What is Durham’s assignment?
Then-Attorney General Bill Barr asked Durham in May 2019 to review law enforcement and intelligence gathering during the 2016 presidential campaign. Barr asked Durham to expand the inquiry into a special counsel investigation in October 2020.
Durham’s job was basically to investigate the investigators. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had appointed Mueller, a former FBI director, as a special counsel to investigate whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russians to win the 2016 election.
Mueller’s final report found that Russia supported Trump against his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, but not that his campaign colluded with Russia. Mueller documented several actions of potential obstruction of the investigation by Trump but chose not to make a decision on whether to charge him because the Justice Department has a policy against charging sitting presidents.
Trump claimed exoneration from Mueller’s final report. Barr assigned Durham to investigate the FBI surveillance of Trump’s campaign and the Mueller investigation.
The Justice Department’s inspector-general, Michael Horowitz, issued a scathing report in December 2019 that criticized how the FBI won court orders to wiretap Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser.
So far, Durham has charged three people with lying to or for the FBI. Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty to falsifying an email used to support the surveillance of Page.
But cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann and think-tank analyst Igor Danchenko were acquitted at trial of lying to the FBI.