Durham was hired by Trump enabler Bill Barr, who's now trying to repair his reputation.
Because of his conduct in the past, Durham's opinion on a sharply contested subject with profound political implications is suspect right out of the gate. A report from an investigator with less baggage would be more credible.
This four year Trump-initiated fishing expedition cost U.S. taxpayers $6.5 million. I suppose the result was worth it to you folks. Here's what the NYT reported:
Mr. Durham largely revisited criticisms uncovered in a separate investigation and continued to insinuate that Hillary Clinton's campaign had helped fuel the Russia investigation. In 2019, an inspector general found that the F.B.I. had botched wiretap applications used in the inquiry.
"Our investigation also revealed that senior F.B.I. personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor toward the information that they reviewed, especially info received form politically affiliated persons and entities," Mr. Durham wrote. "This information in part triggered and sustained Crossfire Hurricane and contributed to the subsequent need for Special Counsel Mueller's investigation."
But in using the word "triggered," Mr. Durham's report echoed a conspiracy theory pushed by supporters of Mr. Trump that the F.B.I. opened the investigation in July 2016 based on the so-called Steele dossier, opposition research indirectly funded by the Clinton campaign that was later discredited.
In fact, as Mr. Durham acknowledged elsewhere in the report, the dossier did not reach those investigators until mid-September. The F.B.I. instead opened the investigation based on a tip from an Australian diplomats, following WikiLeaks' publication of hacked Democratic emails, that a Trump campaign aide had previously seemed to indicate advance knowledge that Russia would release information damaging to the Clinton campaign.
