Durham Defends Report, Reputation During Testimony

Special counsel John Durham on Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee defended his report on the investigation into the FBI's probe of former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, as well as his professional reputation, amid praise for his work from the committee's Republicans and criticism from Democrats.

"My concern about my reputation is with the people who I respect, and my family, and my Lord, and I'm perfectly comfortable with my reputation with them, sir," Durham said at one point while responding to Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., who had accused him of conducting a biased investigation.

Durham also insisted that there was no political interference with his work, including from Attorney General Merrick Garland.

He told committee members that the Biden appointee did not reach out to discuss the probe or otherwise hinder or meddle with his investigation.

Cohen had wrapped up his questioning with Durham by telling him that at one time he had a good reputation, but now, after being brought on to investigate the FBI's behavior, his reputation would be "damaged as everybody's reputation who gets involved with Donald Trump is damaged. He's damaged goods."

In other talking points, though, when Cohen asked Durham about Trump's attacks on former Attorney General William Barr, the special counsel said that in his experience, the former president's slurs such as Barr being a "gutless pig" and a "RINO" are not correct.

Meanwhile, under questioning by Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., Durham told members of the committee that he has had "any number" of FBI agents "who have come to me and apologized for the manner in which that investigation [Crossfire Hurricane] was undertaken. These are good, hard-working, decent people."

He also said during an exchange with Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, that one of the supervisory special agents in the investigation became "emotional" when shown a memorandum about efforts from Hillary Clinton's campaign to promote the idea that Trump was being supported by Russia.

Then-FBI Director James Comey had not shared the information with the agents, he said.

"We interviewed the first supervisor, the operational person," said Durham. "We showed him the intelligence information. He indicated that he'd never seen it before. He immediately became emotional. Got up and left the room with his lawyer. Spent some time there before he came back."

Durham had also written in his report that senior FBI personnel had displayed a "serious lack of analytical rigor," noted Johnson, adding that he'd also referred to the impact of "confirmation bias" against Trump.

"This wasn't innocent, unintentional, human tendency, was it? It was overt political bias, was it not?" said Johnson, mentioning former FBI agent Peter Strzok.

Durham acknowledged to Johnson that it will "take time to rebuild the public's confidence in the institution," including with reforms that have been made in the time since 2016, but added that those changes will "guard to some extent against a repeat of what happened in Crossfire Hurricane."

Meanwhile, Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., told Durham that his report "reads like a defense of the Trump campaign and an attack on Hillary Clinton because that's exactly what it is."

"Donald Trump wanted you to investigate the investigators to show the deep state conspiracy, but you never found one," Nadler said. "Instead, you gave him and his MAGA Republicans the next best thing, someone else to blame for Donald Trump's problems. That's why you're here today because the chairman [Jim Jordan, R-Ohio] and his colleagues need someone, anyone, to deflect from the mounting evidence of Trump's misconduct."

But under questioning from Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C., it was noted that the FBI launched its investigation against Trump within three days of receiving evidence, without interviewing any of the essential witnesses.

"In my view, based on our investigation, there was not a legitimate basis to open a probe," Durham said, also agreeing that the biases among the investigators involved "our human tendency to accept things that we already think are true and to reject anything else."

And in the case of the Russia investigation there were "any number of significant red flags that were raised, but were simply ignored if there's evidence that was inconsistent with the narrative. They didn't pay attention to it," said Durham. "They didn't explore it. They didn't take the logical investigative steps that should have been taken."

Durham on Tuesday spoke behind closed doors to members of the House Intelligence Committee, saying he believes reforms are needed for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the FBI, even though his report did not contain recommendations, Committee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, told the media, reports CNN.

"It was very clear that Durham believes that there was misconduct, and if you've all been reading his report, he lays out what those instances of misconduct are," Turner said. "He gave us the impression that some of the misconduct is individualized. That there were bad people doing bad things. But then some of it is systemic. And some of it is where we need to change it so that here's higher reviews, higher requirements for this to ever happen again."