Congress Grills John Durham Over His Report On FBI's Handling of Trump-Russia Probe | US News LIVE

you have a minute for a quick call Durham what was the purpose of this call Mr Durham were you discussing the impeachment inquiry I never had any conversation with attorney general Barr about the impeachment inquiry Mr Durham this is an awful lot of direct interactions with the attorney general for impose supposedly independent Council prosecuted during these messages uh that sound to you like appropriate interactions do they sound like appropriate interactions between an attorney general and a prosecutor investigating the administration sure before uh his point in special counsel I worked for the attorney general in the United States but you subsequently became special counsel I know that right subsequently became not only did you interact with the attorney general frequently you also regularly engaged with one of his top deputies set to charm what was your relationship with Mr deuteron and assistant United States Attorney in the eastern district of New York he works with one of my sons who have friends and he at the time was working in the office of Attorney General it seems that rather than having anything independent investigation there was a lot of interaction between the Attorney General lady which shows that generous with the time the Attorney General was actively directing your work the gentle lady yields back I think this is amazing Mr Durham you had eight text messages with the Attorney General of the United States and 11 months time period that's that's amazing I can't believe that Mr chairman parliamentary inquiry whose time is that that you were speaking that was that time that was yield to me earlier that I yielded back I think that's a selection Mr chairman that is that is absolutely inappropriate I was just pointing out something I think is so Mr chairman that is not appropriate and we will go to Mr Klein for five minutes the gentleman from George or from Virginia excuse me is recognized thank you uh Mr Durham your your report is not just sobering as you stated it's it's outrageous and deeply troubling can you confirm these several main points that it that it found the FBI did not have an adequate basis on which to launch Crossfire hurricane correct that's correct the FBI failed to examine all available exculpatory evidence correct correct FBI leadership continued the investigation even when case agents were unable to verify the evidence correct that's correct the FBI did not interview key Witnesses in crossfire hurricane correct correct and individuals within the FBI abused their Authority Under the foreign intelligence surveillance act correct correct the FBI immediately opened Crossfire hurricane as a full counterintelligence investigation what other options could the FBI have taken rather than immediately opening such an investigation attorney general Edward Levy essentially created the guidelines in this area these three divisions of Assessments preliminary and then full although there were different names at the time that has evolved over time and become more particular in this instance the information that they had received from Papadopoulos about a suggestion of a suggestion and not anything about emails but just the suggestion of a suggestion was sufficient and would have been would have required the FBI to take a look at what is this about the opening is an assessment and then you would analytically go try to collect intelligence that either supports or refutes or explains that information that's the whole purpose of it you assess it and then you can move to a preliminary investigation and if the evidence spares it out and you go to a full investigation where you have all the tools available including the most intrusive physical surveillance and electronic surveillance of U.S citizens and here they just immediately want to open it is a full investigation without ever having talked to the Australians or gathered other evidence right so investigators relied on misstatements by the confidential human Source ignored exculpatory statements made by Papadopoulos in submitting the face application to surveil Carter page correct that's correct is it true that an FBI employee fabricated this evidence can you expand on that that fabrication and the Reliance to support that uh fishing application in connection with the one of the extensions the final extension renewal of the five Zone Carter page one of the agents who had come on board wanted to be certain that there was information that was their information so whether our Carter page had been a source of information at the CIA and pressed Kevin kleinsmith in the general counsel's office of the FBI on that point kleinsmith got a hold of people at another government agency Intelligence Agency on the issue and that person indicated not indicated said that yes in the FBI parlance uh Carter page was the source and put that in writing when Klein Smith talked to the agent who was saying we want to be sure on this is was he or was he not a source Klein Smith said no he said he's not he said did we get that in writing Klein Smith said yes and they said well I want to see it and then Klein Smith altered the other government agency document to reflect this to say that page was not a source when he in fact was a source that's the gist of it what did the investigators mean when they said they hope the Returns on the Carter page Vice application would quote self-corroborate and that is another Troublesome thing maybe agent was they're saying well if we can get on um surveillance electronic surveillance of page then we'll find out essentially whether we really do have probable cause or not he would self-corroborate in that sense our investigators supposed to corroborate information before or after it's included in a fisa application yeah um you have to have that before you intrude in the Liberties of American citizens in fact the FBI is required to follow its Woods procedures at which the FBI adopted to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in fice applications correct that's correct and did Fisk did the Fisk ever criticize the FBI's handling of the page fisa application yes and what were some of those concerns that they raised well ultimately the fisca issued an order a memorandum indicating that I had the information and it was disclosed in the investigation done by Inspector General Horowitz a very thorough job and a good job in a well-written report had they known that at least the second and third renewal applications would not have established probable cause and I think the bureau I'm sorry the Department of Justice acknowledges that as well if the Fisk had all of the information that I think is included in this report I think it's highly doubtful that there would have ever been an application submitted and if it was submitted that the Fisk would have ever granted that order thank you yield back yields back the gentleman from Tennessee is recognized thank you Mr chair Mr Durham you were appointed by whom um who recommended you and appointed you as the special counsel no as a U.S attorney as U.S attorney um as president Trump at the time with two Democratic senators from Connecticut supporting the nomination Mr Trump appointed you believe Mr Trump has pretty good judgment on people and their abilities and their character I'm not going to characterize Mr Trump or my thoughts about Mr Trump Mr Barr appointed you special counsel is that correct that's correct Mr Trump has called Mr barrer gutless Pig a coward and a rhino which of those is correct which isn't in my experience none of those are correct so Mr Trump isn't that good of a expert on character and judging people in your opinion he isn't because he's he's none of those he's not a gutless pig but Trump says he is that's outside the scope of my report also outside the scope you report apparently also outside of the scope of your report or was was apparently the meeting at Trump Tower between the Russians and the Trump boys where they talked about allegedly adoptions but we know is really about sanctions how was that outside of your report yeah I'm not I'm sorry I didn't quite follow the Trump Tower attorney Uh Russian attorney came to the Trump and Donald Trump Jr was just wonderful wonderful we love it we love it uh Russian decisions to interact with the Trump campaign and influence the actions of the campaign allegedly for adoption law but really for sanctions relief the FBI came up with that did they not I'm a meeting took place at Trump Towers on June 9th the lures I understand it was that there was information derogatory information on Clinton that was going to be provided they met and it's I believe in a hipsy report the hipsy report fully laid that out that the discussion then at Trump Towers was about adoption not about anything relating to Mrs Clinton it's totally it was totally about sanctions you're trying to get rid of the magnitsky law adoptions is a ruse should you not have gone it looked into that and seen what the Russians were wanting in return for that because that's the biggest thing Putin wanted at the time was to get Trump to relieve his people of magnitsky sanctions and I think that um director Mueller investigated that and I believe one of your house committees um explored that that was outside the scope of what we were looking at and it's and it was outside the scope of your authority to look at Columbia and and manafort meeting and exchanging polling data was that I'm sorry I'm not following remember manafort the crook that managed the campaign for nothing but got tons of money from the from different Russian people over the years that y'all pardoned your Mr bar later got helped him with the commutation or pardon I think pardon manafort I know who Miss manafort is yeah he met with kalimnik and they discussed polling data you don't know about that no the Mr Clinton met with a lot of people including people he met with manafort and discussed polling data do you not know about that I'm aware of that all right why did you then not think it was a good idea for you to look into it and see if the FBI wasn't correct and that there was collusion a connection between Russia and the Trump campaign to elect Trump my assignment was to look at the conduct of the intelligence Community agencies not to conduct a separate investigation that was done by the house or that's done by the senator was done by director Mueller you don't think that if there was if the intelligence communities the FBI others came up with this information and did good work that that should be part of your balance report yeah well I'm not I'm not I'm not following your question I apologize well yeah I tried to follow your report Donald Trump Jr would have called it a a nothing Burger you got no convictions you got nothing it was all set up to hurt the Mueller report which was correct and was redacted to hurt the bidens and to help Trump and you were a part of it you have a good reputation you had a good reputation that's why the two Democrats supported you but the longer you hold on to Mr Barr and this report that Mr Barr gave you a special counsel your reputation will be damaged as everybody's reputation who gets involved with Donald Trump is damaged he's damaged goods there's no good dealing with him because you will end up on the bottom of a pyre I yield back the balance of my time sure we presume the gentleman's undecided on how he feels about the former president yeah gentlemen the witness can respond yeah my concern about my reputation is with the people who I respect and my family and my Lord and I'm perfectly comfortable with my reputation with them sir well said God bless you um the um the the the chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin uh Mr Fitzgerald Mr Durham uh thank you for being here today on October 3rd 2016 the FBI met with Christopher Steele who confessed to relying heavily on a Russian national living in Washington D.C as a sub source that sub Source was later identified as Igor denchenko steel not only used danchenko to create the dossier but according to your report Steele was unable to corroborate any of the substantial allegations made in the dossier is that correct that's correct even after the FBI offered steel a million dollars if somehow he could actually follow through and and underscore some of those uh specific items is that correct that's correct so the FBI interviewed danchenko and Steele's subsource the steel sub source for three days from January 24th through January 26 of 17. however according to your report dancheco could not provide any evidence corroborating allegations contained in the dossier is that correct that's a fact and yet the FBI paid danchenko 220 thousand dollars during his time as a confidential human source is that correct that's correct and did the FBI propose making continued future payments to Dan changel totaling more than three hundred thousand dollars that's correct the enchantical becomes a confidential human source that enlists his own subsource Charles Dolan as was brought up earlier who was a Democrat operative and had previously served as an advisor to Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign is that is that your understanding is that correct that's correct did danchenko ever disclose his relationship with Charles Dolan to the FBI that you're aware of he did not during the interviews that were conducted in January subsequently he was specifically asked in an interview with his then Handler you know Charles Dolan you listen to the recording he hesitates for some awkward period of time and I said yes I know who Dolan is so he acknowledged knowing Mr Dolan do you think it had anything to do with he was simply worried that disclosing a Democrat operative as a substores might jeopardize the whole payroll deal that the FBI had set up with them and we lay these facts out as we do other facts in the report and leave it to others through to all the reasonable conclusions or inferences from those facts very good of a hundred of the hundreds of individuals who the FBI interviewed through the course of Crossfire hurricane and Miller's special Council investigation um this came up earlier was Charles Dolan ever interviewed by the FBI it was not do you have any insight as to why the FBI would not interview him or Overlook such a high-profile person in this whole investigation that's something or a mystery going back to October 3rd according to the alad the assistant legal ad test chief of the bureau when he first oh I'm sorry they're going back to July 5th when he first met with Steele um Steele had indicated to him at the time that HC was aware of what he still was doing when the bureau went back to interview Steele on October 3rd about matters relating to Crossfire hurricane Steel in fact had provided the bureau with Dolan's name as somebody who might have information relating to Trump but he's never interviewed um so yeah I'm not I don't know why they never interviewed Trump I'm sorry why they didn't interview Mr Mr Dolan but they didn't um the explanation that was given to the um intelligence analyst who's referred to in the report essentially was that that would be outside the scope of their mission outside their role very good you note in your report on page 168 that one of the analysts of the Miller team was told quote to cease all research and Analysis related to Dolan unquote this was the same analyst who according to your footnote prepared a timeline in the event she were later interviewed about her role on the Miller special counsel investigation is that correct that's correct Igor donchenko had also relied on other sub sources namely Olga galkina and Sergey Millen when the FBI interviewed those two sub sources were either of them able to verify the information in the steel dossier well speaking first to million we interviewed Milian as well he's outside the country he claims to fear for his safety and whatnot but he adamantly denied ever talking to denchenko or providing any information akin to what was in the steel reporting in fact he's a supporter of President Trump which made it seem highly unlikely that he would be providing derogatory information to somebody he had never met or spoken to so that says as to uh Milian with respect to his uh galkina Ms galkina was somebody Who provided some information that enchenko provided some information to Dolan they give us a cheer him out of time gentlemen gentleman yields back the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia Thank you Mr chairman special counsel Durham in March of 2019 before releasing the Mueller report to the public attorney general Barr released a statement mischaracterizing its findings and conclusions and shortly thereafter attorney general Barr announced that he was investigating the FBI for investigating Putin's interference in the 2016 presidential election and then in April or May of 2019 attorney general Barr appointed you to lead that investigation isn't that correct he did appoint me to leave the investigation yes sir and then in October of 2020 attorney general Barr appointed you as an independent special counsel so that you could continue investigating the origins of the Russia Russia Russia investigation once Trump was out of office correct I support I was appointed special counsel in October yes and by that time your investigation had already cost the American taxpayers over six and a half million dollars isn't that correct um at that point probably not no well at this point how much has it cost as I understand the figure having looked at it it's around six and a half million dollars and and after three and a half years of investigation and six and a half million dollars of taxpayer money spent your investigation led to the indictment of only three individuals correct that's correct well it's indictment and contrary to the fervent prayers of some on this panel uh former FBI director Jim Comey and former CIA director John Brennan were not among those three who were indicted isn't that correct that's correct and to the extreme disappointment of some on this panel your investigation failed to produce indictments against Hillary Clinton correct that's correct didn't indict Barack Obama that's correct didn't but indict Joe Biden that's correct couldn't even indict Hunter Biden we didn't investigate Mr Hunter Biden and of your three prosecutions one ended with a guilty plea to an unrelated uh uh unrelated to the origins of the FBI investigation and that individual received a probated sentence with no jail time correct parts of that are correct and the other two men you prosecuted went to trial on the charges uh charging they were accused of lying to the FBI and both were slam dunk acquitted isn't that correct they were acquitted and none of the individuals you prosecuted were ever charged with being part of a hoax or a fraud or a Witch Hunt or a politically motivated deep state conspiracy against Donald Trump isn't that correct I would not say that that's accurate you mean you did charge somebody with being a part of a hoax we charged Mr Sussman with having knowingly provided false information to the