Special counsel John Durham concludes that the FBI should not have launched an investigation into the alleged link between the campaign of former US President Donald Trump (2017-2021) and Russia in the 2016 elections, in a report published this Monday after a 4 year investigation.
In the report, of more than 300 pages, Durham indicates that the FBI used "uncorroborated, unprocessed and unanalyzed" intelligence information to launch investigations into the Trump campaign team and its possible ties to Russia.
Durham was appointed in 2019 by then-Attorney General William Barr, during Trump's tenure, to examine the federal agency's previous investigation into alleged ties between the Republican's election team and Russia.
The special counsel argues that, after reviewing the FBI investigation and other intelligence activities, he has concluded that "the Department (of Justice) and the FBI failed to fulfill their mission of strict fidelity to the law, in connection with certain events and activities described in this report".
Durham points out in the text that FBI officials showed "a serious lack" of analytical rigor in the treatment of the information they received, especially that related to people and entities with political affiliations.
In sum, the FBI's handling of several key aspects of this case was "seriously flawed," according to the special counsel, who considered that this failure to fulfill its responsibility to the public caused "serious harm." to the agency's reputation.
In his day, Barr opened this investigation after Trump's insistence that his campaign had been the object of espionage before the 2016 elections by US intelligence, under the orders of then-president Barack Obama.
In this way, the Department of Justice investigated itself, since this supposed espionage would have been carried out by the FBI, an agency with which Trump was very critical since he came to power.
With this inquiry, Trump intended to get to the root of the investigation into the so-called "Russian plot" led by Robert Mueller, which tormented him during the first two years of his Presidency and which ended in March 2019 with the conclusion that neither neither he nor anyone around him worked with the Kremlin to win the 2016 elections.
After the publication of the report, Trump's reaction was immediate and in a message on his social network, Truth, the former president stated that the Americans have been "ripped off."
"WOW! After Extensive Investigation, Special Counsel John Durham Concludes The FBI Should Never Have Launched The Trump-Russia Inquiry! In Other Words, The American Public Was Scammed, As It Is Now By Those Who Didn't They want to see GREATNESS for America!" he said.
In a statement, the FBI assured this Monday that its leadership "has already applied dozens of corrective actions, which have been underway for a long time" in response to the behavior denounced by Durham.
The note adds that if "those reforms" had been in place in 2016, "the missteps" identified in the report could have been prevented.
Since the Republicans regained control of the majority in the US House of Representatives in the midterm elections last November, they have launched legislative investigations into what they denounce is the manipulation of federal agencies, such as the FBI, to put them at the service of political ends.
