The FBI did not interview the people connected to the information it used to open a full investigation of the Trump campaign during the heat of the 2016 election, according to the report by special counsel John Durham.
The bureau rushed to open the initial investigation based on unvetted intelligence from Australia, according to Durham, who has spent nearly three years investigating the origins of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign.
The FBI’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 report states. That includes the inquiry into the Clinton Foundation, which was virtually frozen in the leadup to Election Day in 2016.
The much-anticipated report (pdf), a copy of which The Epoch Times obtained ahead of its public release, also delves into other controversial aspects of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI codename for the investigation of the Trump campaign.
“[T]he objective facts show that the FBI’s handling of important aspects of the Crossfire Hurricane matter were seriously deficient,” the report states.
The special counsel further impugned the bureau’s error-ridden applications to surveil Trump campaign associate Carter Page. FBI agents applied to renew the secret-court warrants on Page despite admitting, both at the time and subsequently, 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 special counsel “does not recommend any wholesale changes in the guidelines and policies that the Department and the FBI now have in place.”
“The answer is not the creation of new rules but a renewed fidelity to the old,” the report says.
“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 of ‘Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity’ are not 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 did not speak to the people who provided the information used for opening the investigation, Durham found.
The bureau also failed to examine its own databases, check with other intelligence agencies, interview essential witnesses, and did not use “any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluation raw intelligence,” the report states.
While Durham does not attribute a motive to the shoddy work, he points to “pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump” from Peter Strzok, the person in charge of the investigation.
Had the FBI followed its own rules, the bureau’s agents would have discovered that neither the bureau, the CIA, or the FBI had any evidence to show that Donald Trump or anyone in his campaign had been in contact with any Russian intelligence officials at any time during the campaign, the report states.
Durham highlights that the handling 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. In one example, 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.