FBI regarding Alpha bank but he was acquitted though right after that wasn't your question well he was Mr Sussman was acquitted after you charged him correct grand jury he was found innocent by a jury of uh by a unanimous jury of 12. that's not true well what's true is the grand jury found probable cause to indict Mr Sussman a jury of his childhood has acquitted him though correct and a trial you're not you're not going to disagree on that are you uh Mr Durham I'm going to try to answer your question as well let me ask you this because in your report you uh related or alluded to allegations of misconduct against Mr Sussman and Mr danchenko as if those allegations had been proven have been proven true at trial when in fact both those individuals had been acquitted and your allegations disproven do you believe that it's ethical to State something as a fact in an official government report when the court system found that you could not prove those allegations well I think if you read the report you'd see that we talked about the results of the trial and we included all of the evidence that we had available unfortunately not all of which was admitted at trial well let me ask you about Mr Durham you closed your investigation after you failed to find that the FBI investigation into Putin's interference in the 2016 election was politically motivated and was a deep state conspiracy against ex-president Trump you are unable to prove that that was true that is not what I was investigating well but you did not find that that was true correct you found it to be false as a matter of fact if you if um that correct you have a chance to read the report well I did Mr chairman can we the time is expired because the gentleman will be allowed to answer the question someone can respond time to gentleman from George's expired the witness can respond saying if you if you read the report we lay the facts out in the report as to these matters I'm not here to talk about Mr Trump I'm not here to talk about deep state or whatever other characterizations you made this report is factual nobody's raised any issues as to whether it's factually inaccurate in any way people can draw their own conclusions based on those facts yep Mr Jim you've been at it an hour and a half here we can keep going if you can keep going uh just let us know when if and when you I'm fine whatever you're not recognize the gentleman from California Mr Isa Mr Durham uh each of us on the panel has a different background and a different uh idea of what's best to get out of this report and the work that you have done so Faithfully not just for the last four years but for your entire career so I'm going to start off by asking is it true that you have the Attorney General's exceptional service award decoration for your service that's true is it also true that you have the Attorney General's distinguished service award that's true and uh who awarded you that goes back in times attorney general Reno had no no 2012. oh I'm sorry in 2012. I'm trying to remember what award it was I don't frankly reply just for the record it's Eric Holder yeah um that was that was the CIA investigation that's right it's uh attorney general holder it was and uh you uh you had to deal with some of the most despicable people and and and do the things that we do sometimes when wrong has been done uh so I want to thank you for that it seems like for your entire career you've been a go-to for difficult situations uh uh not necessarily the standard I'm trying to rise quickly award but in fact you're a career investigator and uh I would imagine pretty closely that you've got your 82 percent overall but I want to talk about something that I'm not qualified to talk about but I can ask you are there what you would call unindicted co-conspirators in this in other words are there people at all levels who did things wrong who were not charged with crimes because of the limitation of the ability to bring charges against them for what they did even if it was wrong we brought charges where we thought in good faith that we could prove a case Beyond A Reasonable Doubt but evidence beyond that of course sure so in your experience as a career prosecutor when when people break the rules and it changes the outcome of something like launching an investigation without a predicate like the president the vice president the attorney general and a host of others FBI director knowing that this had been started with a false predicate knowing that Hillary Clinton's campaign with her approval in fact had authorized this not OP research but this weaponizing of a false claim when they did that they in fact changed the outcome whether criminal or not of many things including certainly some things in voters Minds isn't that correct I mean generally speaking there are lots of bad things that people do that aren't crimes um we can only charge those that aren't crying I appreciate that so when people are constantly making this point that somehow you didn't put enough people in jail you gave us 300 pages that give us a responsibility and as I said I I'm not going to try to pretend that I'm the smart lawyer up here at all or even a lawyer but I am somebody that understands organization oversight and transparency in your report you you do note the changes made and so on but unless we make changes in transparency to outside individuals who can be counted on to be Ombudsman to the process isn't it true that if the president the vice president the attorney general and a host of other top people at the FBI and Department of Justice choose in the future to push to make to make outcomes occur that would not occur according to their own printed rule rules that no rule per se is going to change that I think that's true as we say in the report ultimately what this comes down to is the Integrity of the people who are doing the job that they adhere into their oath or are they not adhering to their clothes are they following the law are they not following the law well in my 20 plus years on this side of the Deus what I've found is that people when the light of day is shed on them follow the rules much better than they aren't so for all of us up here I want to thank you for your contributions and your service hopefully I know you're going to gone into retirement but hopefully in the future as we begin looking at reforms that can be counted on and believed by the American people at reforms that create better transparency that reforms that do not allow fisa judges to be misled by people with an agenda that you'll be available to at least give us some of the guidance from your Decades of knowing how it's done right at the Department of Justice and Mr chairman I want to thank you for your Indulgence in so many people I will not take excess time I believe this Witnesses 300 plus Pages speaks extremely well for itself and I yield back gentleman yields back the gentleman from California is recognizing Mr Durham just so people remember what this is all about let me ask you the Mueller investigation revealed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in sweeping and systemic fashion correct that's correct and Russia did so through a social media campaign that favored Donald Trump and disparaged Hillary Clinton correct the report says yes and Mueller found that a Russian intelligence service hacked computers associated with the Clinton campaign and then released the stolen documents publicly is that right that report speaks for itself as well Mueller also reported that though he could not establish the crime of conspiracy Beyond a reasonable doubt he also said quote a statement that the investigation did not establish certain facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts and also appears in the report doesn't it it's the language of that effect yes in fact you cited that very statement in your own report did you not as a way of distinguishing between proof Beyond A Reasonable Doubt and evidence that falls short of proof Beyond A Reasonable Doubt correct as an illustration of this both Mueller and Congressional investigations found that Trump's campaign chairman Paul manafort was secretly meeting with an operative linked to Russian intelligence named Constantine kalimnik correct that's my understanding yes and that manafort while chairman of the Trump campaign gave that Russian intelligence operative the campaign's internal polling data correct that's what I've read in the news yes and that manafort provided this information to Russian intelligence while Russian intelligence was engaged in that social media campaign and the release is stolen documents to help the Trump campaign correct you may be getting Beyond uh depth of my knowledge but well let me say very simply while manafort the campaign chairman for Donald Trump was giving this Russian intelligence officer internal campaign polling data Russian intelligence was helping the Trump campaign weren't they I I don't I don't know that you really don't know those very basic facts of the investigation I know the general um facts yes do I know that particular fact myself no I mean I know that I've read that in the media anywhere uh Mr Durham at Mueller and Congressional investigations also revealed that Don Jr was informed that a Russian official was offering the Trump campaign quote very high level and sensitive information unquote that would be incriminating if Hillary Clinton was part of quote Russia and its government support of Mr Trump you aware of that sure people get phone calls all the time from individuals who claim to have information like that really the son of a presidential candidate gets calls all the time from before in government offering dirt on their important opponent is that what you're saying I don't think this is unique in your experience so you you have other instances of the Russian government offering dirt on a presidential candidate to the presidential candidate's son is that what you're saying would you repeat the question you said that it's not uncommon to get offers of help from a hostile foreign government a presidential campaign directed at the president's son you really stand by that Mr Durham saying that it that people can make phone calls um making uh claims all the time that you may have you're really trying to diminish the significance of what happened here and the secret meeting that the president said Sons set up and Trump Tower to receive that incriminating information you're trying to diminish the significance of that Mr Turner not trying to diminish it all but I think the more complete story is that they met and it was arusen they didn't talk about Mrs Clinton uh and and you think it's insignificant that he had a secret meeting with the Russian delegation for the purpose of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton and the only disappointment to express that meeting was that the dirt they got wasn't better you don't think that's significant I don't think that that was a well-advised thing to do oh oh not not well advised right well that's that's the understatement of the year so you think it's perfectly appropriate or or maybe just ill-advised for a presidential campaign to secretly meet with a Russian delegation to get dirt on their opponent you would merely say that's inadvisable yeah if you're asking me would I do it I hope I wouldn't do it but as it was not illegal it was it was stupid foolish ill-advised well it is illegal to conspire to get incriminating opposition research from a hostile government that is of financial value to a campaign wouldn't that violate campaign laws I don't know I don't know all those facts to be true well your report Mr Durham doesn't dispute anything Mueller found did it no our our object our aim was not to dispute director Marlow I have the greatest regard highest regard for director Mueller he's a patriot the only distinguishment between his investigation and yours is he refused to bring charges where he couldn't prove guilty on a reasonable doubt and you did I yield back gentleman yields back the gentleman from Colorado is recognized thank you Mr chairman Mr Durham I want to as a fellow Alum of doj I want to thank you for your service number one and number two welcome you to Congress it's a real pleasure to be I want to ask you some questions about uh fisa and some of your most recent experiences as the special counsel and and what your specific advice would be I guess I I am concerned with the conclusions in your report and I just want to have been mentioned several times here but uh in your opening statement you talk about lack of investigative discipline a failure to take logical investigative steps and bias it's appears to me that the lack of an investigative discipline and the failure to take logical investigative steps are a result of bias is that fair it's I think that that's fair when you look at what uh is involved here this is a presidential campaign um it's not a run-of-the-mill uh investigation this is um so highly sensitive it could affect the outcome of a presidential election and the future of the nation you would expect that the discipline that would have been followed would have been higher than ever and that didn't happen here there was sort of analytical rigor the discipline and how we investigate criminal matters that was just absent here in large measure yeah fair to say that there was a rush to judgment I'm sorry fair to say that there was a rush to judgment in other words the Judgment of uh proceeding with the investigation before following proper procedure has been alluded to here the information that they had received from the Australian diplomats not Australian intelligence or law enforcement and about Australian diplomats about something that was said at a bar within three days of that information having been received at FBI headquarters the deputy director of the FBI according to Mr strzok told him to immediately open that and it was opened as a full investigation on a weekend with Mr strzok not only writing the opening electronic communication opening memo but approving that memo as well and this is the same Mr strzok who we saw the text message from that had a clear bias regarding president Trump that's the same person yes and how long did director Comey serve in the FBI before he became director I'm not saying the permanent Justice I'm saying FBI right my knowledge he was not in the FBI prior to becoming director and he promoted the people Annie McKay Peter struck others to the position and headquarters and then dealt with them there is that fair he would have certainly had a role in the advancement of people in the upper management of the FBI yes my concern is that the the bias that has been demonstrated there whether it has been eradicated or dealt with could exist in any of these agencies and these agencies have access to very sensitive information information that we and Congress allow for counterterrorism counterintelligence activities and it really goes around the Constitution because it does not deal with U.S citizens and I'm talking about the fisa rules now uh have you heard of backdoor searches I've heard the term yes sir and it refers to the ability of an agency to look at a U.S Citizen's Communications because the communication was with a foreign individual and it was recorded because that foreign individual was being looked at is that fair that's fair and the uh if there was this bias in an agency like the FBI um that that we saw previously and they wanted to go after a U.S citizen they could use that technique to go after that Citizen and my question to you is how do we prevent that how do we in Congress take a look at fisa try to maintain the National Security interests but at the same time protect U.S citizens from a rogue agency a biased agency or agent I shouldn't say agency and condemn everyone but but individuals in the agency how do we protect American citizens from what could occur and let me give you another quick example uh going out and buying infamous Nation from private data sellers to to obtain information that you couldn't obtain with a search warrant because you don't have probable cause those techniques are all available under fisa what should we do you know that's clearly beyond my um uh my background and experience these are very complicated uh questions particularly when we know the adversaries are doing the same thing and you know what what do we do under those circumstances I think you've got a very tough job in figuring out how how do you balance the Liberties of the American people and protect the Liberties American people while at the same time protecting um the country and on the nation and the people of the United States um I don't feel qualified really to provide you with any um helpful information along those lines but I know that it is a serious issue it's a serious concern I thank you gentleman yields back uh before going to the general from California General lady from Texas says he in Wisconsin I think okay Mr chairman uh I asked unanimous consent to submit records from the Department of Justice reflecting meetings with the U.S attorney John Durham these records were in response to American oversight's requests for doj communications between the officers of the Attorney General and the deputy attorney general and the Durham or his first assistant Financial consent the places in the record of this hearing it's not objection so ordered this chairman of the unanimous California the chairman you and your colleagues have continually cited to Steve de Union's transcribed interviews using selected statements taken out of context I move for unanimous consent to enter the entire transcript into the record so the American public Can See For Itself exactly what he said yeah we will work on that yeah we'll work on that we don't want to we gotta we'll talk with the chairman we want to make that fully available Mr chairman you're connecting to a unanimously Senate request then to somebody Mr chairman I object okay so if I understand correctly Mr chairman you're happy to decide selected portions of the transcript out of context people you're not happy Mr chairman there's an objection Is there further action you don't want the American public to see this Mr Nice roll call vote please yeah there's no vote on that there's I just want to I just want to clarify for the gentleman uh we want to put the transcript out there's a couple we've got a little work to do on certain names that have to be redacted for for obvious reasons but um yeah we want to we definitely put the transcripts the minority to make sure that happens I want I want I thought it was an amazing interview by Mr Dan tuano the former head of the Washington field office we want that information out to the public and we'll make sure it happens can I suggest with chairman that you grant the request subject to redactions to protect personally private information without objection somewhere thank you very much gentleman from California is is you have accepted my submission I didn't hear that right away thank you gentleman from California is recognized Mr Durham uh many of my mega colleagues want you to be someone who you are not and to say something that you clearly won't and so I want to just start by thanking you for your many years of service to our country as a federal prosecutor I want to talk a little bit more about the independence of a special counsel and just clarify you did send multiple texts to the attorney general after you were appointed a special counsel did you ever text message with attorney general Garland once he took over as Attorney General no um turn General Garland and me communicate through the principal Deputy attorney general Mr wine uh weinsteiner did you ever travel overseas with attorney general Garland no with the attorney general but I didn't travel overseas with him and President Biden through the Attorney General could have had you removed fired is that right um I'm sure he could have and you stayed on I completed my Dharma special counsel was there anyone you wanted to indict that you were prohibited from indicting by attorney general Garland no so if you wanted to you could have indicted Hillary Clinton but you never asked is that right if I had the evidence um yeah he could have for sure if you wanted to indict President Biden you could have asked right yeah that was not part of our mission we weren't really looking at that but if you could have indicted director Comey you could have asked is that right and you didn't yeah the attorney general attorney general Garland had never asked me not to indict somebody great so I just want to get clear to my colleagues you had all the power in the world to indict anyone that you had evidence to indict and you were never blocked from doing it that's correct that's correct I also want to compare you to the last major special counsel investigation that we have you agree special counsel Mueller charged dozens of individuals and you indicted three is that correct indicted to and another a third pleaded guilty right and special counsel Mueller had dozens of convictions Summit trial but no defendant was outright acquitted is that right in the Mueller investigation outright acquitted across the board every charge acquitted right I don't believe there are any quills I'm not sure there were dozens of convictions there were dozens there yeah more than a dozen people who are indicted you were wise earlier to not weigh in on Donald Trump's character you are under oath after all um but did anything in your report prove false that Russians met with Trump's family during the campaign at Trump Tower after an offer of dirt on Hillary Clinton anything prove that that meeting didn't happen I don't have any evidence that that did not happen anything in your proof false that in the 2016 campaign Donald Trump tried and concealed from the public a real estate deal he was seeking in Moscow I don't know anything about that there's nothing in the report about it it's not something we investigated anything in your prove false that Donald Trump publicly asked Russia to hack Hillary's emails and then hours later they did my record if you're referring to um did you prove did Donald Trump not say at a press conference Russia if you're listening you should get Hillary's emails did you prove that he didn't say that yeah no we didn't okay didn't investigate did you prove false in the 16 campaign that Trump's campaign manager gave polling data to a spy for a Russian intelligence service we didn't investigate that anything in your report say that Donald Trump in 2016 acted the way that Americans would want a presidential candidate to act with regard to Russia I'm sorry could you repeat are you signing off on the way Donald Trump acted with Russia in 2016. yeah I report doesn't address that and you agree that Russia interfered in the 2016 election agree that there's some substantial evidence to show that thank you Mr my Maga colleagues want you to be someone you're not and they want you to say something you won't they want you to join the law firm of insurrection LLC which incidentally and probably appropriately is chaired by a guy who never passed the bar exam and you're wise not to do that you see my colleagues today they are making themselves footnotes and foot soldiers in the history books that will Chronicle Donald Trump's corruption and I yield my remaining time to Mr Schiff returning to your decision to speak out during the penalty of your investigation [Music] did you have staff on your team advise you against making statements during the Penance of your investigation they didn't advise me either way no any of your staff raise ethical concerns about your speaking out either in an interim report or after the Inspector General investigation any of you your staff raise ethical concerns when you're doing so not that I recall no it raised a technical concern no not that I'm aware of did they raise concerns with your speaking out during the penalty of the investigation Simon the gentleman has expired the witness can respond I'm sorry did any of your staff raise concerns about your speaking out during the pendency of your investigation in contrast to doj policy not that I recall thank you gentleman yields back generally from Florida is recognized morning Mr Durham just complete that answer Warren but I don't want to lay any blame at their part I made that decision to make a statement they they were not involved in it a friend of mine a um a very good lawyer an honest person why did she resign that's why we brought her on why did she resign the gentleman's time has expired that the gentleman answer the question if you'd like Mr chairman who's in charge here because it's not Mr Schiff I don't think it's it's it's uh the ladies time from Florida good morning Mr Durham good morning as a former Federal prosecutor I want to begin by telling you how much I appreciate your work that of your team and your presence here today and you may Begin by answering the prior question if you wish with respect to Ms Danny I have the greatest respect for her she's a friend of mine she's very well educated she's an honest person we had some disagreements on issues and I don't really have any comment uh beyond that I'm not going to discuss the internal management and decision making I'll tell you this that every agent and every lawyer who worked on this project had a full voice in the decisions that were going forward I made the final decisions thank you Mr Durham I'd like to focus on the department of Justice's procedures as to fisa Applications when that process is conducted appropriately to begin with so fisa surveillance application must include an affidavit from a federal law enforcement officer correct that's correct and that affidavit must demonstrate cause to believe that the target of the surveillance is an agent of a foreign power is that also right right if it relates to a U.S citizen it has to be that they're a knowing agent if it's a non-us person a knowing element is not required who's intended that that affidavit should rely upon reasonable reasonable trustworthy information is it not that's correct right and in some cases in including the case of Carter page those affidavits that information can include the use of information obtained from a confidential human Source correct that's correct and when information from a confidential human source is included would you agree that it's important that material related to the reliability or trustworthiness of that confidential human source is disclosed within the affidavit yes and I believe you testified here earlier today that in this case information in that Carter page application related to the reliability and credibility of the confidential human Source was not included in these in these applications is that right I think I believe that's correct would you tell us in your experience in your many years working with the Department why is it important that that type of information is included and disclosed to both Federal prosecutors and to the court there's um when when matters are submitted to the courts for a reason or to a judge that's to let an independent judicial officer uh weigh the question so whether probable cause exists or not in providing that information to Independent objective judicial officers judicial magistrates if there's confidential human Source information that's being provided it's important for the person the judge who's reviewing this to know what's the basis of the person's knowledge is it hearsay or do they have personal knowledge as an example and then whether or not there's some track record or basis to believe that the information would be credible coming from this person and of course at this stage of the proceeding the person who's the subject of the investigation has no idea that this application is even being made or considered or reviewed by the court in most cases so it's solely less rest with the government the responsibility to ensure that this power that the surveillance power that's being used is being done in a way that is appropriate and compliant with the law that's correct and you mentioned something earlier about that in this case agents immediately move to the most intrusive investigative means that were available referring of course to the interception of live communications correct that's correct in this instance the bureau almost immediately when they opened it as full investigations was the umbrella case um across our hurricane and then the four sub-files they immediately uh went to try to get visor coverage um on Papadopoulos which they weren't able to do and then Carter page and some of the techniques for law enforcement you know there is a lot of other things they can do to collect surveillance information short of this interception of communications like pull cameras pain registers trap and Trace trash polls correct are there many other things that ins in investigations are often utilized prior to taking this step of attempting to intercept live communications right those are typically building blocks for electronic surveillance So based on your testimony so far what we're hearing is that here a fisa application was pursued without disclosing some relevant information to prosecutors or the court without following standard procedural rules utilizing investigative techniques that that were the most intrusive without first exhausting other techniques and instead pursuing the most invasive method possible from the outside against Mr Page that's essentially correct yes now testimony that is identified during your investigation that if they were not addressed they would result in National Security risks and continued public lack of confidence in our institutions of justice that there were no overnight fixes but we needed accountability standards and consequences would you elaborate please witness can respond the National Security interests here include Liberties of the uh the American people one of the things that was most disturbing about the dossier the steel dossiers whether or not this is so at least some of it was Russian disinformation whether Igor denchenko who personally wrote that he was responsible for 80 percent of the intelligence and these in the dossier and 50 of the analysis whether or not Mr denchenko was the source of Russian disinformation if you don't run some of those things to ground it does affect the Liberties or potentially affects the Liberties of the American people and the National Security interests of this country thank you sir generally yields back the gentleman from California is recognized thank you Mr chairman before I begin my questioning I want to say that the house Judiciary Committee is responsible for helping to ensure the rule of law the chairman of this committee ignored a bipartisan Congressional subpoena the president sent by this chairman has damaged ability of congressional committees to get information from Witnesses and damaged the rule of law now Mr Durham thank you for being here voluntarily today in your report not only did their FBI have information as stated before that their Australians knew that Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos has suggested that the Russians were going to release Anonymous information damage to Hillary Clinton the FBI also knew and had information that the Democratic National Committee was hacked by the Russians and information was being released to the American public the fa also had information from various media reports that Trump had relations with different Russian businessmen and the FBI had information that Trump said quote Russia if you're listening I hope you're able to find a 30 000 emails there to missing the FBI had all the information prior to opening operation hurricane correct Crossfire hurricane is that right that's correct okay if the FBI had chosen to do so the multiple pieces of information they had would have allowed them to open a preliminary investigation is that right now report you say that the FBI certainly had an obligation to assess the information you know perhaps make it a preliminary investigation okay in fact it would have been a dereliction of Duty for the FBI to have just sat on their hands and done nothing with information that they had is that right yeah the FBI should not have ignored that information it's also true isn't it that the inspector General of Department Justice looked at this situation and concluded that not only did FBI have enough information to open a preliminary investigation the FBI had enough information to open a full investigation that was the conclusion of Inspector General correct my recollection is that the inspector General said it's a low bar and he thought that had been mad Inspector General didn't necessarily address um one so thank you I'd like to enter their inspector journalist report date of December 2019 enter the record Mr chairman without objection okay turns out the FBI was correct the deporting justice found that the Russians interfered in our elections in a quote sweeping and systematic manner a bipartisan U.S Senate report confirmed that the Russians interfered in the 2016 elections and that that interference benefited Donald Trump Paul manafort Trump's former campaign chairman also publicly admitted to giving internal Trump campaign data to the Russians and the U.S treasury Department found that this data which it said was quote sensitive information on polling campaign strategy was then passed to Russian intelligence services there is a phrase to describe the facts I just set forth It's called Russian collusion Mr chairman I'd like to enter both the treasury Department documents data April 2021 as well as the bipartisan Sun report intelligence dated August 2020. that objection okay now Mr Durham like to ask you the following simple yes or no questions Trump's former campaign chairman Paul manafort was convicted correct I'm sorry could you just repeat that Trump's former campaign chairman Paul manafort was convicted correct that's correct Trump's former foreign policy advisor to the campaign George Papadopoulos was convicted correct it's correct Transformer Deputy campaign manager Rick Gates was convicted correct Trump all right Mr Durham you can hold yourself out as an objective Department of Justice official or as a partisan hack and the more that you try to spend the facts and not answer my questions you sound like the latter so I'm just ask this simply Trump's former National Security advisor Michael Flynn was convicted correct that's correct Trump's longtime advisor Roger Stone was convicted correct I'm sorry missed the last time long time advisor Roger Stone was convicted correct correct in contrast to multiple Trump Associates were convicted you brought two cases jury trial based on this investigation and you lost both and so I don't actually know what we're doing here because the author of the Durham report concedes that the FBI had enough information to investigate and thank goodness the FBI did because multiple Trump Associates who committed crimes were held accountable and the best way to summarize what happened is thank you to the brave men and women of FBI for doing their jobs I yield back gentlemen's Tom's expiry yields back gentleman from California Mr McClintock is recognized for five minutes first of all Mr Durham I apologize for the personal attacks have been leveled upon you by uh sources on the other side of the aisle this is what they do this is how they are you so we've gotten used to it and I hope you will too at some point the central charge in the Russian collusion hoax was that Trump campaign operatives were in contact with Russian intelligence sources were Clinton campaign operatives in contact with Russian intelligence sources uh that's beyond the scope of our report I can only speak to the former and the formers there was no such evidence as we report in in the report there was was denchenko a Russian intelligence Source Mr denchenko had been investigated by the FBI for Espionage they closed the case when they mistakenly thought he had left the country um Mr danchenko um status and connection with that Espionage matter was never resolved by the Bureau of the bureau in fact never opened it and he was the source for for much of the Steele dossier he said that he was responsible for 80 percent of the intelligence in the dossier and who Commissioners who commissioned the Steele dossier the Steele dossier was done by Fusion GPS who's hired by Perkins who represented the Clinton campaign and so what what role did the Clinton campaign play in this hoax what I'm sorry did they what what role did the Clinton campaign play in this hoax um the Clinton campaign um funded the work opposition research that was done by Fusion GPS and GPS um paid Mr Steele for the dossier and who in the Clinton campaign approved that relationship um well we lay some of that out uh in the in the report I think it was um Mr Elias who is General Counsel to the campaign who um engaged the services of Fusion GPS Mr Jordan referenced the Clinton plan intelligence exactly what was the Clinton plan um based on Declassified documents in the in the public record there was Intelligence information that was received at virtually the same time that the information came from from the Australians I mean within a day or two that intelligence and included information that there was a purported plan um designed by um one of Mrs Clinton's foreign policy advisors uh to create a scandal tying Donald Trump uh to the Russians that's the essence of the intelligence as contained in the Declassified information did the president receive this intelligence um on August 3rd of 2016 uh then director Brennan had briefed the president vice president Director of National Intelligence the FBI the attorney general and others when you say the FBI you mean Mr Comey um he had on August 3rd it was conducted at the White House it was director Comey himself so Mr Coney knew about this President Obama knew about this Vice President Biden knew about this um but it wasn't provided to the agents on the case or provided to the secret fisa court is that correct that's correct why wasn't it no we can tell you what the facts are um and people can draw their own conclusions from that uh about the pop adopolis comments at the bar that we used as justification uh for for this whole thing what would the FBI have learned had it looked into this information honestly if before opening Crossfire hurricane they had checked their own files and communicated with other intelligence agencies um and the like they would have found that there was nothing at that time in their files that would corroborate the information the suggestion of a suggestion that the Russians might provide some kind of assistance there's nothing in their files that would corroborate that uh the steel dossier was entered in the Congressional Record was it true that's I'm sorry the steel dossier was it was entered into our Congressional Record was it true there is not a single substantive piece of information and the dossier that has ever been corroborated by the FBI or to my knowledge anyone else you mentioned the device a court to criticized the misleading and false information was used request the fisa warrants but did the fisa court hold anyone in contempt for that not to my knowledge did they apply any sanctions to anyone responsible for that um not to my knowledge did they even yell at anybody they they issued an appropriately harsh memo signed by what the expectation is um when a document is submitted to that court that it be uh truthful and accurate and complete um and that was the expectation is the expectation gentleman yields back here now recognize the general lady from Washington thank you Mr chairman Mr Durham thank you for being here today to speak with us about the report you produced looking at the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election your report took four years and over six and a half million dollars in taxpayer dollars to produce Mr Durham how many cases did you bring to trial during your time investigating the 2016 election I'm sorry just missed part of that because how many cases did you bring to trial two two and in how many of those two cases did the juries vote to convict neither one neither one neither jury voted to convict the gentleman that you prosecuted and in fact in one case the trial judge threw out one of your charges because the claim that you were charging as false was as he put it literally true Mr Durham I think you were given an impossible task by attorney general Bill Barr he asked you to figure out how to make Donald Trump's Spygate claims true but you couldn't do that because you quickly realized that the claims were false and so you set about as many Republicans on cable news do trying to find a way to blame Hillary Clinton for Donald Trump's woes Mr Durham do you know how many people special counsel Mueller indicted or obtained guilty pleas from indicted a Charged number of people I think it was 34 it was 34 people and three companies um do you know how many of those indictments of uh were of individuals who were acquitted in court I don't know that anybody was acquitted that's right the answer is none so I think the difference between your investigation and Mr muellers was that Mr Mueller actually found actual evidence of a crime we know that Russia did attempt to interfere in the 2016 election we know that Russia did hack into the DNC email server and Mr Mueller's prosecutions reflected that reality such as the case of 12 Russian Military Intelligence Officers who he charged with crimes related to the hacking and the leaking of leading Democrats emails in 2016. similarly Mr Mueller found repeated instances of trump campaign Associates lying when asked about their interactions with Russian interests and a result as a result of Mr Mueller's investigation George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October of 2017 to making false statements to the FBI Trump campaign aide Rick Gates pleaded guilty to one false statement's charge and one conspiracy charge Trump National Security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI and in November of 2019 Trump adviser Roger Stone was convicted on seven counts including lying to the house intelligence committee and tampering with a witness again Mr Mueller indicted or got guilty pleased from 34 people and three companies Mr Durham you're a career prosecutor correct that's correct when you started working as a state prosecutor in 1977 and you joined the justice department in 1982 yes or no prosecutors prioritize bringing cases to court that have a high likelihood of winning I would not say that that's the standard now so you don't think that to call an investigation successful you should at least reveal some new information most of your report Mr Durham is a rehashing of old news including process related concerns that the FBI had already addressed in fact that's why you said you were not recommending or recommending any further charges changes to FBI policies or procedures so at the very least I would think that you would need to win some of the cases on their merits but that's not what happened and that's not what Mega Republicans are looking for chairman Jordan seems to be looking for any excuse to discredit law enforcement and doj who are finally holding Donald Trump accountable for his serious violations of the law violations by the way that Donald Trump just admitted to last night on Fox News Americans will see through this facade and I wanted to asked Mr Schiff if he wants my additional 40 seconds of time if so I yield I thank you I just want to follow up on my question before Nora Donahue is a very well respected member of your team why did she resign I'm sorry Laura Dan he was a very well respected member of your team why did she resign that's not part of the report and I'm not going to discuss internal matters management does she resign over disagreement she had with you about how you're handling the investigation not part of the report I'm not going to discuss it it's nothing but you know the answer Mr Durham why won't you tell us I think I think is that's not part of the report that's not part of the mission and I'm not going to discuss internal discussions I can tell you this with respect to every major decision that was made by our team every agent and every lawyer had full voice in expressing their opinions now we proceeded accordingly with me making some voter with their feet to leave your office time of the gentleman's gentlelady is expired I yield back gentle lady yields back gentleman from Texas is recognized thank you Mr Durham that's not part of the report is a lot of what I've heard from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle one of my colleagues from California said I don't know what we're doing here and what we're doing here is going through this very damning report the FBI has failed many times over the over the years that you investigated them I'd like to ask did the FBI open Crossfire hurricane without speaking to the people who provided the information yes did the FBI open Crossfire hurricane on a Sunday only three days after reviewing the information yes did the FBI open Crossfire hurricane without any significant review of its own intelligence database yes did the FBI open Crossfire hurricane without interviewing the essential Witnesses yes did the FBI open Crossfire hurricane without using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed in evaluating intelligence yes did the FBI consider the possibility that it was the target um it didn't appear so to me from the from the evidence and so I'm curious if you could tell me because I'm not a prosecutor some of my colleagues here are but the average American is not can you tell us why and under what motivation would a prosecutorial agency act in such a way where it willfully ignores multiple instances of exclamatory evidence throughout the course of its investigation because I just don't understand that that in my experience said that is um that is not the norm that's not how the FBI performs in this particular case as is reflected in the in the report there appear to be people uh persons in the FBI who were Central to opening the investigation that had um rather strong views concerning um than candidate Trump and we've heard in your report that you you reference confirmation bias and a lot of times or sometimes we see that the investigators perhaps the FBI investigators they have a confirmation bias because they want a guilty outcome they want to find the suspect guilty but we did not see that to be the case for Hillary Clinton so it makes me think that based on the investigation into the conduct and the continuous disregard for Duty there was obviously a special motivation to find this suspect Donald Trump and his campaign guilty above anyone else would you agree I can I can speak to what the facts show as documented in the report again people draw their reasonable inferences conclusions from those facts the honest reading of the report if either you or someone on your team willfully ignored exculpitary exculpatory evidence refuse to interview key Witnesses favored one suspect over another or did any or all of the things that the FBI did during Crossfire hurricane would you face repercussions there ought to be repercussions if that ever happened in connection with an agent that I was working with and I knew about it the first thing would be to report it to the court and the probably second thing would be to report it to the superiors the third thing would be sure that that agent never worked with me again I appreciate that I also appreciate your remarks earlier in your open testimony where you said my colleagues and I carried out our work in good faith with Integrity in the spirit of following the facts wherever they lead without fear or favor I believe you did that I'm I'm disappointed and some of my colleagues that have said disparaging remarks about you I've seen very few that actually talk about your report they want to talk about everything else which tells me you're on to something I'd also yield the balance of my time to the chairman I appreciate the gentleman for yielding so Dan Cinco is the primary sub Source a few years before he does this work he was investigated by the FBI for Espionage is that right Mr Durham right and that that case was halted because the FBI thought he left the country right right had he left the country no where was he living your you remain living in the place that is living when they open the investigation right here in DC right yeah yeah and leftovers right here in DC and Nathan we're going to stop this and then they go hire him use the tax money of the people I get the privilege of representing to pay this guy who the obviously knew was a Russian spy they hire him who's the source of all the false information is that true they paid him um they hired it and they paid him a couple hundred thousand if I if I recall right is over two hundred thousand dollars yeah and then this guy is hanging out with Dolan Charles Dolan who's a buddy of the clintons who's also a source for the false dossier that was used to spy on American citizen he's hanging out with all in fact don't they meet on a park bench somewhere in Arlington Virginia on New Year's Day New Year's Day middle of the day this is straight out of the movies right and the FBI says but we're not going to talk to Charles Dolan this is two of the dumbest things I've ever heard of they won't talk they they pay a guy who's a Russian spy who's the source of the dossier the other source of the dossier is Charles Dolan who meets with that guy on a park bench in Arlington and they don't want to interview him I mean you can't make this stuff up but that's what comey's FBI did and they're still doing this kind of baloney because Mr dantuano told us so running operations running Investigations out of headquarters instead of assigning a U.S attorney a job you did for a long time and did very well that is a huge problem in your report that's why your report's valuable gentlemen I yield back to the gentleman who was out of time and we now recognize the gentleman from oh Mr Craig oh we got oh I'm sorry right here the gentlelady from Pennsylvania is recognized for five thank you and thank you for coming to testify today I know it's not a comfortable experience obviously um and clearly the questions have exposed that we have many areas of disagreement across the aisle but I am relieved that we have no disagreement about one of the fundamental conclusions of your report that it was incumbent upon the FBI to uh open some form of Investigation when presented with evidence that a presidential candidate and his associates are either coordinating campaign efforts with Hospital the Hostile Nation or being manipulated by such a hostile nation and and that is a fundamental conclusion right some form of Investigation was necessary right I mean the FBI when they receive information disinformation and other information they uh almost always have some obligation to assess that information sure that's what the assessment is about sure so we've established over the course of questions that the current Attorney General Eric Garland allowed you to run your investigation I think you said independently and without interference right that's correct okay and you've talked about the thoroughness of in your investigation as you performed it over the course of four four and a half years uh 6.5 million dollars hundreds of of FBI agents six million pages of documents not hundreds of FBI agents hundreds of personnel working with you um that would not be accurate but okay well you also had the benefit of Prior investigations including the Mueller report correct um the 2019 Department of Justice office of Inspector General's report which concurred with you that there was an obligation to investigate right yes although it disagreed with you about precisely the form correct I think it's more than formed but you know we had disagreement in our garden and there was also a 2020 select Senate select committee report on intelligence run by Senator Rubio that affirmed that Russia in fact had sought to interfere in our elections to benefit the Trump campaign correct that the report I don't remember if Senator Rubio was the chair at the time or not okay okay so with all of that you and attorney general Barr had both been appointed by President Trump right I'm sorry can you just repeat that again you and attorney general Barr had both been appointed to serve at that time by President Trump correct I had been nominated by um president Trump and I believe that uh Mr Barr was um nominated to be attorney general by Mr Trump okay and the AG Barr appointed you to be special counsel right he appointed me a special counsel yes okay but in in contrast to the independence and lack of interference which you have noted on multiple occasions that has been uh performed by Merrick Garland A.J Barr had a very active role in your investigation and I just wanted to mention a couple instances first of all shortly after your appointment you and A.G Barr both traveled overseas and met with Italian officials Who provided some allegations with respect to criminal activity by the former president correct we traveled to well this is outside the reports I'm not sure that I'm authorized to talk about it but we were we went to Italy to try to pursue leads involving a particular um mysterious Professor okay so you don't mention in your report those allegations of misconduct concerning the former president correct it's not in your report you would limit you didn't include that information in your report right which information about your trip to Italy with A.G Barr no I don't know why I would think that in a report the day the inspector General's report was published you issued a press release saying that you didn't agree with some of his conclusions um did AJ Barr ask you to issue that re that uh press release absolutely not okay who did I made that decision do you want to know why or no uh actually I wanted to know first can you identify any other occasion which a special counsel has released a press statement questioning another special counsel or inspector General's report can you name one yeah I don't know Vinnie okay they may have but I don't know about it okay so did you communicate with A.G Barr about your press res press statement before his was released the same day or was that just a fantastic coincidence did I communicate with the turn General bar about what about your press release questioning the ig's report I told attorney general Barr I didn't ask his permission I told him that I was going to do it okay one more question there's been mention of the resignation of one of your colleagues Nora Donahue in the fall of 2020. isn't it true that she resigned in protest concerning pressure by A.G Barr for you to deliver an interim report or other results before the 2020 presidential election you'd have to ask Ms Danny that I'm not going to discuss the internal discussions um in our group or we could Google it thank you I yield back a pretty good source of information sure is uh the gentle lady yields back the gentleman from Oregon's recognized thank you Mr chair and thank you Mr chairman for being here today and for your patience uh with us I want to talk about that space between law and uh and policy I guess if you will and I want to go back to I think I got your Awards written down during your opening statement where you said there were troubling violations of Law and policy do I have that right yes sir and so your the assertion has been that perhaps there should have been more indictments more people brought before the court for the before their actions but it appears to me that you you tried that and and perhaps encountered uh I haven't gotten looked at your two the two trials that turned out not to reach convictions but was it a situation where there was something wrong but it didn't rise to the level of a crime is that was was going on in that space you conduct these investigations we conducted this investigation and done other public corruption investigations organized crime um investigations and when there's sufficient evidence that you believe that the evidence is sufficient to prove the case Beyond A Reasonable Doubt on that case should be brought and maybe uh evidence do you have but you're not confident that it would be sufficient to prove the case Beyond A Reasonable Doubt and sustain that case on appeal and you don't bring any action and here there's there was conduct some of which was misconduct there's conduct that was probably criminal but you couldn't prove it and that's that's true here Pearson other instances as well right and I think the phrase political bias or confirmation bias has been used a number of times is that a crime confirmation bias is not a crime it's part of our Human Condition I suppose yes and it's it's uh so you may well have found and it sounds like you did uh troubling violations of Law and policy which perhaps would not lead to and did not of course convictions but doesn't make it any less wrong when we have our law enforcement agencies engaging in this kind of conduct and I think that's why you call it troubling do I have that right you have that right and the the the the question I suppose is what can we do about this situation looking forward if it's not a crime uh but we know it's wrong what should we be doing and I think you made