Attorney General William Barr told Republicans not to expect more indictments or a significant report from U.S. Attorney John Durham before the 2020 election.
The news that Durham is working methodically but slowly in his the Russia investigation, reported by Axios on Friday, is sure to disappoint allies of President Trump who fear that the federal prosecutor’s findings could get buried if Joe Biden becomes president.
“This is the nightmare scenario. Essentially, the year and a half of arguably the number one issue for the Republican base is virtually meaningless if this doesn’t happen before the election,” a Republican congressional aide told the outlet.
The reporting matches what Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo reported in late September. “I’m being told by sources it is now too close to the election and could be viewed as politically motivated,” Bartiromo said on her Fox News program, Sunday Morning Futures. “However, I can confirm Durham’s investigation is significant, and it is expanding.”
The Justice Department did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
Durham was appointed by Barr a year and a half ago to review the conduct of federal intelligence and law enforcement associated with the investigation into ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
“I still have tremendous faith in the attorney general,” Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told Bartiromo on Friday. “I think Attorney General Barr has a high level of character, and I’ve never met John Durham, but everybody says that he is a high-level character guy too. So I know as frustrating as it is for you, Maria, for all of your viewers, you can imagine how frustrating it would be for myself and all the Republicans who have been lambasted over this and called every name under the sun, brought up under a fake ethics investigation. It’s really hard for us, but I think even harder for the president of the United States when there was an attempted coup on his presidency.”
Politico reported on Thursday that Trump’s tweetstorm and the recent flurry of declassifications “don’t appear to be coincidences” and cited “sources on and off the Hill” who claimed Durham “is not expected to release information related to the probe before Election Day.” The outlet reported, “Senate Republicans running similar investigations were told of the intention within the last week — and it’s why they’ve been stepping up their releases of declassified documents.”
An Associated Press report on Thursday said that Trump is “increasingly at odds” with Barr over the status of Durham’s inquiry. Trump “increasingly critical about a lack of arrests” while Barr is “frustrated by Trump’s public pronouncements about the case” and has “privately expressed frustration over the president’s public pronouncements,” the report said.
The attorney general is “broadly in agreement with Trump on the need to investigate the origins of the Russia probe,” according to a person “familiar” with his thinking, but has “often bemoaned Trump’s lack of understanding about the intricacies of the legal system and the steps that need to be taken to complete an investigation,” the AP report added. A “friend of Barr’s” said there is “tension” between Trump and Barr on the matter, and while the attorney general “believes deeply in the importance of the Durham investigation and in the president’s authority to exercise control over federal agencies, he will not tolerate interference in specific investigations.”
That friend of Barr’s also reportedly said that Justice Department officials “were eager for Durham’s work to be completed while Trump is still in office for fear the investigation would be shuttered in a possible Biden administration.”
The Durham inquiry has been subject to intense scrutiny, although little is publicly known about what the Connecticut prosecutor’s team is examining beyond the occasional media report. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe announced on Wednesday that his office provided almost 1,000 pages of materials to the Justice Department in response to a document request by Durham.
A top prosecutor from Durham’s team, Nora Dannehy, abruptly resigned in mid-September, after which Democrats demanded the Justice Department’s independent watchdog to open an “emergency investigation” into whether Barr, Durham, and others are taking steps to influence the 2020 election improperly.
Still, Trump has put pressure on Barr to produce results.
“Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes, the greatest political crime in the history of our country, then we’re going to get little satisfaction unless I win,” Trump said on Fox Business on Thursday, adding, “Bill Barr’s going to go down either as the greatest Attorney General in the history of the country or he’s going to go down as a very sad, sad situation. I mean, I’ll be honest with you, he’s got all the information he needs. They want to get more, more, more, they keep getting more. I said, ‘You don’t need any more. You’ve got more stuff than anybody’s ever had.’ Now, you know, with Durham, I don’t know what happened to Durham, but we’re going to find out what happened to Durham, but he’s got so much stuff.”
Barr has publicly expressed frustration with Trump’s public pronouncements in the past, saying in February that Trump’s comments about the sentencing of Roger Stone, a longtime adviser and friend to Trump, made it “impossible for me to do my job.”
“I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,” Barr said at the time. “I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody … whether it’s Congress, a newspaper editorial board, or the president… I’m gonna do what I think is right. … I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.”
Durham’s investigation has produced one criminal case. Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty in August to a false statements charge for fraudulently altering a CIA email during the process of the bureau seeking a court’s permission to renew an order to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser.
