Article by Ryan Saavedra in The Daily Wire
U.S. Attorney John Durham Will Not Release Report On Russia Criminal Investigation Before Election, Report Says
U.S. Attorney John Durham reportedly will not release a report on the findings of his criminal investigation into the origins of the FBI’s counterintelligence into the Trump campaign in 2016.
“Attorney General Bill Barr has begun telling top Republicans that the Justice Department’s sweeping review into the origins of the Russia investigation will not be released before the election,” Axios reported. “Barr has made clear that they should not expect any further indictments or a comprehensive report before Nov. 3.”
Barr is reportedly telling officials that Durham is taking the investigation “extremely seriously” and is focused on winning criminal prosecutions.
“According to one of the sources briefed on the conversations Barr said Durham is working in a deliberate and calculated fashion, and they need to be patient,” Axios continued. “The general sense of the talks, the source says, is that Durham is not preoccupied with completing his probe by a certain deadline for political purposes.”
President Donald Trump has increasingly become frustrated with the pace of the investigation, which has been hampered by the pandemic.
“Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes — the greatest political crime in the history of our country — then we’ll get little satisfaction, unless I win,” Trump told Fox News in an interview. “Because I won’t forget it. But these people should be indicted. These are people who spied on my campaign. And we have everything. And I say, Bill, we’ve got plenty, you don’t need anymore. We’ve got so much.”
Democrat Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL) tried to pressure Barr during a congressional hearing in July to commit to not releasing any results from the Durham investigation before the election, which Barr refused to do.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified documents last week that showed that the U.S. government had “obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”
The declassified documents said that on September 7, 2016, “U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding ‘U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.'”
The intelligence was so serious that former CIA Director John Brennan “subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the ‘alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.'”
This report has been updated to include additional background information.
