John Durham Just Made False Statements to Congress

Source: Mother Jones

John Durham—the special counsel who was appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the FBI’s investigation of the Trump-Russia scandal and who utterly failed to produce evidence it was a hoax—testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. In doing so, he made false statements to Congress. He might even have lied.

Durham spent four years on a crusade that Donald Trump and others hoped would back up Trump’s claim that the Russia investigation was cooked up by his enemies within the supposed Deep State. Yet Durham came up empty on this front, losing two jury trials unrelated to the origins of the FBI’s inquiry and winning a guilty plea from an FBI lawyer who had altered an email to support a surveillance warrant for a former Trump campaign adviser. He prosecuted no FBI officials or Obama administration officials for the supposedly big crime of mounting a plot (or witch hunt!) against Trump. Durham even concluded there was justification for the FBI to have initiated a preliminary investigation, just not a full investigation, of Russia’s attack on the 2016 election and contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

When Durham came before the committee, House Republicans eagerly picked over the scraps in his final report, which has been much criticized, and they treated him as a hero. But under questioning from Democratic and Republican members, Durham misrepresented key aspects of the Russia scandal, suggesting he was either unfamiliar with basic facts or was purposefully trying to mislead the committee and the American public.

During his turn to question Durham, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) asked Durham about the infamous meeting held in Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, when Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort—three of Trump’s top campaign advisers—sat down with an emissary of the Russian government whom they were told had dirt on Hillary Clinton to share. An email sent to Trump Jr. from a business associate that set up this session informed the candidate’s son that this meeting was part of a secret Russian scheme to help Trump’s campaign. Durham dismissed the matter, remarking, “People get phone calls all the time from individuals who claim to have information like that.”



Read more: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/06/john-durham-just-made-false-statements-to-congress/