Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn warned President-elect Joe Biden that firing special counsel John Durham, who was appointed to continue investigating the origins of the Russia inquiry in the next administration, would be a risky move.
“I think there would be a big price to pay, and I think they would be very ill-advised to do that,” Cornyn told the Washington Examiner. “By and large, I think the vice president’s not personally implicated. This is, of course, the Obama administration and those Justice Department officials.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who spearheaded the Democratic impeachment effort against President Trump, recommended that Biden’s attorney general should end Durham’s inquiry into the Trump-Russia investigators.
“The appointment is not consistent with the language of the statute that he’s relying on and can be rescinded, I think, by the next attorney general. I would presume the next attorney general will look to see if there is any merit to the work that John Durham is doing and make a rational decision about whether that should continue at any level,” he said during an appearance Tuesday on MSNBC.
Cornyn, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, lauded the appointment of Durham, which occurred on Oct. 19 — two weeks before Election Day.
“I think that’s a smart idea. I was worried [about] that because of the election results that the Durham investigation would just be swept under the rug. But I think it’s really important for us to get to the bottom of this, and I think he’s an impartial individual who’s handled very sensitive investigations in the past, and I think basically giving him the same status now as Robert Mueller will protect him from political firings,” Cornyn said.
He added, “And we’ll make sure that we get to the bottom of what happened. And we deal with it. I think, you know, that I hate the fact that both the FBI and the Department of Justice have been tarnished, as a result of the politicalization of those institutions, when it came to the Trump campaign and then the Trump presidency.”
