Special Counsel John Durham is set to testify next month before the House Judiciary Committee about his 300-page report detailing his investigation into the FBI probe of alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian officials.
Durham will appear before the House Intelligence Committee in a closed-door briefing on June 20 before participating in a House Judiciary hearing the following day, Fox News first reported.
The report found the Department of Justice and the FBI did not have “any actual evidence of collusion” between Russian officials and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Instead, the agencies began their Crossfire Hurricane investigation based on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” the report said.
“Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” Durham wrote.
The report also confirmed that the FBI did not give due consideration to the possibility that the Steele Dossier, which was used to obtain a FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page, was Russian disinformation.
FBI leaders displayed “serious lack of analytical rigor,” according to Durham, and they relied significantly on. “investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents,” referring to staffers and allies of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whose campaign funded the Steele dossier through its law firm Perkins Coie.
The dossier was created by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele and accused Trump and his campaign aides of collaborating with Kremlin officials.
Durham released his report nearly four years after then-attorney general Bill Barr tasked him with investigation the origins of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
The FBI responded to the report in saying that the “conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time.”
“Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented,” the bureau said. “This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.”