The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Barr met with U.S. attorney for CT soon after Mueller probe
WASHINGTON — The day after U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr sent a controversial letter to Congress summarizing the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Barr sat down with U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham in his office in Washington, D.C.
The date was March 25, 2019. Durham, Barr, several Department of Justice senior staffers, including those who handle the logistical needs of U.S. attorneys, participated in what was scheduled to be a 30-minute afternoon huddle.
This meeting was revealed in new documents obtained via lawsuit by the nonpartisan ethics watchdog American Oversight and released publicly on Wednesday. For over a year, Durham has been conducting a probe into how the U.S. intelligence community investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the new documents show that Barr may have initiated Durham’s investigation immediately after receiving Mueller’s findings and well before Durham’s probe was revealed in the press in May 2019.
It is clear that Barr has long been closely involved in Durham’s investigation, which President Donald Trump sought after accusing the Federal Bureau of Investigation of “spying” on his 2016 campaign.
Very little is publicly known about the veteran prosecutor’s probe, although media have previously reported that it was upgraded to a criminal inquiry. The investigation may involve top officials from the Central Intelligence Bureau and other national intelligence agencies and how they handled information regarding Russian election interference efforts in 2016, CNN reported.
Barr said Monday former President
Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden are unlikely to be subjects of criminal charges from Durham’s probe.
“Whatever their level of involvement, based on the level of information I have today, I don’t expect Mr. Durham’s work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man,” Barr said. “Our concern over potential criminality is focused on others.”
Durham declined to comment on the investigation, its scope or when it will conclude through a spokesman Wednesday.
Barr has faced criticism former Justice Department attorneys and other lawyers for interfering in cases involving Trump’s political advisers in ways that appeared motivated by politics. Democrats lampooned Barr by calling him the president’s personal lawyer, not the nation’s top justice official.
The new documents highlight the frequent coordination between Durham and Barr as Durham’s probe has unfolded. They show that Durham and Barr had at least 18 meetings or phone calls from March to October of 2019.
A spokesman for Durham told Hearst Connecticut Media in October 2019 that Durham was traveling to Washington every week to meet with Barr.
Durham and Barr also traveled to Italy together twice in August to meet with officials for the inquiry, Hearst Connecticut Media previously reported. President Donald Trump himself has made calls to introduce foreign officials to Durham and Barr, said Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice.
Barr is Durham’s boss and therefore meetings between two are not unusual. But this level of contact is fairly extraordinary, said Stan Twardy Jr., U.S. attorney for Connecticut from 1985 to 1991.
It indicates the particular interest Barr is taking in probe has implications for the most powerful man in American politics — Trump and his 2016 campaign.
“This isn’t a normal investigation,” said Twardy. “In a normal investigation, the attorney general would not be meeting on a regular basis with the U.S. attorney because there are 93 U.S attorneys . ... This is a unique investigation. This is one in which John Durham is acting not as U.S attorney for Connecticut but acting as chief investigator for Attorney General Barr.”
Durham comes to job with a reputation as a seasoned and impartial prosecutor, who has investigated the actions of the intelligence community before — including the FBI and organized crime involvement, and the CIA and abusive interrogation practices. Durham was sworn in as U.S. attorney for Connecticut in 2018, but has worked in the office prosecuting organized crime, violent crime and public corruption for 35 years.
From the Connecticut U.S. attorney’s office, two assistant U.S. attorneys, a paralegal and an administrative support person are assisting Durham with his current probe, Durham’s spokesman, Tom Carson, said Wednesday.
“I am not surprised that John has support from the U.S. attorney’s office in Connecticut and I would not be surprised if John had help from other U.S. attorneys’ offices and other agencies working on this,” Twardy said. “I am certain there are FBI agents who are working on this.”
The team has continued work despite the coronavirus pandemic.
Durham and Mueller are not the only government investigators who have scrutinized contacts between the Trump campaign, Russia and U.S. intelligence agencies.
In December 2019, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a longawaited report showing the Federal Bureau of Investigations had sufficient reason to start an investigation into the links between Russia and Trump campaign aides in 2016, but it made serious and systematic errors in handling applications for court orders to wire tap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.
After the report’s release, Durham and Barr released statements saying they disagreed with it, noting that they had information from outside the Justice Department.
“Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.,” Durham said in a rare statement in December. “Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”
The American Oversight documents indicate that Durham and Barr’s counselor Seth Ducharme met with Horowitz on April 12, 2019 to discuss “what John and [redacted] and I are working on,” an email from Ducharme shows. Two days earlier, Barr had told Congress he thought U.S. intelligence agents conducted “spying” on the Trump campaign in 2016.
At this time, almost all of what the public knew of the Mueller report came from Barr’s fourpage summary letter to Congress from March 24.
On April 18, Barr held a news conference hours before the release of the 448-page Mueller report to Congress or the public to say the report found no evidence the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government ahead of the 2016 presidential election and stated that Mueller’s findings did not constitute the basis for obstruction of justice charges.
A letter from Mueller to Barr made public at the end of April showed that Mueller believed Barr had mischaracterized the findings of his two-year investigation.
The Mueller report found that Trump’s campaign did not coordinate with Russians during the 2016 election, but Mueller could not clear Trump of charges of obstruction of justice. Mueller’s team wrote “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.”
Justice Department guidelines bar the indictment of a sitting president, and Mueller, testifying before Congress in July 2019, was unclear whether those guidelines are the reason Mueller did not indict Trump.
Throughout that spring and summer as Congress, Barr and Mueller were unpacking Mueller’s findings, Durham was quietly working on his investigation also targeting the Trump campaign, Russia, federal agencies and other actors. He did so in frequent contact with Barr, documents show.