The report of Special Counsel John H. Durham into the origins of the “Russia collusion” investigation refutes the claims of an earlier Inspector General’s report that Democrats cited to defend the FBI and the probe itself.
In late 2019, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz released the report of his investigation into the FBI’s “Russia collusion” probe. While Horowitz found there had been “serious performance failures,” he found no evidence of “intentional misconduct.” More broadly, he found that while the conduct of the probe — including fraudulent warrant applications — had been wrong, the investigation was opened for good reasons.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), then the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, claimed: “Simply put, the FBI investigation was motivated by fact, not bias.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein says IG report “conclusively refutes” claims of political motivation by Pres. Trump, Attorney General Barr.
“There is no Deep State. Simply put, the FBI investigation was motivated by facts, not bias.”https://t.co/c868WmzANb pic.twitter.com/lSehyUO2YD
— ABC News (@ABC) December 11, 2019
Democrats seized on the latter claim to dismiss Republican concerns that the intelligence and law enforcement agencies had been politicized and weaponized against Trump. But Durham and then-Attorney General William Barr publicly dissented from Horowitz’s conclusions, strongly implying that Durham had access to information, such as grand jury testimony, that would not have been available to Horowitz in the process of his investigation.
It turns out that Durham and Barr was right, and Horowitz did not have the complete picture. Durhams’ report concludes that the FBI never should have opened an investigation into Trump; it was political from the start.
Durham reports that the FBI and CIA never had any credible intelligence information about “Russia collusion” and that officials with “pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump” rushed to open an investigation.
Democrats were wrong: bias, not fact, was the motivation.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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