“Raw, Unanalyzed, and Uncorroborated”: Durham Releases Report on the Russian Collusion Investigation

I have columns out today on the release of the long-awaited report from John Durham on the Russian collusion investigation, including on the new Messenger site. However, I wanted to post the report itself below. As expected, it is a scathing indictment of the Clinton campaign, the FBI, and the media for one of the most successful political hit jobs in history.

The report shreds the FBI and Justice Department for abandoning standards and ignoring the lack of evidence to launch and prolong the investigation. The report notes that the treatment of the unsubstantiated allegations in the Steele Dossier, funded by the Clinton Campaign, was “markedly different” from the government’s level of interest in Clinton’s campaign when it faced such allegations.

Durham’s report confirmed that the FBI ignored intelligence it received from “a trusted foreign source pointing to a Clinton campaign plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin so as to divert attention from her own concerns relating to her use of a private email server.”

Durham noted that “The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign.”

The FBI issued a statement on Monday:

“The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time. Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented. This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.”

“Missteps” is hardly how one would describe a false narrative promulgated by a campaign and perpetuated by the FBI or the derailing of a duly elected president for three years in a faux conspiracy. The statement is ample evidence of a lack of remorse by the FBI like a habitual offender giving a shrug in his court “allocution” before a judge.

As for the media, they are already minimizing and spinning their own key role in this disinformation campaign. Yesterday, as I went to the studio, I listened to CBS/WTOP cover the report in 20 words before a lengthy report on Martha Stewart making the cover of Sports Illustrated. Most viewers and readers will be given few details of this report by a media that spent three years pushing this false narrative. It is part of a long pattern that raises troubling questions of a de facto state media in this country.

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