America's Talking - Durham: Feds Had No Real Evidence to Investigate Russian Collusion, Monitor Trump Campaign

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Former Special Counsel for the United States Department of Justice John Durham testified Wednesday that the federal government had no substantive basis to begin its 2016 probe into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. During the Trump administration, former Attorney General Bill Barr tapped John Durham to investigate Crossfire-Hurricane, the name for the FBI probe into alleged collusion between Russia and the campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me again today is the Center Square Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey, it is officially summer, but the news out of Washington, D.C. doesn't seem to be taking a break. Pretty big congressional hearing this week into the now debunked allegations that the campaign of former President Donald Trump in 2016 colluded with Russia to try to tilt the race against the then Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in Trump's favor. Special counsel John Durham investigated the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign, so to speak, and concluded earlier this year that the FBI investigation really never should have taken place to begin with because there was no

evidence. And instead, it was essentially provoked by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Durham got before Congress this week where he was questioned about his investigation into the investigation. What did we learn? Yeah, I mean, we learned, we got a really a breakdown of this report that you're referencing. And I was just really struck by how when you, you know, you kicked off this podcast, this story by talking about the now debunked claims. And it's just amazing because if you had said that a few years ago, you could have been attacked, maligned on Twitter, considered a potential Russian agent just for saying the statement you said now, which is we all know is it's an established fact. So, and that does, I mean, that seems to be a theme of, you know, we've hit on many times on

this podcast of things that were once considered conspiracy or misinformation. later through, you know, partially through good reporting, but being found out to be true, being verified. This is another example of that. So, you know, there's many things here. Jerome's report was over 300 pages. Most interesting, probably to many of our listeners, is this is a quote for him, him, he said, the FBI was too willing to accept and use politically funded and uncorroborated opposition research like the Steele dossier. So to outright call the steel dossier, which is really the document, the research document that was the basis, for the FBI spying on the Trump campaign. I mean, call it spy. You can call it monitoring,

whatever. I mean, that's another, speaking of other things that were written off is ridiculous conspiracies. When Trump said he was being spied on, people rolled their eyes as like, here we go again with, you know, Trump of 2016. But he was actually right. The FBI was monitoring him in really the late summer of 2016 and beyond it. So that's another example of something that was proven true. But for Durham to call this a political opposition research document, that just to have that on the record from the Department of Justice is really interesting because that document basically was funded by the Clinton campaign. But another finding of this report that was really interesting is that the FISA warrant applications, which the FBI kind of has to go through this process

to get these warrants to be able to monitor people. They just, according to Durham, they totally abused it. They misused this document to get what they needed. And people have been really skeptical of these FISA a warrants for a while now. Behind closed doors, law enforcement can get access to things because they don't want to, and it makes sense, they don't want to reveal their investigations because it can, it can mess up the investigation. But proceedings behind closed doors have been shown again and again to not be very reliable, not to be incredibly integrous. And so I don't know what the answer is there. Of course, there's plenty of examples where it's been used rightly, but we've had some pretty high profile missteps with the FISA system. So like I said, it's a 300-page report here, but

we have germs saying it's politically motivated, basically opposition research. The FBI made a lot of mistakes. They even abused this, this FISA system. And Trump was right about being spite on. What I can't get past is for years, going back to 2016, this Russia collusion allegation against the Trump campaign, it was considered fact. When it turns out, it was the Clinton campaign that was colluding with the FBI against the Trump campaign. What I haven't heard in the national conversation about this? Did the Clinton campaign do anything illegal here? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, my gut is probably not unless you could really prove that they had some kind of malintent and power to control within the FBI because my understanding is what they did is they created

this document. They funded this document kind of through multiple groups. They didn't directly create it, but they funded it through multiple groups. And then their legal team handed it over to the FBI and said, hey, you guys should take a look at this. So it seems like most of the fault is in the FBI, but at the same time, has that really been thoroughly investigated? And I would say that has not been investigated enough. No. What was more of the origins of that dossier?

How did it come about? Was there any mis-wrongdoing associated? I think there's a lot of unanswered questions on that. But it just goes to this kind of sad, I don't know, it really bothers me. But this trend of the FBI just is having a really bad, I guess, a little more than five years, so maybe a really bad decade. Right. They took, you know, people really were upset with him for how they felt like they helped Trump, you know, the FBI helped Trump win the election maybe by talking about Hillary's investigation just a few days before the election, right? But they were also politically involved in spying on Trump. And now we know that in this latest election, the FBI told the social media companies not to run with the Hunter Biden story, which Trump claims swung the election in Joe Biden's favor. And there's no way to really know who would have won an election if hypothetically something hadn't happened, right? What we do know for sure is that in the last two presidential elections, the FBI has had a major role in determining the winner.

And it should not be that way. In the aftermath of the Durham hearing this week, Casey, congressional Republicans voted to sanction Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, who in Congress, launched an investigation into this now debunked Trump-Russia collusion hoax. Was that just political payback? What's your take on that? I mean, there is some political payback there. But I think a lot of Republicans in Congress believe that Adam Schiff has crossed the line from politics to actually acting in bad faith to where maybe he knew what he was doing was wrong or had no basis. And yet he's still pursuing it for political purposes and maybe even being kind of controlled by democratic interests outside of Congress, I guess I would say. So I think that's where that is coming from. I think it's well with and they're right. I mean, Congress is getting more and more divided. I wouldn't be surprised if we see some more actions like that. in the coming years. Interesting stuff, Casey. I do not know what's next with the now debunked Russia-Trump collusion hoax and the invests, all the investigations. So many investigations.

Yeah, right. And do it. But for any developments, listeners can keep up with the story at the center square.com. We are now out of time for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McKeel. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening.