Durham Report Does Not Support Trump's 'Russia Hoax' Claims

Lawyer Stephen Humphreys finds many problems with Special Counsel John Durham's report on the FBI's 'Crossfire Hurricane' investigation into Trump campaign collusion with Russian intelligence.

Trump said it would expose the crime of the century. When Special Counsel John Durham released his report on 16 May, hard-core Trump supporters hailed it as proof that the Trump campaign Russian collusion was a hoax, and the Russia investigation was a witch hunt. They went so far as to demand the prosecution of everyone from Hillary Clinton to Christopher Steele, including the FBI agents who opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump campaign collusion with Russian intelligence.

Yet Durham followed all those threads for four years, failed in the attempted prosecution of two minor figures, and recommended no additional criminal charges in his report.

That is why the hearing called by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan for this Wednesday, 21 June,  poses a critical test for the Durham Report and its ultimate impact on public opinion. The question remains whether he and his MAGA cohorts will, in the absence of any criminal conspiracy identified by Durham, be able to present any substance to match the projected histrionics.

Meanwhile, the legislative hearing will provide a format in which the opposition party will be able to poke holes in Durham’s main thesis, that—despite the felony convictions of six Trump campaign officials, and the indictment of 25 Russian military intelligence agents—the Crossfire Hurricane investigation of Trump-Russia collusion never should have been opened.

This hearing will no doubt shape the contest for public opinion – over Trump’s espionage indictment, continuing criminal investigations in Washington and Atlanta, opposition to Putin’s war of aggression, and the Republican attempt to create a counter-narrative of Biden corruption in Ukraine – leading into the presidential election year 2024. The hearing will foreshadow a referendum on the pre-eminence of US national security as a priority for American voters, and the Republican party in particular.