John Durham, the former special counsel appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the origins of the Russia probe, “undercuts” the Trump administration’s case against former FBI Director James Comey in interviews, according to ABC News.
Durham met with federal prosecutors investigating Comey in August and told them that he was unable to uncover evidence that would support false statements or obstruction charges against the former FBI director during his four-year-long investigation.
Furthermore, lawyers at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., who had investigated Comey for years, and prosecutors in Virginia reached the same conclusion as Durham.
Yet, Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, who has no prosecutorial experience, disregarded the findings of all those prosecutors and presented the case to the grand jury just days after taking office. The grand jury returned an indictment on two of the three charges, making a false statement and obstruction of a congressional proceeding.
The charges stem from testimony Comey gave on Sept. 30, 2020, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Asked by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about testimony he gave in 2017 asserting that he did not authorize leaking an intelligence report regarding the FBI’s investigations into Trump or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Comey said, “I stand by the testimony.”
ABC noted that Durham’s team extensively investigated whether Comey’s testimony that he was unaware of the intelligence report and that the allegation ‘doesn’t ring any bells’ was intentionally misleading. Durham did not believe he could support false statement charges for Comey’s purported lack of memory, and that evidence never fully established that Comey had seen the intelligence report.
