John Durham Further Discredits FBI’s Investigation of Trump Campaign

The FBI did not interview any witnesses before opening a full investigation of the Trump campaign during the heat of the 2016 election, according to the investigation report by special counsel John Durham obtained by The Epoch Times.

The bureau rushed to open the initial investigation based on unvetted intelligence from Australia, according to Durham, who has spent nearly three years investigating the origins of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign.

The FBI’s rush to open the investigation and the shoddy foundations used as the premise for the probe were a departure from how the department treated other politically sensitive investigations in 2016. That includes the inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized use of a private email server to transmit top-secret government emails.

The much-anticipated report, a copy of which The Epoch Times obtained ahead of its public release, also delves into other controversial aspects of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI codename for the investigation of the Trump campaign.

The special counsel further impugned the bureau’s error-ridden applications to surveil Trump campaign associate Carter Page. FBI agents applied to renew the secret-court warrants despite admitting, both at the time and subsequently, that they had no probable cause to do so.

Durham concludes that the FBI failed to uphold its “important mission of strict fidelity to the law.”

The special counsel “does not recommend any wholesale changes in the guidelines and policies that the Department and the FBI now have in place.”

“The answer is not the creation of new rules but a renewed fidelity to the old,” the report says.

“The promulgation of additional rules and regulations to be learned in yet more training sessions would likely prove to be a fruitless exercise if the FBI’s guiding principles of ‘Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity’ are not engrained in the hearts and minds of those sworn to meet the FBI’s mission of ‘Protecting the American People and Upholding the Constitution of the United States.’”

Opening ‘Crossfire Hurricane’

The FBI did not speak to the people who provided the information used for opening the investigation, Durham found.

The bureau also failed to examine its own databases, check with other intelligence agencies, interview essential witnesses, and did not use “any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluation raw intelligence,” the report states.

While Durham does not attribute a motive to the shoddy work, he points to “pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump” from Peter Strzok, the person in charge of the investigation.

Had the FBI followed its own rules, the bureau’s agents would have discovered that neither the bureau, the CIA, or the FBI had any evidence to show that Donald Trump or anyone in his campaign had been in contact with any Russian intelligence officials at any time during the campaign, the report states.

FISA Warrant

Durham further found that in addition to FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who was found to have fabricated evidence in the FBI’s FISA application on Trump associate Carter Page, the problem was more widespread.

“In other instances, FBI personnel working on that same FISA application displayed, at best, a cavalier attitude towards accuracy and completeness. FBI personnel also repeatedly disregarded important requirements when they continued to seek renewals of that FISA surveillance while acknowledging—both then and in hindsight—that they did not genuinely believe there was probable cause to believe that the target was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of a foreign power, or knowingly helping another person in such activities.”

Durham furthermore criticized senior FBI personnel for displaying “a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities.”

“This information in part triggered and sustained Crossfire Hurricane and contributed to the subsequent need for Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. In particular, there was significant reliance on investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents.”

“The Department did not adequately examine or question these materials and the motivations of those providing them, even when at about the same time the Director of the FBI and others learned of significant and potentially contrary intelligence.”