some suggestions can you recite those for us and what you spent four years in this space and there's obviously things going wrong that we can't convict people for or at least it doesn't rise to the level that will warrant that approach what should we be doing yeah I mean the um the real difficulty in my view is trying to figure out um how to hold people accountable for their conduct um and it's not a simple problem to solve in the context of the fisa uh situation you know for for example or um maybe it would be the case in any instance in which there's um what's referred to in the bureau essay sensitive investigative matter a Sim that there are additional rules that that apply there you know maybe there's it's come time where if an agent is going to sign a fisa application in a sensitive investigative manner that they not only understand that they're signing under the penalties of perjury but if the bureau determines that they intentionally misstated anything that their employment will be terminated I mean this is this real teeth and when somebody signs an affidavit swears to something before a Judicial officer there are consequences of the that is untrue there our criminal penalties but there sure has got to be other penalties as well I mean there are things like that in these sensitive cases I mean this is not a normal case this is a presidential election and an effect it affected the nation maybe they ought to instill uh practice uh for example of red teaming which we tried to do to an extent in our investigation which is you have a group of people who take the opposite side to make the arguments and try to point out either where the weaknesses are or where additional evidence needs uh to be developed it may be that the benefit that the bureau would benefit as I said in the report from having something of an ombudsman who would look at fisa applications or look at the investigative effort under being undertaken and he says sensitive investigative for matters um who looks at how the investigation is progressing and whether or not in that person's estimation the investigation is being done independently and in addition disciplined way there are those kinds of things but ultimately I don't know how you hold people responsible absent their integrity and that kind of overview or review of what the um what the investigation is doing thank you Mr Derma yield back gentlemen yields back the gentleman from Colorado is recognized I thank the chairman uh Mr Durham thank you for testifying today thank you for your service it's been a real pleasure our country well we appreciate your service to our country to the Department of Justice uh I've read your report as I suspect most of the members of the committee have and appreciated your work I want to talk a bit about your interactions with Maine Justice the Department of Justice in particular with attorney general Garland did attorney general Garland permit your inquiry to proceed independently yes did attorney general Garland interfere with your inquiry or investigation in any way no did attorney general Garland attempt to prevent or stop you or your team from taking any investigative step that you deemed necessary he did not did attorney general Garland Provide support to your efforts um in terms of um occasionally we need some additional Personnel in a couple of instances we had a person that was detailed from Maine Justice yes so in that in that respect yes did attorney general Garland declined to implement any of the recommendations that you've made um I don't I don't know that the letter the report I believe it's on page three of your report you say and I'll quote after the inauguration of President Biden attorney general Garland met with the office of the special counsel the office very much appreciates the support consistent with his testimony referring to transitional Garland during his confirmation hearings that the attorney general has provided to our efforts and the Department's willingness to allow us to operate independently end quote you stand by that I suspect I do correct sounds like the Department of Justice and the Attorney General were supportive of your efforts did not interfere in any way with the work that you did over the course of the last several years there are some folks here in Congress some colleagues of mine on the other side of the aisle who have talked about or indicated their desire to defund the Department of Justice do you believe the Department of Justice should be defunded I don't believe these discussions about defunding the police make any sense at all for the security of the nation and I don't think defunding um Cornerstone law enforcement entities make a whole lot of sense maybe more oversight but defunding and our cities and streets and so forth no that doesn't make sense to me but I've only been at this for 40 years sure well and as I said I I am grateful to your service and for your service rather and I guess I just want to put a finer point on it because I don't I guess I didn't hear that in your answer you said a Cornerstone of law enforcement I take that you mean the Department of Justice the Department of Justice obviously should not be defunded right you've committed your career to the Department of Justice You're a former U.S attorney a former acting U.S attorney 35 years as an assistant U.S attorney you have a decorated record of service to the department I I'm hoping you're willing to stay on the record clearly that you don't believe the department should be defunded I don't believe the Department of Justice or the FBI should be defunded I think there may be ought to be some changes and and the like but defunded no thank you and I appreciate your candor and I agree with you and with respect to the office of the special counsel of course you've concluded Your Service as you know there are different special counsels that are appointed from time to time you've served in that capacity multiple times yourselves there is discussion of defunding special counsels do you support more broadly the principle of of defunding the office of a special counsel yeah I mean I guess I would have to know know the particulars of what the discussion is but I mean the general notion that you would um establish special counsel office the special counsel is doing an investigation they're going to defund it would not make sense to me yeah I agree and just to put a finer point on this you served as special counsel for a period of years during the course of your investigation for the bulk of that time Democrats were in control of the United States House of Representatives there was no effort that I'm aware of to defund your office and I I assume that you would have construed that if someone had made an effort to defund the office of special counsel your office as you were undertaking your investigation as political interference to the extent that that was being done to try to impair or impinge on your investigation is that an accurate statement I mean if it were if it were our office our team I guess I'd have to know the basis of that to see if I thought it was you know political or you know let's say it's let's say it's because people did too much money sure let's say it's because people disagreed with the work that you were doing they didn't like your investigation they they disagreed fundamentally what decisions you were making I presume you would construe that as political interference special counsel should operate um independently that's the whole purpose of a special counsel so I certainly agree and again I thank you for being here I yield back Mr chairman gentlemen gentlemen yields back the gentleman from Alabama is recognized thank you Mr chairman Mr Durham I appreciate you being here today sobering I think is a pretty good word I think that's a good description of what we're talking about when I read your report and as we talk about it when I'm in the district very often one of the major concerns is a weaponization of Investigations in the Department of Justice against certain people in our society and so um yes or no did the FBI Place significant Reliance on information given to them by President Trump's political opponents I'm sorry can you just repeat that one did the FBI did they Place significant Reliance on information given to them by President Trump's opponents the crossfire hurricane investigation um well the fisa in particular the Pfizer and Carter page um The Bureau had concluded itself absentee dossier they wouldn't have been able to establish probable cause did the dossier come from president Trump's political opponents it was funded by the Clinton campaign um in the in the DNC um so in that that degree yes it came that's how it was paid for can you connect the dots between the Trump I mean I'm sorry between the Clinton campaign and the investigation of the FBI um you know we we were investigating I did investigate you know what was what was behind that investigation how did it get started was it properly predicated as a full uh investigation by the FBI and why did it then continue even after director Mueller had found a lack of sufficient evidence concerning conspiracy Mr Durham is that what you call sobering would that be sobering to you it's sobering to me in connection with this investigation as the FBI the people who were involved in the crossfire herd cane investigation ignoring exculpatory information uh discarding information that was inconsistent with the investigative narrative with using information in this instance from the steel dossier to establish probable cause to electronically Seville a United States citizen who happened to be a Naval Academy graduate those things are sober to me oh I would agree with that um did the FBI ever fail to take a delay taking action in an investigation involving Hillary Clinton I did that wasn't um well there's a portion of the report that relates to the disparate treatment so did the FBI delay there are three instances that are identified in the report where the FBI's investigative efforts were considered considerably more disciplined than was the case with respect to Mr Mr Trump more discipline you mean by us and let me move Mr I don't run out of time did the FBI give the Clinton campaign a defensive briefing um they gave in a particular manner the FBI gave Mrs Clinton's represent legal represent Representatives a DB freeing of the defensive nature yes why wasn't the same done for the Trump campaign and president Trump we um explored that during the course of the investigation the what we learned and set out in the report it would appear from at least what we were told to very little uh thought went into whether they should give anybody in the Trump campaign a defensive briefing and they didn't a lot of thought went into giving Hillary Clinton's campaign a defensive briefing apparently but not president Trump in one instance uh the I think you're referring to um the submission of a fisa application in that matter against the foreign interest was premised on them giving a defensive briefing to Mrs Clinton and some other uh political Mr Durham is it safe to say that the Clinton campaign colluded with the Russians to accuse Donald Trump of colluding with the Russians I could not phrase it that way I could say is that the Clinton campaign funded the information that showed up in the in the dossier the Clinton uh uh campaign funded the information that's put together concerning an alleged secret Communications Channel between Trump and Alpha bank which was presented to the FBI through Mr Sussman so yeah there are those things that definitely occurred in the evidence establishes that thank you Mr Durham I appreciate your service I'll yield back to the chairman I think the gentleman uh Mr Durham Carter page is an American citizen who Naval Academy grad served our country why not just talk to him before you spy on him in this instance I mean I think I don't know if people looked at this in the report there is a particular piece of information that had been given to Michael um isakov and appeared in a Yahoo news article on September 23rd in which Mr isakov lays out what he's obviously been told and it's clearly the information um from Steel but it also included a statement that a senior law enforcement official confirmed that Carter page was on the radar screen that matter was never referred for investigation as to who leaked at this is an investigation that was supposed to be closely held confidential uh sensitive investigation Nets never referred to number they ever looked at who's the senior law enforcement officer who gave the information to Michael isikov that Carter page was on their radar screen that's not number uh who do you think it was chairman the time is well expired the witness could answer the question you can't answer another ask another one I appreciate the ranking member for pointing that that fact out okay I'm not sure am I supposed to answer or not I'm done I'll let you answer oh um okay so then with respect to um uh to Carter page Carter page within two days of that article wrote a letter to director Comey saying um I didn't I didn't do the things that are suggested I didn't meet with these people I'm willing to sit down and talk to the FBI you know tell me when and where essentially he offered to be interviewed the gentlelady from Texas is recognized for unanimous consent uh thank you very much Mr chairman uh let me uh submit into the record uh article dated 6 18 23 after years of political hype the duramine curry failed to deliver and unanimous consent and then asked unanimous to place into the record this language from a letter directed to uh Mr Durham on May 15 2023 the Federal Bureau of Investigation appreciates the special counsel's independent review we also appreciate your acknowledgment of the extensive cooperation the FBI provided to your team throughout the review including production of nearly 7 million pages of documents assignment of full-time FBI special agents to assist in your fact-finding process and provision of FBI technical objection thank you Mr chairman I yield back generally back the gentlelady from Pennsylvania is recognized thank you Mr chairman and thank you special counsel Durham for being here today as has been noted it's been four years and six and a half million dollars of an investigation of an investigation and the Durham report makes no new recommendations to change FBI policy or procedure it does not conclude that the crossfire hurricane investigation should not have been opened and it even acknowledges that the Clinton campaign did nothing worthy of prosecution sadly the Durham report dredges up allegations from unsuccessful prosecutions including claims that have been rejected by judge and jury the flaws of the Durham process were so troubling that some AIDS resigned in protest I did Google and in fact read the news articles around the resignation of Nora Donahue that it is reported that she resigned because of pressure on the on you and and the the special counsel group to produce a report or an interim report prior to the presidential election you can comment on Nora denehy's Personnel matter were you ever encouraged persuaded pressured to issue an interim or report prior to the presidential election and say without hesitation I was not pressured into doing anything was it suggested to you it was not suggested to me and yet it might have been suggested to someone who worked under you separate from you I don't believe so okay Mr Durham would it have been a dereliction of Duty if the FBI sat on its hands and did not investigate with the information they had in front of them isn't it I'm sure the bureau has an obligation to investigate uh they should investigate um information that they received from the public or or otherwise and generally speaking Yeah they have an obligation to look at and assess information and in this case they had an affirmative duty to investigate would you agree and affirmative duty to assess the information they had gotten from the Australian which would be an investigation you were assigned to investigate that investigation Mr Durham when did you first meet with attorney general Barr about a potential investigation into the Mueller report Mueller investigation you know I was appointed in May of 2019. I had met attorney general Barr after not in connection with these matters but I think I initially met the Attorney General when I became the U.S attorney for Canada let me just oh put the calendar together uh it was on March 22nd that the Mueller report was submitted to attorney general Barr would you agree with that that's the Yeah March 22nd and according to public records you met with attorney general Barr on March 25th three days later okay and on March 24th attorney general Barr released his so-called summary document of a 448-page uh report which blatantly mischaracterized the findings in the Mueller report would you agree with that no did you discuss the Mueller report during your meeting with Mr Barr on March 25th I don't believe so I think that I I the timing was three days after he received the report and you don't think in your meeting you talked about the Mueller report I don't I don't think that was was I think it was when I was meeting the Attorney General because I had become the U.S attorney in Connecticut in mid late February maybe you could search your memory and get back to us on that it's troubling to me because it is clear you were brought in by attorney general Barr the same week the Mueller report was released and the day after his misleading letter which hung out there for 25 days before the public got our hands in our eyes on the redacted report you were hired to investigate the investigators one week after you met with Mr Barr on April 13th attorney general Barr's counselor Seth decharm emailed you offering assistance on behalf of Barr saying quote John the AG has made me aware of the redacted material you're working with him on and he asked me to provide you with my support and assistance is that true I think that's correct I don't remember the date but that sounds right and that's only April so I'm wondering if you weren't yet put into this this um this field uh Donald Trump was very vocal on Twitter as he always has been about his belief that the Mueller investigation should never have been taken are you aware of his tweets I know that the former president um was a tweeter yes he was a tweeter part of your purpose Mr Donald Trump I want to take you back to your opening statement it's a paragraph four as you know Mr Durham you said this morning if repeated or left unaddressed these issues could result in significant National Security risks and further erode public faith in our justice system we now sit with a former president indicted 37 counts of around the documents the classified documents that he took he held he moved he concealed he lied about he showed to other people 37 counts if repeated or left unaddressed these issues could result in significant National Security risks and further erode public faith in our justice system I thank you for your service for pointing out what really matters when we have a very dangerous former president and