Low-profile prosecutor leads high-profile hunt
John Durham of Connecticut digs into origin of Trump collusion claims
U.S. Attorney John H. Durham was back in Connecticut for a retirement dinner earlier this fall and one of the other attendees observed, half facetiously, that he showed no obvious signs of bruising or broken bones.
One might expect otherwise, judging from the news from Washington since May, when Attorney General William Barr put Durham at the center of the most contentious national controversy in years. He is digging into the origins of the FBI’s counter-intelligence, Russia-collusion investigation of President Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign. Was it legally justified? Or was it contrived, as Trump supporters believe, by a “deep state” of senior intelligence and law-enforcement officers to smear Trump and sink his campaign?
Durham, a career prosecutor with a gold-plated resume, will be excoriated no matter what he does. The president’s allies have created formidable expectations, predicting Durham will prove Democrats have maligned Trump with a succession of made-up controversies. Top Democrats are calling Durham a tool Trump is using for revenge.
Speculation increased last week
with the impending release Monday of Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s report of his investigation of one aspect of the FBI’s conduct in the Trump collusion case. If the Horowitz report contains evidence of a violation in the way the bureau obtained a national-security, surveillance warrant targeting a Trump campaign volunteer, prosecution could fall to Durham.
Durham’s colleagues say there is no one better able to tune out the partisan noise. They predict he will immerse himself in the work and he may end up frustrating everyone.
“They opened Pandora’s Box, when they chose John,” said Bill Reiner, a retired FBI agent and longtime Durham colleague. “He is going to go wherever the evidence goes. And he does not care where it goes. There is no politics in John. There is no politics in anything he does.”
Over a 41-year career, much of it spent on complex criminal conspiracies, Durham hasn’t been a stranger to contention. He helped break up the New England Mafia, unraveled Irish gangster James “Whitey” Bulger’s corrupt hold over law enforcement and looked into allegations — for Republican and Democratic administrations — that the CIA destroyed evidence that its post 9/11 interrogations of terror suspects may have amounted to torture.
None of those cases ignited the partisan rancor associated with the so-called “investigation of the investigators,” especially after the stakes grew last month when it was widely reported that Durham and his hand-picked, inner circle of Connecticut colleagues have criminal authority. That means they can force recalcitrant witnesses to appear before a grand jury and, ultimately, bring charges for perjury, obstruction or substantive crimes — just as Special Counsel Robert Mueller did when he was appointed in May 2017 to take over the collusion investigation.
Political interest in Durham had been limited mostly to figuring out who he is. That changed when it became clear he can demand that appointees of former President Barack Obama explain why they were justified in what Barr has called “spying” on the Trump campaign.
“These reports, if true, raise profound new concerns that the Department of Justice under AG Barr has lost its independence and become a vehicle for President Trump’s political revenge,” U.S House Democrats and impeachment investigators Jerrold Nadler and Adam Schiff said. “If the Department of Justice may be used as a tool of political retribution, or to help the president with a political narrative for the next election, the rule of law will suffer new and irreparable damage.”
Analyzing allied intelligence
Durham and his team — including former assistant U.S. Attorney Nora Dannehy and retired FBI agent John Eckenrode, both of Connecticut — have had remarkable success keeping most of what they are doing secret.
It was Barr who disclosed that Durham has conferred with European governments to learn what friendly intelligence services channeled to their U.S. counterparts about Russia and the Trump campaign. Some governments, including the Baltic states and Ukraine, were early opponents of a Trump candidacy because of his criticism of the NATO alliance and support for Russia.
Durham has been asked to decide — if such intelligence was a basis for the collusion investigation — whether it was obtained and used appropriately under U.S. laws that govern foreign intelligence collection and restrict spying on Americans.
“A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries … played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the
Trump campaign during the 2016 election,” Barr spokesman Kerri Kupec said a month ago.
While traveling to Italy together, Barr and Durham pressed for information about Joseph Mifsud, the mysterious Maltese academic who started the collusion narrative when, in the spring of 2016, he told George Papadopoulos, a junior Trump Campaign volunteer, that the Russians had “dirt” on then candidate Hillary Clinton. After a $30 million twoyear investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller said in his exhaustive report that his investigators had been unable to effectively question Mifsud because Papadopoulos had been criminally uncooperative.
