Special Counsel John Durham is on the hot seat today on Capitol Hill, at least when the Democrats are asking the questions. (The seat is a little cooler when Republicans take the mic.)
Durham’s 4-year-long investigation into the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation and the Durham Report it produced unleashed its own political “crossfire” upon its May release, with MAGA GOP adherents claiming the report vindicated former President Donald Trump and his “hoax” and “witch hunt” claims about his 2016 campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia, while Democrats largely characterized the report as a “nothing burger,” with Durham notably having lost all the cases he brought to trial during his investigation.
Lawyer and Congressman — and former House Intelligence Committee Chair — Adam Schiff, who recently dodged efforts by House Republicans to censure him over his Russia-Trump collusion allegations, ripped into Durham during the hearings.
Schiff’s line of inquiry got Special Counsel Durham to admit under oath that a meeting the Trump team — including his own son — arranged at Trump Tower in order to vet potentially damaging information about his political opponent Hillary Clinton was “not well-advised.”
Right here says so much! Trump’s son was meeting with Russians to get information on HRC but it wasn’t good enough.
— Skyleigh Heinen (@Sky_Lee_1) June 21, 2023
–@RepAdamSchiff schools Durham🔥 pic.twitter.com/dvrrLZs3Q0
Schiff asked Durham: “Are you really trying to diminish the significance of what happened here? And the secret meeting that the President’s son set up in Trump Tower to receive that incriminating information, trying to diminish the significance of that, Mr. Durham?”
Durham replied: “I’m not trying to diminish it at all, but I think the more complete story is they met and it was a ruse and they didn’t talk about Mrs. Clinton.”
Schiff: “And you think it’s insignificant that he had a secret meeting with the Russian delegation for the purpose of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton, and the only disappointment expressed at that meeting was that the dirt they got wasn’t better? You don’t think that’s significant?”
Durham: “I don’t think that that was a well-advised thing to do.”
Not “well-advised” activities aren’t crimes, of course, and Durham, in his report, concluded that the Trump Tower meeting wasn’t even enough to warrant the FBI’s investigation. Schiff evidently believes otherwise.
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