

Garland - illustrates how prosecutorial independence itself risks a different kind of dysfunction. Barr made him a special counsel, entrenching him to remain under the Biden administration with some independence from Attorney General Merrick B. Trump, not a special counsel - illustrates why there is a recurring public policy interest in shielding prosecutors pursuing politically sensitive matters from political appointees.īut the second phase - after Mr. Durham’s investigation - when he was a U.S. Dannehy, to resign in protest over ethics, The New York Times has reported.Īgainst that backdrop, the first phase of Mr. Barr pushed him to draft a potential interim report, prompting Mr. Durham had found no one to charge before the election, Mr.

Durham, regularly meeting with him, sharing Scotch and accompanying him to Europe. and treating the bureau as a victim, not a perpetrator. Trump and Russia, accusing them both of making false statements to the F.B.I. Durham only ever developed charges against two outsiders involved in efforts to scrutinize links between Mr. Brennan, and Democratic leaders like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joseph R. Those include the former directors of the F.B.I. Durham would imprison high-level officials. Trump and some of his allies in the news media went further, stoking expectations among his supporters that Mr.

There is something far more troubling here.” In April 2020, for example, he suggested in a Fox News interview that officials could be prosecuted and said: “The evidence shows that we are not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness. Durham’s investigation also helped foster perceptions that he had found something big. Barr recounted in his memoir, was angry about the lack of charges as the 2020 election neared.īut Mr. Durham shifted to a different rationale, hunting for a basis to blame the Clinton campaign for suspicions surrounding myriad links Trump campaign associates had to Russia.īy keeping the investigation going, Mr. lawyer who doctored an email during preparations for a wiretap renewal, belongs to Mr. Durham’s only courtroom success, a guilty plea by an F.B.I. Horowitz, found those problems, leaving Mr.

But the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. botched applications to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser. There were real-world flaws with the Russia investigation, especially how the F.B.I. Trump’s claims about the Russia investigation. Barr set him up to fail the moment he assigned Mr. Durham failed to deliver and more that Attorney General William P. Durham’s efforts ultimately ran up against reality. Just as his and his supporters’ wild and invented claims of election fraud floundered in court ( Fox News also agreed to pay a $787.5 million settlement for amplifying lies about Dominion Voting Systems), the political noise surrounding Mr. Trump’s comparison was unintentionally striking. This totally illegal act had a huge impact on the Election.” “This is 2020 Presidential Election Fraud, just like ‘stuffing’ the ballot boxes, only more so. “The Durham Report spells out in great detail the Democrat Hoax that was perpetrated upon me and the American people,” Mr. Trump and many of his loyalists issued statements treating it as vindication of their claims that the Russia inquiry involved far more extravagant wrongdoing. of “confirmation bias” rather than making a more explosive conclusion of political bias - made scant difference in parts of the political arena. Predictably, the report’s actual content - it contained no major new revelations, and it accused the F.B.I. or intelligence official with a crime and acknowledged in a footnote that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign did nothing prosecutable, either. Trump that he would uncover a politically motivated “deep state” conspiracy. but failed to live up to the expectations of supporters of Donald J. Durham delivered a report that scolded the F.B.I. Durham, a special counsel, into the Russia inquiry ended with a whimper that stood in contrast to the countless hours of political furor that spun off from it.
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Durham’s four-year investigation of the Russia inquiry underscores a recurring dilemma in American government: how to shield sensitive law enforcement investigations from politics without creating prosecutors who can run amok, never to be held to account.Īt a time when special counsels are proliferating - there have been four since 2017, two of whom are still at work - the much-hyped investigation by Mr.
