Attorney General William Barr said he expects there to be “developments” in U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation into the Russia investigation this summer even as he hinted it would continue through the November election.
Barr, who appointed the Connecticut federal prosecutor last year after Trump gave the attorney general full declassification authority to look into the Trump-Russia saga, made the comments during an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News, pointing to what he saw as the “collapse” of the Russian collusion narrative.
“It’s been stunning that all we’ve gotten from the mainstream media is sort of bovine silence in the face of the complete collapse of the so-called Russiagate scandal, which they did all they could to sensationalize and drive, and it’s like not even a ‘whoops.’ They’re just on to the next false scandal,” Barr said. “In terms of the future of Durham’s investigation, he’s pressing ahead as hard as he can, and I expect that we will have some developments, hopefully before the end of the summer, but as I’ve said, his investigation will continue. It’s not going to stop because of the election. What happens after the election may depend on who wins the election.”
The FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, code-named Crossfire Hurricane, began in the summer of 2016. It was later wrapped into Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, which concluded Russia interfered in 2016 in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish” any criminal conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign.
Barr blamed the coronavirus pandemic for a “slowing down” of Durham’s ability to interview witnesses. He declined to say whether there has been any grand jury activity, but noted, “It is a fact that there have not been grand juries in virtually all districts for a long period of time.”
Barr said Durham “has been working where he can on other matters that aren’t affected by the pandemic.”
“It is the closest we have come to an organized effort to push a president out of office” in a long time, he said, adding, “I’m not reaching a judgment as to what the motivations there were.”
Barr previously confirmed Durham’s investigation includes a deep dive into the 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian interference during 2016’s election, and Durham is reportedly looking into whether former CIA Director John Brennan took politicized actions to pressure the rest of the intelligence community to match his conclusions about Putin’s motivations.
Durham is also examining whether the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was properly predicated, even after the Department of Justice inspector general said it was justified.
The FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation is said to have begun after Australian diplomat Alexander Downer met with Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos at London’s Kensington Wine Rooms in May 2016, where Papadopoulos said Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton. He later said he heard this information from Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud. Two months later, after WikiLeaks published emails stolen from Democratic officials, the Australians informed the United States about what Papadopoulos told Downer.
Barr declined to say whether Mifsud had ever worked with Western intelligence but noted Durham was scrutinizing the matter. The “official version of what happened” about a “comment in a London wine bar” would be “a very slender reed to get law enforcement and intelligence agencies involved in investigating the campaign of one’s political opponent,” he said.
The attorney general also noted that in January and March 2017, FBI agents spoke with the dossier’s primary subsource and “the dossier pretty much collapsed at that point — and yet they continued to use it as a basis for pursuing this counterintelligence investigation.” Barr declined to say whether FBI Director James Comey and FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, both of whom were fired by the Trump administration, were aware of the flaws in British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December report criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page in 2016 and 2017 and for the bureau’s reliance on Steele’s dossier. Steele worked at the behest of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, funded by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm.
“I understand why it is important to try to determine whether there was any activity before July, before the Papadopoulos wine bar conversation,” Barr said. “And so people are looking at that. It’s significant also that the dossier was initiated before July.”
Recently declassified footnotes showed the FBI was aware that Steele’s dossier may have been compromised by Russian disinformation and still used it.
Barr also touched on the “unmasking” controversy, which Durham is scrutinizing, as well as classified leaks like those in early 2017 that centered on retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s calls with Russia’s ambassador. Barr picked U.S. Attorney John Bash of Texas to assist Durham with the unmasking inquiry back in May.
“It’s unusual for an outgoing administration, high-level officials, to be unmasking very much in the days they’re preparing to leave office,” and so it “makes you wonder what they were doing,” he said.
Bartiromo pointed to a Senate Homeland Security Committee report on the high volume of stories based on classified leaks from the early days of the Trump administration.
“Leaking national defense information, unauthorized disclosure of that information is a felony,” Barr said, adding, “We have a lot of leak investigations underway.”
He said leaks were tough to suss out, especially when multiple people have access to the classified information, but “if we get the evidence that’s necessary, we’ll prosecute them.”
