On May 12, 2023 Special Counsel John Durham submitted to the US Attorney General and Congress a 306 page final report [1] titled “Report on matters related to intelligence activities and investigations arising out of the 2016 Presidential campaigns“, he report was released to the public on May 15, 2023, with no indictments or arrests.  [2, 3, 8, 9]

After four years, Durham declared the July 2016 origins of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane, Russia collusion probe [colloquially known as Russiagate] to be “flawed” and based on no verified intelligence or evidence. [4, 10, 11, 12, 13]

“Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Durham wrote

The report concluded:

“…that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report.”

“In other words, they didn’t follow the law”  states Rep. Jim Jordan

Durham specifically faulted the FBI for relying on evidence from the campaign of 2016 Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, including the now-discredited Steele dossier [which she paid for].  He stated the “investigation also revealed that senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received…” Particularly with “significant reliance on investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents“.  Even when they “learned of significant and potentially contrary intelligence.”

He highlighted “a dual system of justice, noting the FBI never opened a counterintelligence probe of Clinton’s campaign, despite receiving intelligence she had authorized a dirty trick to paint Trump as a stooge for Russian President Vladimir Putin to impact the outcome of the [2016] election”.

In April 2018 the Washington Post and The New York Times jointly shared the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the Intel-Community-fuelled claims that Trump conspired with Russia to win the 2016 Presidency.   Former President Trump has repeatedly asked Pulitzer to revoke the awards in light of Durham’s incremental revelations.  In July 2022 the Pulitzer board rejected the request, which in turn Trump sued them for defamation. [5]

  • July 2016 the FBI opened Crossfire Hurricane investigation
  • In March 2019, special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of investigators found no evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia, thus concluding the Mueller investigation, with 34 other indictments.
  • In May 2019 Durham began work as lead investigator into the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation by the FBI—Crossfire Hurricane. [6, 7]
  • In October 2020 John Durham was appointed as Special Counsel by Attorney General William Barr – to ensure the investigation could continue following the 2020 Presidential election

The media-fuelled weight of these now “debunked“,”flawed” and “biased” allegations, started by the intelligence community in July 2016, during Trump’s Presidential campaign.  Influencing the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election?