Rep. Jerry Nadler questioned Special Counsel John Durham on his 4-year-long investigation into 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia and the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into that alleged collusion.
Durham issued a 300-page report on his findings in May, part of which concluded that the FBI should not have launched a full investigation into the matter, as the Bureau lacked sufficient evidence to do so. Instead, a preliminary investigation was appropriate.
[NOTE: MAGA insiders like Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz all claimed Special Counsel Durham‘s conclusion revealed an anti-Trump bias at the FBI, a notion disputed by lawmakers like Rep. Dan Goldman below.]
Rep. Dan Goldman demolishes a lot of the spin surrounding the Durham report in short order pic.twitter.com/WUl5oDJIwi
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 23, 2023
In his questioning, Nadler asserts that Durham’s report created fodder for the aforementioned MAGA claims, while otherwise striking out in efforts to pin nefarious intent or criminally biased conduct on the FBI.
Nadler: You lost all the cases you brought to trial, correct?
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 21, 2023
Durham: Correct. pic.twitter.com/Qd7St7zj5z
In a span of a minute, as Nadler grills Durham about the length of the investigation, the paucity of charges and the dearth of convictions (one) it resulted in, Durham repeatedly responds “correct.”
“You lost all the cases you brought to trial, correct?” Nadler asks. “Correct,” Durham replies.
In the video’s span, Durham responds that Nadler’s assertions are “correct” four times.
Nadler says that from his reading, the Durham Report “did not make any specific concrete recommendations to improve DOJ or FBI policies or procedures” — implying that a lack of recommended solutions implies a lack of procedural problems to be solved.
Nadler, it should be noted, was against Attorney General Bill Barr‘s Durham appointment from the beginning, issuing a 2020 statement that read, in part:
“In the waning days of the Trump Administration, the Attorney General has once again used the powers of his office to settle old scores for the President. This order is one more desperate attempt to feed President Trump’s fixation on events that have been investigated over and over again, including by the Department’s independent Inspector General. It is a distraction to divert attention from the President’s failure to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and his resounding defeat in the presidential election.”
