FBI’s Trump investigation failed massively, Durham report shows.

The FBI’s Rushed Investigation of the Trump Campaign

The FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election was based on unvetted intelligence from Australia, according to a report by special counsel John Durham. The report reveals that the FBI failed to interview the people connected to the information used to open a full investigation of the Trump campaign. Durham spent nearly three years investigating the origins of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign and found that the bureau’s rush to open the investigation and the shoddy evidence used as the premise for the probe were a departure from how the department treated other politically sensitive investigations in 2016.

The FBI’s Serious Deficiencies

The report states that “the objective facts show that the FBI’s handling of important aspects of the Crossfire Hurricane matter were seriously deficient.” The FBI’s error-ridden applications to surveil Trump campaign associate Carter Page were further impugned by Durham. The FBI agents applied to renew the secret-court warrants on Page despite admitting that they had no probable cause to do so. Durham concludes that the FBI failed to uphold its “important mission of strict fidelity to the law.”

The Need for Renewed Fidelity

The report does not recommend any wholesale changes in the guidelines and policies that the Department and the FBI now have in place. Instead, it emphasizes the need for a renewed fidelity to the FBI’s guiding principles of “Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity.” The report states that “the promulgation of additional rules and regulations to be learned in yet more training sessions would likely prove to be a fruitless exercise if the FBI’s guiding principles aren’t engrained in the hearts and minds of those sworn to meet the FBI’s mission of ‘Protecting the American People and Upholding the Constitution of the United States.’”

The FBI’s Mishandling of the Trump Investigation

The FBI’s mishandling of the Trump investigation was a departure from the cautious approach the bureau took in handling matters related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump’s election opponent, the report found. The FBI and Justice Department restricted an inquiry into the Clinton Foundation so that little to no investigative activity could take place in the months leading up to the election. Durham highlights the distinct approach the FBI took to intelligence it received from a trusted foreign source indicating that the Clinton campaign planned to smear Trump by tying him to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Steele Dossier

The FBI couldn’t corroborate any of the claims in the infamous Steele dossier, according to Durham’s investigators. The dossier’s author, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, couldn’t corroborate any of the claims even when the FBI offered him $1 million to do so. The Clinton campaign paid for the creation and dissemination of the Steele dossier using a law firm as a cutout. The campaign and the Democratic National Committee agreed to pay federal fines last year for concealing the nature of the payments for the dossier.