Attorney General Pam Bondi this previous week directed federal prosecutors to launch a grand jury investigation into accusations that the Obama administration manufactured intelligence about Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Her order bears placing similarities to President Donald Trump’s first time period, when then-Attorney General Bill Barr alleged that “government power was used to spy on American citizens.” Barr tapped John Durham to steer what grew to become a four-year probe that faulted the FBI for quite a few actions launching and finishing up its investigation of Trump and Russia.
But Durham’s lengthy investigation didn’t result in any legal expenses — or allegations of vital wrongdoing — associated to the CIA and intelligence neighborhood’s function in concluding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and wished to assist Trump win.
In essence, Bondi is now asking her prosecutors to research a interval in American historical past that has been scrutinized and re-scrutinized for greater than eight years now. It’s the newest in a collection of prosecutorial strikes through which Trump’s Justice Department has been wielded to go after his perceived political opponents and enemies.
“John Durham was dead set on bringing criminal charges if he could. And he didn’t get anywhere near the type of charges or the type of players they’re talking about here,” mentioned Elie Honig, a senior NCS authorized analyst and former federal prosecutor.
“This is now the fifth bite at that same apple,” Honig mentioned. “If they want to go down this road again, I don’t see any reason to think they’re going to do any better unless they just completely manipulate the facts here.”
Bondi’s new probe was sparked by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who has declassified and launched a number of units of paperwork in current weeks she claims have been proof of a “seditious conspiracy,” alleging that Obama officers must be prosecuted for manufacturing intelligence that Russia interfered in the election.
“I don’t know what excuse there is for those who supposedly investigated this previously, whether it was Durham or others, that they were not able to put together the dots and ultimately show the truth to the American people,” Gabbard informed Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo final month when requested why different investigations like Durham’s didn’t discover proof of the allegations she was making.
“I really cannot fathom — there is no rationale or logical explanation for why they failed,” she continued. “The only logical conclusion that I can draw in this, Maria, is what you’re implying here directly, is that there was direct intent to cover up the truth about what occurred and who was responsible, and the broad network of how this seditious conspiracy was concocted and who exactly was responsible for carrying it out.”
While Durham’s investigation centered totally on FBI missteps that had been documented by the Justice Department inspector common, Gabbard’s allegations at the moment are directed at the CIA and intelligence neighborhood.
Durham discovered that the intelligence neighborhood’s evaluation of Russia’s election meddling — which detailed a social media affect marketing campaign and cyber operations directed by President Vladimir Putin — was one of a number of investigations into Moscow’s actions in 2016 that had contributed “to our understanding of Russian election interference efforts.”
“There was a real Russian threat,” Durham testified in 2023 when requested about the January 2017 evaluation from the CIA and intelligence neighborhood detailing Russia’s election interference that’s the focus of Gabbard’s renewed scrutiny.
But at the White House podium final month, Gabbard alleged that Obama administration officers knowingly pushed a false narrative about Russia’s election interference, claiming “the evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment.”
In her allegations, Gabbard has conflated and misrepresented what the intelligence neighborhood truly concluded in its evaluation.
For instance, Gabbard cited numerous intelligence assessments from 2016 that acknowledged the Russians didn’t alter the election outcomes via cyberattacks geared toward infiltrating voting techniques. But the intelligence neighborhood by no means discovered any votes have been altered in the first place.
She additionally declassified and released a Republican House Intelligence Committee report that alleged the intelligence neighborhood’s evaluation that Putin most popular Trump over Hillary Clinton was thinly sourced and ignored contradictory proof. But not like Gabbard, the House report didn’t argue that the intelligence was “manufactured” or that Russian election interference didn’t happen.
Democrats have accused Gabbard and Trump of utilizing the Russia investigation paperwork to attempt to distract from the furor surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein information. Gabbard’s allegations, they argue, are rebutted by the investigations carried out by Durham, particular counsel Robert Mueller, the Justice Department inspector common and the Senate Intelligence Committee, which all concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
“After years of investigation, John Durham confirmed what we already knew: There was no grand conspiracy to frame Donald Trump,” mentioned Sen. Mark Warner, the prime Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “What we do know, from the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report and multiple independent investigations, is that Russia interfered in our elections in order to help Trump win.”