criminal indictments to come a mess of Mr Trump's own making I am baffled by this this uh committee's lifting up the lady has expired and I thank you for indulging me just as you indulge yourself thank you God bless you that's right God bless you opportunity uh the the um Mr Durham uh if you can you can go one more round just every day yeah well this is this is relatively calm to some some hearings and we have Mr if you can go one more then we'll give you a break but we'll recognize the general from California and we'll give you a quick break maybe five ten minutes and we'll come back and and finish but the gentleman from California is recognized for five uh Mr Durham several people today including ranking member madler and three representatives from California uh Mr Schiff Mr Mr swallow and Mr Liu uh have attacked you Mr ranking member Nadler called your report a political exercise with ethical ambiguity uh Mr Lou uh called you a partisan hack however it seems that they're taking issue not so much with the conclusions of your report as those of Mr Mueller's report uh which concluded that the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities that conclusion directly contradicted statements made on the record by those representatives for example Mr Schiff in 2017-2018 made statements such as the Russians offered help the campaign accepted help the Russians gave help and the president made full use of that help and that is pretty damning he also said there's clear evidence on the issue of collusion he said I think there's plenty of evidence of conclusion collusion or conspiracy in plain sight Mr Durham are those statements supported by the conclusions no Mr Durham are those statements supported by the Mueller report I don't believe so Mr Nadler stated it's clear that the campaign concluded and there's a lot of evidence of that the question is was the president involved Mr Nadler also said there was obviously a lot of collusion uh Mr Durham were those statements supported by the Mueller report I don't believe that you're supported by the Mueller report Mr Lou stated uh in a press release in March of 2017 the bombshell revelation that U.S officials have information that suggests Trump Associates may have concluded colluded with the Russians means we must pause the entire Trump agenda we may have an illegitimate president of the United States currently occupying the white house uh Mr Durham did the Mueller report establish that we had a illegitimate president occupying the White House not to my knowledge Mr swallow stated in 2018 in our investigation we saw strong evidence of collusion did the Mueller report support that there was strong evidence of collusion not to my knowledge even here today we had uh Mr Schiff raised questions about your public statement during the investigation saying this somehow violated a doj policy however Mr Mueller himself made a public statement in January of 2019 this is a article from CNN Headline Mueller's office disputes BuzzFeed report that Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress so whatever policy that might exist in the doj with respect to public statements by special counsels it would seem that you and Mr Moore would be on equal footing with respect to it is that correct would seem so Mr naduate ranking member Nadler also suggested that we're only here today because of the recent indictments of President Trump however you received your assignment as special counsel in 2019 is that correct that's correct uh 2020 special Gaz was in uh 2020. in 2020 and was that before or after the events alleged in the recent indictments by the president by the president as before and is it customary for a special counselor to come testify in Congress upon the issuance of the report this is my first experience of this sort of thing um so I I yeah I know that uh director Mueller had had occasion testified before Congress so I I guess this is not unique so it's pretty likely you would have been here whether or not the president had been recently indicted yes contrary to ranking memorab or statement I want to quote from you uh a part of your report where you say uh there are reasons why in examining politically charged and high profile issues the office must exercise and has exercise special care one of those statements you said is that even when prosecutors believe that they can obtain a conviction there are some instances in which it may not be advisable to expend government time and resources on a criminal prosecution particularly where it could create the appearance even if unfounded that the government is seeking to criminalize the behavior of political opponents or punish the activities of a specific political party or campaign could you just expound on that a little bit this idea that there are Prudential considerations that may counsel against prosecution even if there has been some technical violation of a statute sure the standard principles of federal prosecution include and it was a Bedrock that you ought not to bring a prosecution unless you believe in good faith that there's sufficient evidence to prove a case Beyond A Reasonable Doubt material will convict and that the conviction a conviction can be sustained on appeal there may be those instances in which you're pretty well convinced that a crime was committed in the can identify the person who committed it but you can't in good faith say a jury is likely to convict in this case we believe that a jury will convict and we can sustain it on appeal those are the principles that we try to apply here that we followed here the same principles I've followed for 40 years as a federal prosecutor what are you referring to when you uh when you say that there might be additional considerations involving the perception that you're criminalizing the behavior of political opponents yeah I mean these are these are difficult things for example uh taking this case I think all the members of the committee have had access to whether they took advantage or not I don't know but uh we filed a classified appendix here right so there are some prosecutions where it may very well be that it looks like and you think you can prove the crime Beyond A Reasonable Doubt but because of the classified nature of much of your evidence it's never going to see the light of day so that might be uh preclude a prosecution um you know things things of that sort uh come up to that are part of the Prudential judgment that a prosecutor has to make in these matters I yield back thank you gentleman yields back people take a short break short recess uh if we can cut today's hearing on the report of special counsel John Durham the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Alabama to lead us in the pledge the United States of America one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all chairs recognized for an opening statement three years ago in 11 months July 24 2019 Bob Mueller sat in this room in that chair and told this committee no collusion no conspiracy no coordination between President Trump and Russia none what the Democrats say we don't care we're going to keep going after president Trump in fact they didn't even wait one day the next day the phone call between President Trump and president zielinski became the basis for their impeachment Republicans said maybe maybe instead of the never-ending attacks on President Trump maybe the country would be better off if we figured out how the whole false Trump Russian narrative started after two and a half years of the Mueller investigation 19 lawyers 40 agents 30 million dollars where they found nothing maybe we should figure out how the whole lie started that's exactly what Mr Durham has done in his report he told us how the dossier was funded he told us who fun eager the FBI was to use it how they put the dossier in a fisa Draft application just two days after receiving it he told us that not one not one single substantive allegation the dossier was ever corroborated ever validated yet it was used used to spy on an American citizen associated with the presidential campaign he told us there was no proper predicate for opening the crossfire hurricane investigation maybe most importantly he told us the FBI the FBI the preeminent law enforcement agency in the world failed failed in its fundamental mission of adherence to the rule of law and unfortunately I think once again the Democrats will say we don't care it doesn't matter we're never going to stop going after president Trump in fact eight days ago we saw how far they are willing to go with the indictment of President Trump but frankly this shouldn't surprise us they told us their objective in fact it was an agent on the case of Crossfire hurricane who told us what their objective was we all remember the text message from Peter strzok where he said don't worry we'll stop Trump it started with the crossfire hurricane investigation Mr Durham has told us how wrong that was now we have an indictment of a former president who's winning in every single poll by his opponent's justice department and in between those two events we had the Mueller investigation we had impeachment we had 51 former Intel officials falsely falsely tell us the Biden laptop was Russian disinformation we had a raid on President Trump's home and of course we got Alvin Bragg's ridiculous case in New York seven years nothing has changed don't believe me we interviewed Stephen dantuano former head of the Washington field office when the Trump classified document case began Mr dantuano told the committee interviewed him just two weeks ago two weeks ago today Mr dantuano told the committee that when he asked the Department of Justice why is there new no U.S attorney assigned to the Trump classified document case headquarters said because we're running it he suggested the Miami Field office should do the red instead of sending the folks from Washington field office down to Miami how the folks in in the Miami Field office do it headquarters said no he suggested there shouldn't be a raid instead they should continue to work with President Trump's lawyers once again headquarters said no Mr dantuano even said how about when we get there When we arrive at president Trump's home we then call his lawyer and we do the search together again headquarters said no another interesting fact the lawyer who turned down Mr dantuano's request happens to be the same person who is alleged to have pressured the attorney representing a trump employee about a judgeship nothing has changed and frankly they're never going to stop seven years of attacking Trump is scary enough but what's more frightening any one of us could be next in fact it's already started parents at school board meetings are terrorists pro-life Catholics are extremist even journalists aren't safe Federal Trade Commission 13 letters one of those letters to Twitter said who are the journalists you're talking to think about that they name four people personally two come and testify in front of this committee while they're in front of this committee Democrats are asking them to reveal their sources violate First Amendment principles one of them Matt taibi while he's sitting at that table testifying to the Judiciary Committee the IRS is knocking on his door parents Catholics journalists but guess who gets it the worst guess who gets it the worst whistleblowers if you dare come forward and tell Congress what's going on look out they will come for you they will take your clearance they will take your pay they'll even take your kids clothes just ask Garrett O'Boyle who testified in front of this committee as well over the next few hours we're going to hear the facts and details about the whole false Trump Russian narrative the crossfire hurricane investigation and hopefully hopefully it will help change things at the Department of Justice but regardless of what the Biden Administration and the Garland justice department do I know what Republicans in the house are committed to doing we will work to dramatically change the fisa law and we will do everything we can in the appropriation process to stop the federal government from going after the American people now recognize the ranking member for an opening statement thank you Mr chairman on June 8th a grand jury in Miami indicted former president Trump on 37 counts related to his mishandling of extraordinarily sensitive National Security information including information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries United States nuclear programs potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack according to the indictment the unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the National Security of the United States Foreign Relations the safety of the of the United States military and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods and indeed indictment goes on to describe how the former president made such unauthorized disclosures even if you believe as chairman Jordan claims that President Trump has committed no crime surely we can agree that it is dangerous and profoundly irresponsible to have taken these documents from the White House and left them unsecured in Mar-A-Lago don't take take just my word for it Trump's Secretary of Defense Mark esper said that the former president's handling of this information put U.S service members lives and our national security at risk and Trump's hand-picked attorney general Bill Barr with whom I agree on very little hit the nail on the head when he described the former president's legal troubles as quote entirely of his own making he had no right to these documents the Government tried for over a year quietly and with respect to get them back and he jerked them around when he faces subpoena he didn't raise any legal arguments engage in the course of deceitful conduct that was a clear crime if those allegations are true close quote the former president could have at any time for months simply returned the documents and avoided prosecution but House Republicans do not want to talk about any of that they seem incapable of assigning any agency or responsibility to Donald Trump for problems that are trumps and trumps alone instead Republicans have planned this hearing and constructed an entire false narrative around this work of special counsel Durham in an effort to distract from the former president's legal troubles and mislead the American public to be clear the Durham report is by itself a deeply flawed vessel after four years thousands of employee hours and more than six and a half million dollars in taxpayer dollars special counsel Durham failed to uncover any wrongdoing the justice department Inspector General Horowitz had not already found in 2019. he brought us two cases to trial and lost them both both defendants were acquitted in mere hours the single conviction that special counsel Durham obtained involved a single charge of lying to the FBI a case developed and handed to him by the Inspector General and one resolved by a quick plea bargain the report itself outlines some fairly glaring investigative missteps the FBI apparently never even looked at a thumb drive of key evidence related to allegations of contact between the Trump campaign and the Russian government via a Russian cell phone Noor says the report did the FBI ever examine questionable computer contacts between the Trump organization and Alpha bank one of the largest banks in Russia the report also fails to recommend a single remedial measure that the justice department or the FBI might take to address certain process related concerns largely because doj and FBI have already implemented the changes recommended by the Inspector General three and a half years ago now I understand that like the former president many mega Republicans had a lot writing on the Durham investigation I understand that they might be disappointed with where it landed but that is no excuse for making things up first the Durham report unequivocally concludes that the FBI not only had the evidence to open an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election but actually had an affirmative obligation to investigate ties between the Russian government and the Trump campaign it is simply not true as some Republicans have claimed that the Durham report suggests that there should not have been an investigation affirmative obligation those in Mr Durham's words not mine second the Durham report shows that the FBI began its investigation when an aide to the Trump campaign disclosed in May 2016 that the campaign knew that Russia had thousands of emails that would embarrass Hillary Clinton the eight bragged about it at a bar an Australian Diplomat who overheard the remark reported it and the investigation began it is simply not true as the most extreme voices in this room have claimed that the investigation was somehow launched by the Clinton campaign that particular conspiracy theory is off by several months nor is it true that the FBI was opposed to Trump from the beginning for example the Durham report tells us that the FBI encouraged a confidential human source to infiltrate the Clinton campaign not the Trump campaign and take steps to entrap unsuccessfully AIDS to secretary Clinton this story is right there on pages 74 and 75 of the report I suspect we won't hear a word about it from House Republicans today because it does not fit the Maga narrative finally nothing in the Durham report disputes essential findings of special counsel Robert Mueller namely Russia interfered in the 2016 election it did so to help Donald Trump and the Trump campaign welcomed this interference this last point is important because it tells us how Mr Durham became special counsel in the first place and it goes to the heart of the fully false Narrative of Maga victimhood from the day that special counsel Mahler began his work Donald Trump and his political allies have railed against an imagined conspiracy against the former president the Russian investigation was a setup it was a Witch Hunt Obama did it we need to investigate the investigators then came the Mueller report the Mueller report was delivered to attorney general Barr on Friday March 22 2019. the next Monday Mr Durham was in Barr's office a week later a colleague emailed Mr Durham to ask about quote the project that Durham and bar were working on while we on this committee were fighting to get access to the Mueller report Mr Durham was already working on an investigation to undercut its Central findings a few weeks later the Trump Administration announced Mr Durham's investigation into the investigators and by August 2019 Mr Durham and attorney general Barr were on a plane to Europe jointly hunting down non-existent evidence of Donald Trump's deep state conspiracy theories if the duo ever found evidence proving that Donald Trump was right all along that evidence certainly never made it into the Durham report it has been alleged however that they found evidence implicating the former president and certain Financial crimes during their trip incidentally that information too is missing from Mr Durham's final pages when he could not give Donald Trump evidence of a deep state conspiracy Mr Durham gave him the