WASHINGTON-
Former US President Donald Trump once predicted that a special prosecutor appointed under his administration would uncover “the crime of the century” – a plot to sink his 2016 campaign.
Yet here are the results of prosecutor John Durham’s three-year investigation: two acquittals at trial – the last Tuesday – and a former FBI attorney sentenced to probation.
This falls far short of Trump supporters’ expectations that Durham would reveal a “deep state” conspiracy behind the US government’s investigation into Russia’s ties to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The result led to scrutiny of the purpose of Durham’s appointment by former attorney general William Barr, who tasked him with finding fault with the Trump-Russia investigation. It has also raised questions about if or when the current attorney general, Merrick Garland, might decide to put the brakes on Durham’s work or speed up its completion.
“You really measure the success of an investigation by what it reveals in terms of malign activity, and he found nothing,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University and a former top official. of the Ministry of Justice.
There is no indication that Durham plans to charge anyone else in his investigation. It is expected to produce a report at some point, but it is unclear whether it will identify any significant misconduct or errors beyond those already flagged by the Justice Department’s watchdog.
Barr gave Durham a broad mandate in 2019 to hunt for wrongdoing by the FBI or other agencies early in their investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. At the time, Durham was Connecticut’s US attorney with decades of Justice Department experience, including investigating CIA interrogations of terrorist suspects.
Trump supporters applauded the nomination, and not just because of Durham’s bona fides.
The appointment was made shortly after the conclusion of an investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which found substantial contact between the Russians and Trump associates but did not allege a criminal conspiracy between them. In December 2019, a report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General concluded that the Russia investigation had been opened for a legitimate reason, but identified numerous errors in the way it was conducted – giving Trump and his supporters a path of attack and optimism over Durham.
But as 2020 drew to a close, there were signs Durham’s investigation was losing momentum.
One of his top prosecutors resigned without explanation from the Justice Department. Months later, Barr told the Wall Street Journal that he did not believe there was any improper activity during the CIA’s investigation of Russia, even though suspicions about the intelligence community had helped Durham’s appointment in the first place.
The year ended with just one criminal case – a guilty plea by an FBI attorney who admitted to tampering with an internal email related to the surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser. Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced to probation rather than jail. Notably, the case involved conduct uncovered during an earlier investigation by the Inspector General, rather than the Durham team.
Two other criminal cases, also narrow in nature, failed. After hours of deliberation, a jury in May acquitted Michael Sussmann, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign attorney. He had been accused of lying to the FBI during a meeting in which he presented information about Trump to the top lawyer in the office that he said needed to be investigated.
A jury on Tuesday acquitted Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst at a US think tank who had been accused of lying to the FBI about his role in creating a widely discredited dossier – a collection of unproven claims that sought to tie Trump to Russia and whose creation was financed by the Democrats. During the trial, he attacked the credibility of FBI agents who were his own witnesses.
Despite the lack of convictions, Durham still managed to shed an unflattering light on some aspects of the Russia investigation. The Danchenko trial, for example, focused on the origins of the dossier, which helped form the basis of secret surveillance requests filed by the FBI to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Even so, Page was one of many leads the FBI investigated, and the dossier did not trigger the Russia investigation. Nor did the Durham inquiry’s allegations erase the main finding of the Mueller inquiry — that Russia wanted Trump elected and Trump’s team welcomed the help — nor did they nor influenced the jurors.
“While Durham has essentially attempted to bring the FBI itself to justice through these lawsuits by pointing out missteps and errors in the first Trump-Russia investigation, the cases have portrayed the FBI as more victim than culprit and evidence of any scheme orchestrated by FBI agents to direct the investigation for political gain has never materialized,” Robert Mintz, a New Jersey attorney and former federal prosecutor, wrote in an email.
The Ministry of Justice declined to comment on Durham’s future, including how long his team might continue or when he might produce a report. Weeks before his resignation, Barr appointed Durham as special counsel to ensure his investigation continued in the Biden administration.
A Durham spokesperson declined to comment on reviews of the artwork.
Garland and senior Justice Department officials, perhaps anxious to avoid the perception of interference in such a politically charged investigation, took a hands-off approach to Durham’s work.
Before Sussmann was indicted, his lawyers appealed to senior department officials in hopes of preventing a charge, according to a person familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. But the Justice Department brushed off the protest, allowing the case to continue.
Now, however, there is mounting pressure not just on Durham to wrap it up, but on Garland, as attorney general, to push him to do so.
“I think he was very wise to let this take its course,” Saltzburg said of Garland. go home.”
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Associated Press writer Matthew Barakat in Alexandria, Va., contributed to this report.