John Durham to testify before Congress this week

John Durham will testify before Congress the week of June 19. After three years of investigation, the Trump-era special prosecutor concluded in mid-May that the investigation of possible collusion between Russia and Donald Trump during the 2016 elections suffered a “serious lack of analytical rigor” on the part of the FBI. The report added that both the agency and the Department of Justice (DOJ) failed to comply with its “mission of strict fidelity to the law.”

The 73-year-old lawyer will testify behind closed doors before two panels of the House of Representatives, namely the Intelligence Committee (chaired by Mike Turner (R-OH)) and the Judiciary Committee (chaired by Jim Jordan (R-OH)). He will stop by the former on Tuesday morning and the latter on Wednesday.

Turner was interviewed by CNN on Sunday and said they will ask Durham for specific recommendations on changes to investigative procedures. As the congressman added, although Durham’s report did not recommend any “wholesale changes in the guidelines and policies that the Department and the FBI now have in place to ensure proper conduct and accountability in how counterintelligence activities are carried out,” the former special prosecutor did agree to give his opinion on possible adjustments to be implemented.

“We’re pulling him into our committee to say, OK, now that we have seen that there were abuses, that this was wrong, and that there are problems with [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] itself, what are the recommendations that you think we should pursue? Here are some of the things we’re looking at. What do you think of these?” the legislator added, who first represented Ohio in the 10th and now the 3rd Congressional District in the Lower House since 2003.

According to Durham’s investigation into the alleged collusion with Russia, there was a “significant reliance” on leads provided by the former president’s political opponents, while the DOJ never questioned the evidence or the motivations of those who provided it.

The prosecutor even highlighted the significant differences between how the FBI handled the investigation against Donald Trump compared to other sensitive investigations, such as those involving Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 election rival.

Republicans used the case to point out the politicization of the Justice Department against its political enemies.