The top FBI officials who oversaw the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and left the bureau years ago have long maintained that they had a duty to investigate allegations that Russia, a strategic US adversary, was seeking to garner influence with Trump, who had no experience in government. The Durham report was more scathing, finding that the FBI moved quickly on a vague tip about potential contacts between a Trump campaign aide and Russian officials in July 2016 based on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated evidence” in a “departure from how it approached” the Clinton campaign.īut Durham’s inquiry failed to uncover any blockbuster revelations suggesting the bureau targeted Trump out of political motivations, and the report at times came across as a defense of his lengthy investigation.ĭurham said the FBI was more cautious of allegations of foreign influence when it came to the Clinton campaign, and did not pursue evidence in two cases of foreign governments trying to gain influence with Clinton while providing defensive briefings, unlike with the Trump campaign ĭurham said the FBI was overly reliant on investigative tips from Trump’s political opponents and did not rigorously analyze the information it received, which extended the investigation and led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Trump ĭurham said the FBI decided to move ahead with Crossfire Hurricane despite a lack of information from the intelligence community that corroborated the hypothesis on which it was predicated and FBI agents ignored information that exonerated key people in the case ĭurham suggested that Crossfire Hurricane was “triggered” by the so-called Steele dossier, when it was in fact based on a tip from an Australian diplomat in London that a Trump campaign aide appeared to have advance knowledge about Russia releasing damaging information on Clinton. Much of the criticism of the FBI in the roughly 300-page report was already known when the justice department inspector general issued its own report, which raised similar concerns but ultimately concluded that the FBI investigation into Trump was justified.

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