Trump used the FBI-Russia report he asked to continue fighting the election that won’t end

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CNN —

A long-awaited report by Republican-appointed special counsel John Durham has failed to find the crime of the century that former President Donald Trump said he was targeting at the center of the Russia investigation. But it brought him a potential political payoff nonetheless.

The 300-page conclusion to a three-year investigation also dealt another blow to the Federal Bureau of Investigation over its handling of the 2016 election that tarnished its reputation. Durham said the bureau’s full-scale probe into the many links between the Trump campaign and the Russians should never have been launched, arguing that investigators ignored or deliberately ignored information that did not support initial theories that there had been collusion between Trump and Russia. And he called on the Justice Department to appoint an official to oversee politically sensitive investigations. But while Durham criticized confirmation bias and mistakes at the FBI, he did not unveil any new prosecutions that undermined Trump’s predictions of a sweeping purge of the bureau and made no recommendations for further reforms. to the FBI.

In a still excerpt from the report that the former GOP president is sure to highlight for political purposes, he argued that neither US law enforcement officials nor the intelligence community appeared to have any actual evidence. of collusion before investigating Trump. And the special counsel also criticized the FBI’s use of the Steele dossier, a document that has now been largely debunked that the FBI used to secure surveillance warrants against a former Trump campaign adviser.

But not much of what Durham revealed Monday was new and while it wasn’t the complete failure some partisan media commentators on the left claimed, it certainly lacked the kind of blockbuster indictments that the former president and his family

Those debates aside, the polarization of American politics, everything involving Trump and the bitter results of the 2016 election mean that perceptions of links between his team and Russia depend for many citizens on their ideological views and opinions about Trump.

That means Durham reports the main legacy is now definitely political. It offered an immediate opening for the former commander in chief who never worried about nuance. Trump quickly claimed vindication for his claims that a massive deep state plot was designed to prevent him from power seven years ago, though the report did not draw such a firm conclusion. And Trump stepped on the scope of the Durhams’ conclusions to indicate that by extension, there are many ongoing criminal investigations against him including two by another special counsel into his attempts to subvert the 2020 election and his -storage of classified documents, is politically motivated. The American Public was scammed, just as people who don’t want to see GREAT for AMERICA are being scammed today! Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Another Trump ally, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, argued that the report showed that the rule of law in America is subservient to political outcomes. This is a very dangerous development and moment in American history, he said in a statement. Some may see Graham’s comments as ironic because the same accusations have often been leveled against Trump while he was in office, and the former president has challenged the rule of law in his bid to stay in office in 2020.

But House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, a top Trump ally, hinted at using the Durhams’ report to fuel his investigation into what he claims is a government weapon against Trump and Republicans. Jordan’s accusations represent a popular belief among pro-Trump conservatives, but so far they have failed to make a convincing leap into mainstream political debates.

Although Trump’s original intent in calling for an FBI investigation was to create a political shield over past and future investigations, he won a significant victory Monday. The former president has promised to dismantle the US intelligence and law enforcement agencies that would hold him accountable if he is elected to a second term in 2024. And his strength in the GOP means that Republicans who could challenge him for nomination must fall in line.

For example, criticized by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis arms federal agencies creating the Russia collusion narrative. It reminds us of the need to clean house at these agencies, as they have never been held accountable for gross abuses of power, DeSantis wrote on Twitter.

Skeptics of the investigation have long pointed out that former Attorney General William Barr started it when he was under intense pressure from the then-president to investigate those investigating his 2016 campaign. Some analysts said that the fact that Durham obtained only one conviction related to the Russia investigation and repeated criticisms of the FBI’s conduct from a previous inspector general’s report proved that the investigation was an expensive waste of money set out to prove a false political theory.

Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, now a senior CNN national security analyst, blasted Monday’s report as a political errand to exact revenge on Trump’s enemies at the FBI.

Despite the criticism of the McCabes, however, the findings of the Durham report are likely to make the FBI more reluctant to launch investigations involving political campaigns during the presidential election. The bureau has already implemented several reforms to address the conclusions of an earlier inspector general report that found problems with applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Warrants.

The Durham report also deepens the imbroglio caused by the 2016 election when the FBI was also accused of influencing the campaign to the detriment of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by publicly reopening an investigation into her handling of classifieds. email days before Election Day. Now a special counsel is accusing it of improperly investigating the Republican nominee as well. While Democrats may not trust Durham’s motivations. They are urging a current special counsel, Jack Smith, in hopes that he will indict Trump. Cherry-picking between special counsels is likely to further curb the lack of confidence in the rule of law and the independence of the Justice Department.

In another politically sensitive part of his report, Durham found that the FBI did not pursue the allegations against Clinton with the same vigor with which they acted against Trump. However, Clinton’s supporters will dismiss that allegation as ridiculous, as they blame then-FBI Director James Comey for swinging the election against her through his public statements on his emails. At the same time, Americans have no idea that Trump is also under investigation.

The long and toxic overhang of the 2016 election does not end there. The deadly presidential race was the trigger for another legal issue that is still causing political fire: the hush money payment Trump made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels that resulted in her becoming the first former president to be impeached. The resulting charges of alleged fraudulent bookkeeping have already ensured that the 2024 election campaign was embroiled in the troubled first Trump presidential bid seven years ago.

While Republicans highlighted parts of the Durhams’ report that appeared to confirm their own baked-in conclusions about what it had to say, some legal experts considered it deeply troubling.

It’s pretty silly, Ryan Goodman, a NYU School of Law professor, told CNN’s Erin Burnett, arguing that the Durhams’ contention that FBI agents found countervailing evidence they ignored to i -upgrading a preliminary investigation into Trump to a full-scale investigation is questionable.

Elliot Williams, a CNN legal analyst, said the report failed to address Trump’s accusations. Because of that Durham didn’t find the systemic abuses that the Trump partisans had hoped to see.

And McCabe, the FBI’s deputy director at the time of the Trump investigation, said he strongly disagreed with the report and argued it represented a deep misunderstanding of what was known at the time. He pointed out that Trump’s investigation was launched at a time when Russia was attacking the servers of the Democratic National Committee and used stolen information to attack Clinton. The investigation was launched only after the bureau received evidence from a friendly foreign government that the Trump campaign was offered help by the Russians. He said the FBI was investigating Clinton under similar circumstances.

Indeed, while Durham criticized the FBI for moving into a full-scale investigation of Trump, he said the bureau had reason to open a preliminary investigation. And while he criticized the fact that a full investigation had been initiated, the outcome of that investigation that resulted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation did not result in any criminal charges against Trump. Mueller refused to conclude that Trumps campaign contacted Russia to influence the 2016 campaign. However, he detailed multiple ties between Trumps campaign and the Russians and showed that many senior figures were expected to benefit. to any intervention in Moscow’s election. And while again filing no charges, Mueller detailed multiple instances of Trump’s apparent obstruction of justice.

Democrats are also trying to extract legal capital from the report specifically from the lack of bombshell accusations of new charges.

Democratic Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois criticized Durham for making no substantive recommendations on how the FBI could improve its application of surveillance authorities in its investigations, which went beyond the inspector general’s report.

While conservatives have criticized the Biden administration for what they say are politically motivated Justice Department investigations, Durham notably thanked Attorney General Merrick Garland for allowing his investigation to proceed without interference.

But all Trump needed from the report was a headline and a general narrative of suspicion against the FBI. He will do the rest.

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