Forget “where is Hunter?” Former President Donald Trump wants to know the whereabouts of special counsel John Durham.
“Where’s John Durham? Is he a living, breathing human being? Will there ever be a Durham report?” the 45th president said in a brief statement sent out by his office on Friday.
The politically charged investigation has been run by Durham since the spring of 2019, which, by one account, means it has lasted longer than special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia inquiry. The federal prosecutor was tasked with investigating the origins and conduct of the FBI’s inquiry into ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
While Trump and his allies claim the businessman-turned-politician was unfairly targeted by the Obama administration, Democrats and some national security veterans have dismissed Durham’s investigation as being tainted by politics.
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Under the Biden administration, Durham recently left his role as the U.S. attorney in Connecticut but was allowed to continue the investigation following his appointment as special counsel by former Attorney General William Barr.
Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, declined to promise during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he would protect Durham’s investigation or make his eventual report public. However, Garland said he didn’t currently have any reason to think it wasn’t the right move to keep Durham from continuing his work.
Much to the chagrin of Trump and his allies, Durham has so far secured only one guilty plea.
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FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who has since left the bureau, admitted to Durham in the summer that he falsified a document during the bureau’s efforts to renew its Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authority to wiretap former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, editing a CIA email in 2017 to state that Page was “not a source.” Page denied any wrongdoing and was never charged with a crime. Clinesmith was sentenced to one year of probation and no prison time.
In a podcast interview last week with Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe, Trump asserted how he believed the Justice Department “didn’t even have to appoint Durham.”
