Washington Examiner Justice Department reporter Jerry Dunleavy detailed special counsel John Durham’s report on the Trump-Russia investigation Saturday and declared the findings showed that the FBI operation Crossfire Hurricane was rife with mismanagement and poor conduct.
Durham’s report posited that the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia displayed areas in which “the FBI badly underperformed and failed, not only in its duties to the public, but also in preventing the severe reputational harm that has befallen the FBI as a consequence of Crossfire Hurricane.”
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If those leading the investigation had followed “their own principles regarding objectivity and integrity,” they might have been able to mitigate the damage to the FBI’s reputation and recognized flawed information, according to the report.
There were obvious failures in the investigation, Dunleavy told C-SPAN host Mimi Geerges on Washington Journal, citing the “FBI’s embrace and reliance on former British spy Christopher Steele’s now thoroughly discredited dossier.”
The dossier made a myriad of allegations against the former president that the FBI grasped onto, Dunleavy said.
“The one that the FBI relied on most heavily was its claim that there was some sort of well-developed conspiracy between Trump and Russia,” he said. “Now, there has not been any evidence uncovered, whether it was by special counsel Mueller, by the DOJ inspector general, or now by Durham, that there was any sort of collusion between Trump and Russia.”
“The FBI relied on that dossier to obtain spy warrants through the foreign intelligence surveillance court to surveil former Trump campaign associate Carter Page. They also relied on the dossier in other ways. Former FBI Director James Comey even wanted to include the dossier in an intelligence community assessment that was put out in very early January 2017 about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election,” Dunleavy said.
Along with the FBI’s reliance on the dossier, the Durham investigation showcased a host of actions the FBI took in Crossfire Hurricane that now reflect poorly on what many consider to be America’s top law enforcement agency, according to Dunleavy.
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“There’s a lot more detail in the Durham report about the problem with the dossier, but even the launch of the investigation itself was based on what is very thin and dubious investigation,” he said.
See Dunleavy’s full remarks here.
