Durham's Trump-Russia Report Is Another Black Eye for the FBI

Special counsel John Durham's report on his investigation into Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential race has dealt a blow to the FBI, concluding that the bureau had no evidence of collusion when it launched its Crossfire Hurricane probe.

On Monday, Durham released the long-awaited report on the origins of Crossfire Hurricane, which looked into whether Trump and Russia conspired to influence the 2016 election. He was appointed to lead the inquiry in October 2019 after Trump pressured former Attorney General William Barr to investigate the FBI's probe.

In Durham's 300-plus-page report, the special counsel said that "at the time of the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI had no information in its holdings indicating that at any time during the campaign anyone in the Trump campaign had been in contact with any Russian intelligence officials."

Durham said the FBI should never have opened its investigation into connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, and that the origins of the probe were based on "raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence."

"Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the [Justice] Department and FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report," the report says.

In response to Monday's report, the FBI told Newsweek in a statement that the conduct Durham examined had already been addressed by "dozens of corrective actions" that have "been in place for some time" now.

"Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented," the statement 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."

Durham's criticisms come amid increased scrutiny of the FBI and its investigations in recent years. After the bureau executed a search warrant for classified documents at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida last August, many Republicans accused the FBI of abusing its powers.

The public's growing distrust of the FBI was reflected in a November 2022 poll conducted by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy. It found that just half of Americans trust the bureau, with 40 percent saying "most of the time" and 10 percent saying "just about always."

Skepticism was particularly high among independent and Republican voters, with 30 percent of independents saying they "hardly ever" trust the FBI and 32 percent of Republicans saying the same. By contrast, only 7 percent of Democrats agreed with that statement.

Durham did not recommend any charges against individual FBI agents, which he could have done, and also did not recommend any changes on how the agency should handle politically charged investigations.

His probe was able to secure just one conviction, that of a low-level FBI officer who was put on probation.

Trump had repeatedly charged that Crossfire Hurricane was a "hoax" and "political witch hunt" initiated by his political enemies and that the election interference investigation was started without any solid evidence.

After four years, Durham's probe sided with Trump, concluding that "neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation."

In his report, the special counsel was particularly critical of the Steele Dossier, a report that played a central role in the surveillance warrant for a former Trump campaign adviser. Durham also criticized former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok, the former deputy assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division who led the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.