next best thing a public narrative with Hillary Clinton as the victim villain over the ensuing years Mr Durham constructed a flimsy story built on shaking inferences and dog whistles to far-right conspiracy theorists although he lost both times he took a case to trial by prolonging his investigation Durham was able to keep Donald Trump's talking points in the news long after Trump left office with a loose approach to doj Norms protecting the reputation of the agency and the Cavalier disregard for the privacy and reputational rights of others Mr Durham's investigation operated as headline generator for maggot Republicans less than half a year into his four-year investigation Mr Durham publicly disputed Inspector General Howard's conclusion that the FBI was warranted in opening a full investigation in violation of doj rules protecting investigations from appearances of political bias Mr Durham similarly flouted guidelines designed to protect third parties from reputational injury when he uses two indictments to accuse the Clinton campaign of a vast conspiracy to tie Trump to Russia but at the end of the day Mr Durham never found what he was looking for he cannot dispute a single conclusion in the Mueller report he cannot prove a magnificent deep state conspiracy and he cannot say that the FBI investigation into the Trump campaigns many ties to Russia never should have happened and again I can see why this would be disappointing to some but instead of owning up to his failure the Durham report doubles down on theories that law spectacularly before two unanimous juries the report also references classified material that has been called likely disinformation to lay out a series of accusations against the former president's perceived enemies by presenting his so-called findings in this way swiping a republican Boogeyman and hiding An Inconvenient truths and footnotes the Durham report gives Donald Trump one last talking point it did not have to be this way it may be hard to remember but at the outset of the Durham investigation Mr Durham was a well-respected career prosecutor with a solid reputation the Attorney General is supposed to appoint the special counsel to prevent the appearance of politicization in a criminal investigation Mr Durham could well have lived up to that expectation instead what we got was a political exercise that operated with ethical ambiguity and existed to perpetuate Donald Trump's unfounded claims the investigation failed in its political objectives but did real damage to a department that is still recovering from the excesses of the Trump Administration and despite Mr Durham's best efforts a reckoning is well underway do not be misled former president Donald Trump is not a victim he did this to himself for all of its flaws the Durham report does not show that anyone else is responsible for the president's legal woes past present or future anyone who tells you otherwise is simply making it up I thank the chairman and I yield back without objection all other opening statements will be included in the record today's witness is The Honorable John Durham Mr Durham was appointed as a special counsel in 2020 to investigate intelligence activities investigations are rising out of the 2016 presidential campaigns he is a career prosecutor having served as a U.S attorney for the District of Connecticut and in various other roles with that office since 1989. prior to that he served with the Department of Justice the Boston Strike Force on organized crime and in various state-level prosecutors offices we welcome our witness and thank him for appearing today we will Begin by swearing you in would you please rise and raise your right hand Mr Durham do you swear affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge information and beliefs so help you God let the records show that the witness has answered in the affirmative thank you you may you may be seated please know that your written testimony will be entered into the record in its entirety accordingly we ask that you summarize your testimony in five minutes but we'll give you a little extra time if you need it Durham you may begin hit your mic there Mr durman just just keep it on if you can throughout the throughout the day you sit on yep it's on now thank you again good morning um chairman Jordan ranking member an Adler and members of this committee as the committee knows on May 13 2019 attorney general Barr directed me to conduct a preliminary view into certain matters related to Federal investigations concerning the 2016 presidential election campaigns that review subsequently developed into several criminal investigations and gave rise to my subsequent employment as special counsel in these matters many of the most significant issues documented in the report that we have written including those relating to lack of investigative discipline failure to take logistical logical investigative steps and bias are relevant to important National Security interests that this committee and American people are concerned about if repeated and left unaddressed these issues could result in significant National Security risks and further erode The public's faith and confidence in our justice system as we said in the report our findings were sobering and tell you having spent 40 years plus as a federal prosecutor they're particularly sobering to me a number of my colleagues who spent decades in the FBI themselves they were sobering while I'm charged by some of the reforms that have been implemented by the FBI the problems identified in this report anybody who actually reads the report the details of the report the documented portions of the report I think would find that um the problems identified in the report are not susceptible to overnight fixes as we said in the report they cannot be addressed solely by enhancing training or additional policy requirements rather what is required is accountability both in terms of the standards to which our law enforcement Personnel hold themselves and in the consequences they face for violation of laws and policies of relevance I'm here to answer your questions I appreciate the opportunity to I'll answer them to the best of my ability and I hope to be of service to your oversight function as I'm sure you know the Department of Justice has issued some guidelines as to what I'm authorized to discuss and those things that I am not authorized to discuss in this regard accordingly I'll refer principally to the report I do want to emphasize a few points at the outset however first I want to emphasize in the strongest terms possible that my colleagues and I carried out our work in good faith with integrity and in the spirit of following the facts wherever they lead without fear or favor at no time in no sense did we act with a purpose to further partisan a political ends to the extent that somebody suggests otherwise that's simply untrue and offensive second the findings set forth in this report are serious and deserve attention from the American public and its Representatives let me just briefly highlight a few of those for one we found troubling violations of Law and policy in the conduct of Highly consequential investigations directed at members of a presidential campaign and ultimately a presidential Administration to me it matters not whether it was a republican campaign or a Democratic campaign it was a presidential campaign our team comprise dedicated and experienced prosecutors and law enforcement agents who work day in and day day out through the entire covet epidemic in the office trying to interview people all in an effort to try to get to those facts and the ground truth that such a group of people made these findings experienced FBI agents experienced prosecutors not people by and large from Washington but from other parts of the country the fact that these people made these findings as reflected in the report is of concern and should be of concern to any American who cares about our civil liberties the rule of law and the just and proportion application of the law to all of us whether we're friends who were foes to law ought to apply to everybody in the same way during our investigation we charged the former FBI agent who pleaded guilty to the felony offense of altering and fabricating a portion of a document used to obtain a court order a fisa order of a surveillance of the United States citizen which in our view is a significant problem several of the relevant fisa applications at issue in the crossfire investigation omitted references to what was clearly relevant and highly exculpatory information that should have been disclosed to the fisa court multiple FBI Personnel who signed or assisted in preparing renewal applications for that same fisa Warren acknowledged that they did not believe that the target Mr Page was a threat to National Security much less a knowing agent of a foreign power which is what the law requires it appears from our investigation to the FBI leadership dismissed those concerns another aspect of our findings concern the FBI's failure to sufficiently scrutinize information and received or to apply the same standards to allegations it received about the Clinton and Trump campaigns as our report details the FBI was too willing to accept and use politically funded and uncorroborated opposition research such as the Steele dossier the FBI relied on the dossier and fisa applications knowing there was a likely material originating from a political campaign a political opponent it did so even after the president United States the FBI and CIA directors and others received briefings about intelligence suggesting that there was a Clinton campaign plan underway to stir up a scandal tying Trump to Russia the accuracy the intelligence was uncertain at the time but the FBI failed to analyze or even assess the implications of the intelligence in any meaningful way when the FBI learned that the primary source of information for the Steele dossier which was basically the guts of the narrative about there being a well coordinate conspiracy involving Trump and the Russians when they learned that danchenko was the primary sub source for those reports is at the time when the FBI already knew that denchenko himself had previously been the suspect of a FBI Espionage investigation he was suspected of being a Russian asset and nonetheless they signed him up as a paid informant without further investigation of that Espionage concern to say nothing of resolving that Espionage matter before using danchenko and denchenko's information and when the FBI and special agent Mueller's office learned that Steele's primaries subsource likely had gathered important portions the dossier information during travels to Russia with one Charles Dolan it inexplicably decided not to interview Dolan or investigate his activities finally I would like to add that Although our work exposed deep concerns concerning facts about the conduct of these investigations our report should not be read to suggest in any way the Russian election interference was not a significant threat it was nor should it be read to suggest that the investigation the investigative authorities at issue no longer serve important law enforcement and National Security interests they do rather responsibility for the failures and transgressions that occurred here rest of the people who committed them or allowed them to occur again to my mind the issues raised in the report deserve close attention from the American people and their elected representatives here in Washington thank you Mr chairman thank you Mr Durham uh the we will now proceed under the five minute uh rule for questions the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Louisiana Mr Johnson thank you Mr chairman Mr Durham for being here today this is much anticipated we have lots of questions for you I'll try to set the table here at the outset uh from 20 000 feet the American people rely on the FBI to abide by its guiding principles and you know what those are Fidelity bravery and integrity and we rely upon them to uphold the Constitution and protect the American people Americans deserve and expect from our Premier law enforcement agency to apply Justice blindly and that is without political bias or ulterior motives however your report now famously States and here's the big quote based on the review of Crossfire hurricane and related intelligence activities you concluded that the doj and FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict Fidelity to the law there's no way another no other way to put this the report illustrates egregious actions on behalf of the FBI that have further eroded faith in our institutions Ms Durham in your report and again here today you said that your findings and conclusions are sobering could you unpack a little bit more of what that means why do you stay sobering well let me let me give you some real life views on that I have had any number of FBI agents who I've worked with over the years some of them are tired some are still in place who have come to me and apologized for the banner in which that investigation was undertaken I take that seriously these are good hard-working the majority of people in the FBI the decent human beings who sweared under their olds to abide by the law and the like and I think that that typifies exemplifies of the concern here there is there are investigative activities undertaken or not undertaken here which raise real concerns about whether or not the law was Fallen to policies in place the FBI were followed um you wrote in your report quote based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly Federal investigations of these matters including the instant investigation 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 investigation to date has any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia ever been uncovered I mean there is there's information obviously in the um report that was prepared by director Mueller uh and whatnot but as uh to collusion or conspiracy I'm not aware of any and and when and let me stop you when the FBI opened Crossfire hurricane that's the issue at hand it did not have any information that anyone in the Trump campaign had ever been in contact with Russian intelligence officials isn't that right so we wrote in as we wrote in the um uh the report talked to the director of the CIA the deputy director of the CIA the director of NSA and people within the FBI and there was no such information that they had in their Holdings at the time they opened Crossfire hurricane and you uh detail I'm going to go quickly here run out of time you and your you detail how FBI Personnel working on fisa applications uh violated protocols they were Cavalier at best as you said in your own words towards accuracy and completeness Senior FBI Personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor uh towards information that they received especially information received from politically Affiliated persons or entities and you said quote a significant Reliance on investigative leads provided or funded by Trump's political opponents were relied upon here among the most alarming things that you refer to in the report is the impact of confirmation bias and you said in your report at page 303 that's defined as or it stands for the general proposition that there is a common human tendency mostly unintentional for people to accept information and evidence that is consistent with what they believe to be true but sir here this wasn't innocent unintentionable unintentional human tendency was it it was overt political bias was it not Peter strzok for example there are some individuals who clearly expressed a personal bias it's difficult to get into somebody else's head to see whether they knew unless we have their emails right and he had Peter struck for example pronounced it pronounced hostile feelings towards president Trump everybody knows that everybody in the country knows it so he was in charge of this he was the direct Deputy assistant director of counterintelligence officially opened the investigation at the direction of FBI Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe he said horrible things about President Trump and all of his supporters by the way how could we say he did not have political bias yeah I know that uh it clearly reflects a personal bias that he had I'll leave it to others in the facts that are set out in the um in the reports whether that's political bias personal advice but there's clearly bias what we know now is the FBI and the doj have been turned into activated political weapons against citizens and even a former president because of their opposing Viewpoint sir they failed to follow protocols in 2016 and you've suggested new protocols and somehow be affixed to this how can the American people have confidence that if they didn't follow protocols in 2016 that they will do protocols I think that's why I said that in the opener remarks you know this is not an easy fix I mean it's going to take time to rebuild the Public's confidence and the institution the changes of the forms they have made are certainly changes that are going to guard to some extent against the repeat of what happened across our hurricane amount of time you go back gentleman yields back the chair and I'll recognizes the general from New York Mr Mr Durham can you pull that microphone real close so everyone gets can hear what you said we appreciate that gentleman from New York's recognized thank you Mr chairman Mr Durham your report reads like a defense of the Trump campaign in an attack on Hillary Clinton because that's exactly what it is Donald Trump wanted you to investigate the investigators to show the Deep state conspiracy but you never found one instead you gave him and his magical Republicans the next best thing someone else to blame for Donald Trump's problems that's why you're here today because the chairman and his colleagues need someone anyone to deflect from the mounting evidence of Trump's misconduct let me remind you that Donald Trump was federally indicted on 37 accounts were mishandling classified information 37 counts that's why you're here today not because of anything that happened in 2016. Ms Durham your investigation costs more than six and a half million dollars involved the work of dozens of FBI employees and federal prosecutors some of whom resigned in protest and took roughly four years to complete is that correct no it's not correct no I mean there were multiple parts of that did it take four years to complete correct okay and with all these resources and all these people you you were sent to help you investigate the investigators you only filed three criminal cases you only brought two cases to trial correct correct and you lost all the cases you brought the trial correct correct in fact two juries acquitted your defendants and all charges and the one conviction that you obtained the defendant pleaded guilty to a single count that never went to trial correct correct I will note that in that case the primary investigative steps were all completed by Inspector General Horowitz perhaps you were better when it came to your report for my reading your report did not make