A spokesperson from the office of former President Donald Trump on Monday stated that the investigative report released by Special Counsel John Durham “proves” a coordinated effort in the federal government to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
“WOW! After extensive research, Special Counsel John Durham concludes the FBI never should have launched the Trump-Russia Probe! In other words, the American Public was scammed, just as it is being scammed right now by those who don’t want to see GREATNESS for AMERICA!” Trump, currently a Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential race, wrote in a statement on Truth Social on Monday.
The former president’s response came shortly after the Department of Justice (DOJ) published (pdf) the long-awaited Durham report on Monday afternoon. The report found flaws in the FBI’s 2016–17 investigation into the Trump campaign, which, Durham wrote, was based on unvetted allegations that Trump colluded with Russian entities.
The Trump campaign said the report shows the existence of a coordinated campaign to remove Trump from the presidency in 2016.
“This report proves there was a coordinated effort by Never Trump activists in the government to falsely accuse President Trump through lies and deceit,” Steven Cheung, Trump campaign spokesman, told The Epoch Times in an email statement following the release of the Durham report.
“The Russia Collusion Hoax was masterminded by Deep State officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI to take away the Presidency from President Trump and the American people,” the spokesperson said.
Durham was tasked in 2019 with reviewing the 2016–17 FBI investigation of alleged nefarious ties between candidate and later President Donald Trump and Russia.
In October 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham a special counsel on this investigation, which, after three years, led to Monday’s report.
In his report, Durham concluded that “neither U.S. nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” Crossfire Hurricane is the FBI codename for the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign.
Furthermore, Durham’s report found that agents “repeatedly disregarded important requirements” when they made surveillance requests on the Trump campaign (initiated under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), in the absence of a “genuine belief” that there was a probable cause to investigate the target.
“Our investigation also revealed that senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities,” the report added.
On these grounds, the Special Counsel wrote in his report that DOJ and the FBI “failed to uphold their important mission” of following the law in its investigation of the Trump campaign and recommended potential reforms to the agency in handling “politically charged allegations in the future.”
The “real collusion,” the Trump campaign’s spokesperson added, was between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and “foreign agents with ties to Russia peddling disinformation to defraud voters in 2016.”
Federal officials found Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had likely violated the law when they hired former British spy Christopher Steele, who conducted political opposition research (in the “Steele Dossier”) that alleged collusion between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russian entities.
The Epoch Times contacted the Clinton Foundation for comment.
Monday’s report did not recommend any indictments in addition to the three people Durham prosecuted. Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who doctored an email to state that a one-time Trump campaign associate was not a CIA asset when the associate actually was, pleaded guilty and received probation. Michael Sussmann was acquitted by a jury, as was Igor Danchenko, a Russian national who was the primary sub-source for the Trump dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele for Hillary Clinton and other Democrats.
Zachary Stieber, Petr Svab, and Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.