During a heated session on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, special counsel John Durham responded better than he received from a lot of House Democrats.
Durham testified before the House Judiciary Committee on a lengthy report he produced earlier this spring that detailed his findings into the genesis of the alleged “Trump-Russia collusion” claim, which was officially known as “Crossfire Hurricane” by the FBI.
The conversation with Durham became contentious at one point when Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) questioned Durham:
SCHIFF: “You also sought to get the Inspector General to change his conclusion…”
DURHAM: “If you wanna go there, we asked the Inspector General to take a look at the intelligence…”
SCHIFF: “You thought it was appropriate for you to intervene…?!”
DURHAM: “[Your] premise isn’t right.”
SCHIFF: "You also sought to get the Inspector General to change his conclusion…"
DURHAM: "If you wanna go there, we asked the Inspector General to take a look at the intelligence…"
SCHIFF: "You thought it was appropriate for you to intervene…?!"
DURHAM: "[Your] premise… pic.twitter.com/BxiMscgkd5
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 21, 2023
Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, a fellow Democrat on the panel, and Durham got into another heated argument after the special counsel said the evidence he found exonerated then-President Donald Trump of any “collusion” allegations and criticized the FBI for opening an investigation without any solid justification.
“I’ve tried to follow your report. Mr. Donald Trump, Jr. would’ve called it a nothing burger. You got no convictions, you got nothing! It was all set up to hurt the Mueller report – which was correct and was redacted – to hurt the Bidens and to help Trump,” Cohen said.
“And you were a part of it. You have a good reputation. You had a good reputation, that’s why the two Democrats supported you. But the longer you hold onto Mr. Barr and this report that Mr. Barr gave you as special counsel, your reputation will be damaged, as everybody’s reputation who gets involved with Donald Trump is damaged,” he lectured.
“He’s damaged goods, there’s no good dealing with him cause you will end up on the bottom of a pyre,” Cohen added.
In response, Durham said: “Yeah, my concern about my reputation is with the people who I respect, my family, and my Lord, and I’m perfectly comfortable with my reputation with them, sir!” Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) then authorized Durham to continue.
“Well said, God bless you,” Jordan responded.
Schiff frequently asserted that he had proof that the former president had colluded with Russia to sabotage the 2016 election throughout his administration and after. However, numerous examinations into the claims brought up no such proof. Because of the untrue allegations, Schiff was kicked off the Intelligence Committee by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Durham discovered that the FBI began looking into Trump before the 2016 election using “uncorroborated intelligence” and that agents consistently failed to uphold “strict fidelity to the law” throughout the investigation.
The Daily Caller highlighted some significant revelations in the Hillary Clinton report:
The report noted that the FBI received intelligence that Hillary Clinton’s campaign approved “a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services,” specifically one that involved “tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee” to distract the public from her email scandals. It notes that President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey were personally briefed on Clinton’s scheme, known as the “Clinton Plan” in the report, by CIA Director John Brennan, who recorded mentioning the plan in his handwritten notes.
The “Clinton Plan” was obtained by the FBI while it was relying on the “Steele Dossier,” a discredited report of lurid allegations of Trump’s personal sexual activity, which the FBI knew was being funded and promoted by the Clinton campaign, according to the report. Durham quotes information from a meeting between the Dossier’s author, former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, and FBI agents, as well as texts between FBI officials, to demonstrate that the agents knew the evidence was connected to Clinton.
