.” In an implicit counterattack to Trump, the FBI has added: “Had those reforms been made in 2016 (when he came to power), the missteps identified in the report could have been avoided.”
Durham’s compliance with current FBI and Justice Department procedures has not prevented Trump from taking the report as confirmation of his accusations against the allegedly conspiratorial attitude of both institutions since he left the White House: “The American public was ripped off, just as he is now by those who don’t want to see GREATNESS for AMERICA! (…) This is fraud in the 2020 elections, just like “stuffing” the ballot box, only more (…) It is the crime of the century!”
Trump’s word.