Mifsud’s telephones
Mueller described Mifsud as a Russian agent. Papadopoulos, who served 12 days in jail for lying to Mueller’s investigators, believes Mifsud is an agent for Western governments. Mifsud, in press accounts, denies he is anyone’s agent and further denies having told Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Clinton.
A cryptic motion filed recently in federal court in Washington suggests Durham may have come back from Italy with something that could help sort out the contradiction.
Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the former Trump national security adviser fighting a conviction for lying to Mueller, baldly asserts in the motion that Durham obtained “data and meta data” contained on two BlackBerry cellphones used by Mifsud. Flynn’s prosecutors won’t confirm or deny the claim and said they will only discuss it in a private meeting with the judge.
Flynn’s Dallas-based lawyer, Sidney Powell, said she is convinced Durham has the information.
“I believe Mr. Durham has the phones,” Powell said. “That’s as much as I can say.”
If she is right, the phones and data could show who is right about Mifsud. Was he a Russian agent, as Trump critics believe. Or was he, as Trump allies contend, a pawn in a “deep state” conspiracy to create the appearance of collusion.
The Horowitz report
Durham has been working in tandem with Inspector General Horowitz, whose focus has been whether the FBI complied with the law when it applied for and was granted a warrant from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to spy on Carter Page. Page is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and short-lived Trump campaign volunteer who worked as an energy consultant and met frequently with Russians.
Trump supporters complain that the agents who applied for the warrant knew, or should have known, that their application contained inaccurate or unverified material. Some material was provided by former British spy Christopher Steele, a one-time FBI informant working for the Democratic National Committee.
Mueller dismissed the warrant’s central contention when he concluded there is nothing to “establish that Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.” What’s more, while Page was a target of Russian recruitment, he also had worked in the past with the bureau to locate and prosecute illegal Russian agents.
There were reports last week that Horowitz found an irregularity in the way an FBI lawyer prepared documents for the warrant application. Since the inspector general does not have criminal authority, Durham, who does, will review the Horowitz report for violations and possible prosecution.
The Horowitz report is scheduled for release Dec. 9.
What’s become public about Durham’s work so far shows he is trying to find out whether the intelligence services of an incumbent administration tried to tip the scales against a candidate trying to replace it.
Blumenthal vs. ‘Bull’ Durham
Even home state Sen. Richard Blumenthal cooled on Durham after the news that he is running a criminal investigation. When he was confirmed as U.S. attorney in February, Blumenthal called Durham “a fierce, fair prosecutor.” More recently, Blumenthal worried that Durham is sullying his reputation.
“It is another very professional public servant tasked with a very unprofessional and unbecoming job,” Blumenthal said. “This investigation of the investigators is a politically motivated distraction. And it threatens to degrade the career professionals who devote their lives — like John Durham — to law enforcement.”
Meanwhile, Trump supporters on the other side of the argument have portrayed Durham as a heroic character ferreting out political misbehavior — by Democrats. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, tweeted that Durham may end up charging former Vice President Joseph Biden.
The president himself, in a wild, hourlong interview with Fox News on Nov. 22, predicted “Bull Durham” will uncover the biggest political scandal in U.S. history.
“You have ‘Bull Durham,’ who’s supposed to be the toughest — I never met him, never spoke to him. But he is supposed to be the smartest and best,” Trump said.
Colleagues say Durham vacuums up news and political gossip and certainly knows what is being said about him. They said he just as certainly doesn’t care.
“John is in a difficult situation,” said Stanley A. Twardy, one of the former Connecticut U.S. attorneys for whom Durham worked. “No matter what he does, he’s going to be criticized by one side or the other. But the great thing about John is he’s not going to care about that. That’s his personality. Basically, he sees things as either right or wrong. And he is going to call it the way he sees it.”
“Let me just put it this way,” Twardy said. “I have people calling me all the time. Trump Forevers and Never Trumpers. They’re both looking for the answer to the same question: Is John someone who is going to provide an honest answer? And I tell them I have every confidence in him.”
Whitey Bulger and Boston
This is not the first time Durham been encircled by hostile forces.
In 1999, then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno sent him to Boston to lead a task force and sort through the law enforcement disaster created by gangster James “Whitey” Bulger. Sensational leaks from a long-running criminal investigation in Boston suggested that Bulger murdered his way to the top of New England organized crime by buying off law enforcement. Durham and his team were supposed to find out what happened and lock up the guilty parties.