Durham’s report was highly critical of the FBI’s determination to research Trump and Russia, concluding that the company didn’t discover “any actual evidence of collusion” between the two and did not take primary investigative steps earlier than launching a yearslong probe. He indicted three individuals all through his four-year investigation, resulting in one guilty plea of a low-level FBI lawyer and two acquittals.
His report centered on the FBI’s actions far more than the CIA and the intelligence neighborhood. But there are quite a few stories from 2019 and 2020 exhibiting each Durham and Barr sought to query CIA officers about their findings on Russian election interference in 2016.
With the new grand jury investigation, it’s nonetheless not but clear what allegations particularly Bondi needs prosecutors to probe and even who will likely be main the investigation. The lawyer common has not spoken publicly about the grand jury investigation. Last month, she introduced a strike power to “investigate potential next legal steps which might stem from DNI Gabbard’s disclosures.”
Gabbard isn’t the solely Trump official who has launched paperwork and made legal referrals associated to Russia and the 2016 election.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe additionally released a review of the intelligence neighborhood’s 2017 evaluation final month that criticized the conclusion that Putin sought to assist Trump.
Ratcliffe’s evaluate mentioned the conclusion on Putin was reached “through an atypical & corrupt process,” although it discovered “the overall assessment was deemed defensible.”
Ratcliffe referred former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey to the Justice Department, which the division can be now investigating, NCS reported.
Emails about ‘Clinton-plan’ on Trump and Russia seem like faked
Trump’s allies have made a lot hay over the launch final month of a redacted classified “annex” from Durham’s report they are saying exhibits proof the Clinton marketing campaign plotted to tie Trump to Russia and push the FBI to research the matter.
The annex was declassified by Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel at the request of Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, who launched the doc.
Patel posted on social media that he discovered the annex whereas uncovering “burn bags/room filled with hidden Russia Gate files.” Grassley mentioned in a assertion that the annex “exposes a reported Hillary Clinton campaign plan to falsely tie President Donald Trump to Russia.”
But the emails cited by Trump’s allies seem like faked, in accordance with Durham’s report.
The newly launched annex focuses partially on emails allegedly from Leonard Benardo at George Soros’ Open Society Foundations that the FBI decided at the time weren’t credible. Durham’s personal “best assessment” of the emails cited in the memos is that they have been a composite of emails stolen by Russian intelligence, which means they weren’t real.
“The office’s best assessment is that the July 25 and July 27 emails that purport to be from Benardo were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of the U.S.-based think tanks, including the Open Society Foundations, the Carnegie Endowment and others,” the annex says.
“In short,” reads a partially redacted sentence from the annex, Durham’s workplace couldn’t “determine definitely whether the purported Clinton campaign plan (redacted section) was entirely genuine, partially true, a composite pulled from multiple sources, exaggerated in certain respects, or fabricated in its entirety.”
One electronic mail, allegedly from Benardo, mentioned how “HRC approved” an “idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering with the U.S. elections.”
“That should distract people from her own missing email,” the alleged electronic mail continues, doubtless in reference to Clinton’s use of a non-public server throughout her time as the secretary of state.
A separate electronic mail allegedly despatched from Benardo in the summer time of 2016 claims that a overseas coverage adviser for Clinton at the time mentioned “it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later the F.B.I. will put more oil into the fire.”
Durham’s report notes that a portion of the alleged Benardo emails used verbatim traces from a wholly totally different electronic mail despatched by a cybersecurity skilled at a DC-based suppose tank.
The memos additionally embrace two totally different variations of Benardo’s alleged electronic mail.
Despite figuring out that the emails have been composites and due to this fact not genuine, Durham criticized the FBI for too shortly coming to the identical conclusion — and for not then making use of the identical skepticism to the file about Trump and Russia.
The FBI, Durham writes in the annex, dismissed the data “as not credible without any investigative steps actually having been taken to either corroborate or disprove the allegations.”