by John Solomon at Just the News
Freed from his double duty as Connecticut’s chief federal prosecutor, Special Counsel John Durham is zeroing in on the final phase of his far-reaching investigation into whether FBI officials or others committed crimes while conducting the Russia collusion probe, such as misleading federal judges or Congress.
All expectations were that Durham would wrap up his probe with final indictments and/or a report last fall after a plea deal was reached with former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted he falsified a document submitted to substantiate an application for a surveillance warrant targeting the Trump campaign.
But FBI Director Chris Wray revealed Tuesday that the entire process — including the bureau’s ability to discipline agents involved in the Russia case — was slowed down at Durham’s request because of continuing concerns about potential criminality.
“Because we are cooperating fully with Mr. Durham’s investigation, at his request we had slowed that process down to allow his criminal investigation to proceed,” Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “So at the moment, that process is still underway in order to make sure we are being appropriately sensitive to the criminal investigation.”
Wray’s comments signaling additional crimes are being investigated are consistent with what former Attorney General William Barr said late last year when he upgraded Durham from a U.S. attorney to a special counsel and expanded his investigative staff.
Interviews with a half dozen sources who have had interactions with Durham’s team say he is focused on whether FBI executives knowingly and unlawfully misled the FISA court and Congress by withholding exculpatory evidence, extending an investigation without justification and creating the illusion there was evidence of Russia collusion when most had been debunked or dismissed.
The sources said one former senior FBI official has provided invaluable cooperation and context to what decisions FBI leadership and field agents were making in the probe on such consequential matters as what to tell Congress, the courts and Justice Department lawyers about the flaws, political origins and falsehoods in the Russia collusion narrative.
Most of the evidence that supports those concerns is now in the public domain after a series of declassifications that began last year and ended when former President Donald Trump declassified hundreds of pages of the most sensitive evidence during his last 24 hours in office in January.
Those documents show that:
- The FBI and President Barack Obama were warned in summer 2016 — well before the first FISA warrant was issued — that Hillary Clinton might be concocting a bogus Russia collusion scandal to “vilify” Trump and distract from her own email scandal.
- The FBI was warned repeatedly that informal Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page had been a longtime CIA asset who assisted the U.S. on Russia matters.
- Both Page and George Papadopoulos had been recorded by an FBI informant wearing a wire denying all the key allegations against them.
- A spreadsheet analyzing Christopher Steele’s dossier found most of his collusion allegations had been debunked, could not be corroborated, were found to be internet rumor or were disavowed by his primary sub-source.
- Steele had been paid by the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign for his Russia collusion work and harbored a desire to defeat Trump and Clinton because he believed the Republican nominee would be bad for his home country of Great Britain.
- FBI had been repeatedly warned that Steele was susceptible to Russian disinformation, that his primary sub-source was assessed to be tied to Russian intelligence and that some of the evidence in his dossier had been determined to be Russian disinformation.
- The lead FBI agent investigating then-prospective National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had reported to his bosses in January 2017 that months of investigation had found “no derogatory” evidence to suggest Flynn was aiding Russia and urged closing down the investigation, but he was overruled by superiors.
Nearly all of these major revelations were withheld from the FISA court and only belatedly disclosed to Congress, officials have said.
Over the last year, Just the News has gathered and published all of the key declassified documents.
Here is the must-read list:…
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