Durham wears his regard for law enforcement on his sleeve — in particular for the FBI agents with whom he has worked for decades. When he got to Boston, it was clear that the FBI and just about every other state, federal and local law enforcement agency were embroiled in a take-noprisoners power struggle.
Federal drug agents and the Massachusetts state police accused the FBI of being in Bulger’s pocket. It followed, those accusers said, that FBI fan Durham was part of a federal cover-up. The FBI was aligned against the state police. Because Bulger’s criminal enterprise reached across the country, Oklahoma and Florida law enforcement were in the mix and with their own alliances. The agencies were not only refusing to cooperate, they were undercutting one another.
Durham’s chief target turned out to be one of the most decorated agents in FBI history, John Connolly. Connolly was said to be so good at recruiting informants that the bureau had him teaching other agents.
Durham persuaded a jury that Connolly had been recruited himself — by Bulger. Bulger’s uncanny success at dodging prosecution was revealed to have been the result of tips he was fed by Connolly — tips Bulger used to murder informants and defeat investigations.
After Connolly was convicted of racketeering and obstruction of justice, no one could accuse Durham of folding under pressure.
Freeing an innocent man
The Bulger case revealed a side of Durham that few noticed.
While sifting through the dark past of another corrupt Boston agent — H. Paul Rico — Durham uncovered FBI reports proving that Rico conspired with organized crime figures in the 1960s to frame five men for a murder they didn’t commit. Durham’s investigation showed that Rico made a deal with one of the real killers, who he was trying to recruit as an informant.
The frame-up was one of the worst kept secrets in law enforcement. Yet, for three decades, no one in authority did anything about it. In fact, Connolly, a Rico protege, worked behind the scenes to keep the five innocent men in prison.
Durham had the exculpating FBI reports delivered to two prisoners who were still alive and the families of three who had died in prison of old age. The two survivors and three estates sued the department and collected $100 million.
Durham personally delivered a set of reports to Victor Garo, the attorney representing Joseph Salvati, an innocent truck driver and family man. Of the five, only Salvati was entirely innocent. Four were innocent of the murder but affiliated with organized crime. Salvati was dropped into the murder because he offended one of Rico’s informants. His children were babies when he went to prison. He was a grandfather when he got out.
Garo had been trying decades to exonerate Salvati. He said Durham called him late on Christmas Eve and said he had found some materials that could be of interest to Salvati. Could he drop them off?
“I will never forget John Durham,” Garo said.
No leaks
Durham has rarely spoken in public of his work in Boston, or anywhere else. Colleagues trade stories about his reticence. Investigators said he is obsessed by leaks.
During the corruption investigation that sent three-term Republican Gov. John G. Rowland to prison, FBI agents said Durham — a Republican — threatened to polygraph investigators whenever he suspected a leak.
“I’ve never been able to find out what he is working on — even when he worked for me,” said Supreme Court Justice Richard Palmer, a former U.S. attorney, half seriously.
Former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who appointed Durham to investigate the destruction of videotapes of post-9/ 11 CIA waterboarding, said speculation about Durham’s work is baseless because the speculators have no idea what they are talking about.
“I can’t believe that any of them actually know what he is doing,” Mukasey said. “I wouldn’t dream of asking him. And If I did, I’m sure he wouldn’t answer.”
Durham may have spoken in public about his work just once. The occasion was a speech at an unlikely venue: the University of St. Joseph in West Hartford. His audience was a couple of dozen nuns, administrators, guests, students and three reporters.
Leonard Boyle, now Durham’s first assistant U.S. attorney, introduced him and pointed out the reporters.
“This may be their only chance to hear John speak about his work, other than in a courtroom,” Boyle said. “He’s notoriously shy about speaking about himself.”
At the time of the speech, Durham already was working in Washington, investigating, coincidentally, leaks, a colleague said. Perhaps not coincidentally, he explained to the St. Joseph audience why he has become so consumed by plugging them:
“One thing that I try to bear in mind, and try to encourage in new young prosecutors, particularly those who are making their bones or cutting their teeth, is an awareness of the incredible power that is wielded by law enforcement, and perhaps federal law enforcement in particular. Issuing a subpoena can destroy somebody’s reputation. It can damage their business, hurt their families. It is an awesome power that we have, that should only be used in appropriate instances,” Durham said.
“It is as important for the system as for prosecutors to protect the secrecy of proceedings, not because we want them to be secret, but because we’re not always right.”