any specific concrete recommendations to improve doj or FBI policies or procedures in fact you report repeatedly references the recommendations made by Inspector General Horowitz almost all of which doj and FBI have already implemented again your investigation lasted four years four years and told sums of money and you still obtained only one conviction you did produce a 300 page report though and that's given my Republican count departs plenty of material to spend Mr Durham George prep atopoulos was a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign in Spring 2016. isn't that right correct and in May 2016 he told an Australian Diplomat that the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to secretary Clinton this is a fact that came out during the Mueller investigation and your investigation found nothing to dispute this fact correct there's more detail to that in the report did it find anything to dispute this report to dispute this fact no okay on page 50 of your report you report that you were you wrote that on July 28 2016 FBI headquarters received the Australian information that formed the basis for the opening of Crossfire hurricane correct correct so this fantasy that some American Republicans have created where the investigation was started for any reason other than a trump campaign operative bragging to Australian intelligence assets about Russian dirt that would damage Hillary Clinton is not true and when the FBI received that information according to your report it had not just the predication to investigate there was no question you wrote that the FBI had an affirmative obligation to closely examine the Australian information isn't that right the FBI had an obligation to examine that's correct so the origin of the investigation was not the steel dossier it was not Alpha Bank it was a trump AIDS loose lips about his campaigns Advanced view into a hack that had a profound effect on the 2016 election that information supplied by the Australian government gave the FBI predication to begin an investigation I'd like to discuss one more false conclusion about your report that's made its way into the Maga Republican talking points some of my colleagues across the aisle have started calling this the quote Russia hoax it's a theory that Russia did not actually interfere in the 2016 presidential election that is patently false in 2017 during the Trump Administration the Director of National Intelligence Declassified a report on Russian activity in the 2016 election you're aware of this report correct correct and in this report the intelligence Community found that quote Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S presidential election Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S democratic says denigrate secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency we further assess Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for president-elect Trump close quote you did not dispute the Trump ordered an influence campaign to influence the 2016 election in your report did you as I said yes or no threat no okay special counselor Mueller indicted 12 Russian Intelligence Officers in July 2018 isn't that right correct the 12 Intelligence Officers who indicted for attacking the Clinton campaign on page 55 of your report you acknowledge that the press conference in 2016 Donald Trump on camera said Russia if you're listening I hope you're able to find the 30 000 emails that are missing is that correct that's correct and two years later they'll sink Trump told the press that he believed Russian President Putin over his own intelligence officials when he told them Russia did not interfere during the 2016 elections uh season I see my times expired I yield back witness can respond if he chooses to chair now recognizes the gentleman from South Carolina Mr Frye for five minutes thank you Mr chairman we are here today to provide transparency finally to the American people seven years ago the FBI launched Crossfire hurricane the left's Brazen attempt to keep Donald Trump out of the White House this federal investigation funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign caused Americans to believe that then candidate Trump was colluding with Russia in order to win the 2016 presidential election Mr Durham has spent four years investigating this 480 Witnesses 6 million pages of documents 190 subpoenas and executing seven search warrants less than a month ago he completed this report um that it instigated the baseless investigation and launched a partisan attack on President Trump despite having no true justification to do this that was the FBI within three days of receiving the information from a diplomat in Australia the FBI opened a full-fledged investigation into the Trump campaign semester Durham let's get into this the FBI opened up Crossfire hurricane without speaking to the people who provided the initial information is that true that's correct the FBI opened Crossfire hurricane on a Sunday only three days after reviewing that information is that correct that's correct so just think about that for a moment an investigation a full investigation into a presidential campaign over a weekend Mr Durham the FBI opened Crossfire hurricane without interviewing any of the essential Witnesses is that true that's true and the FBI also opened up Crossfire hurricane without using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed to evaluate that evidence is that true that's true so think about that the FBI had never talked to the people who gave them the intelligence information they never examined their own Witnesses they never interviewed the witnesses they never corroborated the dossier Mr Durham if the FBI had done these things if they had done their homework would it have found that its own Russian experts had no information about President Trump being involved with Russian leadership or Russian intelligence officials yes so then was there adequate predication for the FBI to open Crossfire hurricane as a full investigation on July 31st and my view based on our investigation there was not a legitimate basis to open as a full investigation an assessment of something that had to be looked at gather information such as interviewing the people who provided the Papadopoulos information checking their own databases the databases of other intelligence agencies and the standard kinds of things that you would do in an investigation like this Mr I think it's safe to conclude based on that report and anyone who has read it that they did not have that adequate basis as you talked about to to launch this investigation let's move on to a second really troubling aspect of of your findings from the report I gathered that key FBI leaders all the way at the top were predisposed to go after candidate Trump this bias likely affected the conduct of FBI Personnel in this investigation is that true yes can you describe that for a moment how did confirmation bias play into this confirmation bias is uh was alluded to has to do with our human tendency to um accept things that we already think are true and to reject anything else in this instance there are any number of significant red flags that were raised they were simply ignored if there's evidence that was inconsistent with the narrative um they didn't pay attention to it they didn't explore it they didn't take the logical investigative steps that should have been taken let's see how real this bias was FB FBI Deputy assistant director Peter struck drafted and approved the crossfire hurricane opening communication is that correct that's correct and in your investigation your office discovered text messages between strong and Lisa Page who was a special assistant to the FBI director McCabe expressing strong bias against candidate Trump that's true for the record let me read aloud this this was generated by by staff but this would what would look there like their text messages on August 18 2016 page Texas struck Trump's not going to become president right right and struck responded by saying no no he's not we'll stop it it's clear that there was no evidence of Russia collusion with the Trump campaign in 2016. the American people deserve the truth and I'm proud to serve on this committee to uncover these these lies that were perpetuated for far too long with that Mr chairman with my remaining 30 seconds I will yield to you see if the chairman yield back we'll we'll uh we'll wait for my time we'll now recognize the gentlelady from California uh thank you Mr chairman and thank you Mr Durham for being here uh this morning uh the ranking member explored an item that I wanted to explore with you which is based on the uh information provided to the U.S government by Australia that a campaign aide had told one of their diplomats that the Russians had dirt on Clinton in the form of thousands of emails that and this is a quote from your report as an initial matter there's no question the FBI had an affirmative obligation to closely examine the Australian information so that's in your report and I think the issue might be preliminary versus full because you agree that there was an obligation to look at it based on that is that correct that's what you said you say based on that some of the premises of the question are inaccurate Papadopoulos did not tell no the question is do you disavow what you said in your report that you had an affirmative obligation the FBI to look at that the answer to that question but they had to look at it yes all right I want to take a look at some of the other things that I didn't find in your report in looking at the FBI's Behavior did you find any uh evidence that the FBI was taking a look at the at the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and their investigation of that and if so where is that in your report that's was outside the scope of what I was asked to do and and in the Mueller report we found he found that the campaign manager Mr manafort was giving inside information private polling data to the Russians that there was a meeting in Trump Tower with the president's son-in-law and his son where the Russians had promised they had dirt and the email from the president's son was something the effective so we love it the FBI look at that did you examine that and if so where is that in your report that is not something I was asked to look at and we didn't look at that I'm wondering did you take a look at how the FBI evaluated these alleged ties to Alpha Bank did you hire cyber experts to actually take a look at those potential or alleged ties yes well I didn't hired them they were FBI experts and where is that in your report um I can't it's in there I can find a page my colleagues can find the page but it is a entire section on Alpha Bank the white papers and the data that were provided by Mr Sussman to the FBI and then the subject my question was did you take a look did did you hire experts to evaluate the FBI's evaluation I did not hire experts to let me ask them what the expert said no let me ask another question you I thought it was a down a rabbit's hole but you and attorney general Barr went to Italy to take a look at some allegation about foreign servers and and Italian officials gave you evidence that they said linked Donald Trump to certain Financial crimes did the Attorney General ask you to investigate that matter that the Italians referred to you and and if so did you take an investigative steps and did you file charges or if not did you file a declination memo for decision not to charge in this case the questions outside the scope of what I think I'm authorized to talk about it's not part of the report I can tell you this that investigative steps War take in Grand Jury subpoenas were issued and it came to nothing I'd like to yield the balance of my time to my colleague from California Mr Schiff Term doj Policy provides that you don't speak about a pending investigation and yet you did didn't you um I'm not exactly sure when when the Inspector General issued a report saying that the investigation was properly predicated you spoke out in violation of Department Justice Department of Justice policy to criticize the inspector General's conclusions didn't you I issued a public statement I didn't do it anonymously I didn't do it through third persons there were nonetheless you violated apartment policy by issuing a statement while your investigation was ongoing didn't you I don't know that if I did then I did but I was not aware that I was violating some policy and you also sought to get the Inspector General to um change his conclusion did you not when he was concluding that the investigation properly predicated did you privately seek to intervene to change that conclusion this is outside the scope of the report but if you want to go there we as the Inspector General to take a look at the intelligence that's included in the classified appendix that you looked at and said that that ought to effect um portions of his report and you thought it was appropriate for you to intervene with an independent investigation by the Inspector General because he was reaching a conclusion you disagreed with you thought that was appropriate isn't right the Inspector General circulated a draft memo to a number of agencies and persons our group was one of them we were asked to review that draft and bring to his attention any concerns that we had or disagreements he refused to change his report just violated the chairman I insist on regular order well it's not even his time it's it's Miss lofgren's time so the gentleman yields back to miss Lofgren who's not here so the time has expired uh Mr Durham in the summer of 2016 did our government receive intelligence that suggested secretary Clinton had approved a plan to tie president Trump to Russia yes was that intelligence important enough for director Brennan to go brief the president of the United States the vice president of the United States the Attorney General of the United States and the director of the FBI yes and was that intelligence put then into a memorandum a referral memorandum yes and was that memorandum then given to director Comey and agent strzok that's who is addressed to yes did director Comey share that memorandum with the fisa court I'm sorry did he share that memorandum with the fisa court did director Comey do that I'm not aware of that if he did did he share with the with the lawyers preparing the fisa application not to my knowledge did he share with the agents on the case working the crossfire hurricane case no didn't share with the agents on the case can you tell the committee what happened when you took that referral memo and shared it with one of those agents specifically supervisory special agent number one we interviewed the first supervisor of the crossfire investigation the operational person we showed him the intelligence information he indicated he had never seen it before uh he immediately became uh emotional and got up and left the room with his lawyer spent some time in the hallway he came back um and ticked off wasn't he he was ticked off because this is something he should have had as an agent on the case is important information that the director of the FBI kept from the people doing the investigation the information was kept from him who's Charles Dolan Charles Dolan is a public relations person here in Washington DC he had prior involvement professional involvement with Russian government representing Russian government interests he was a person that was associated with Igor danchenko he was also buddies with the clintons wasn't he he had held positions when President Clinton was President in their campaign advisory to secretary Clinton's presidential campaign executive director of the Democrat Governors Association that's the same Charles Dolan we're talking about uh yes yeah wasn't he also a key source for information in the dossier he provided some information that was included Ritz Carlton stop the manafort stuff in the crossfire hurricane investigation in the Mueller investigation when the FBI interviewed Mr Dolan what did he have to say um to my knowledge they didn't interview Mr Dolan they didn't interview this guy source for the dossier key information the dossier buddies with the cleanse and they didn't talk to him no I mean we report on that because um even Christopher Steele in October 2016 identified Dolan as somebody that might have information I find it interesting they didn't talk to him what there were were there agents on the case who wanted to talk to Mr Dolan Mr Durham yes what happened to analyst number one she kept pushing to talk to Mr Dolan she was ultimately turned down what happened to her the day that she was turned out and said no no you're we're not talking to Dolan what happened to her um at her about the same time she was assigned to a different project they moved her they said we can't have this we can't have that we can't be looking into the Clinton's buddy a key source for the dossier they reassigned her and then what did she do she memorialized it she entered a memo to the file because she said some point the Inspector General is going to want to know this information I'm going to make it sure it's recorded contemporaneously she put it in the file that's I mean it's crazy they didn't talk to the to the key Source they kept key intelligence from the investigators this how bad this investigation was but here's the scary part I don't think anything has changed the day your report came out five weeks ago May 15th you got a letter Mr Durham addressed to you from the general counsel at the FBI Mr Jason Jones writes you this six page letter and he says not to worry everything is fine it's all been worked out at the FBI he even says on page two he says had the reforms implemented by current FBI leadership summarized below been in place in 2016. fayers detailed in your report never would have happened in the underlines it said this would never happen because the reforms we implemented 2019 and 2020 and then he says on page four one of the specific reforms he says FBI executive management has instructed investigations should be run out of the field and not from the headquarters that statement is not true five weeks ago the FBI wrote you and said everything has changed when in fact it hasn't and a statement in there is absolutely false and we know it's false because two weeks ago today we interviewed Stephen dantuano former head of the Washington field office Mr Durham and here's what he said in his transcript head of the Washington field office when the Trump classified document investigation began he said that case was handled differently than I would have expected it to be than any other case is handled we learned a lot of stuff from Crossfire hurricane that headquarters should not work the investigation it's supposed to be the field offices my concern is that the Department of Justice was not following these principles nothing is and that's the thing that scares me the most nothing has changed Mr Durham I'm just finished with this 60 of Americans now believe there's a double standard at the justice department you know why they believe that because there is that has got to change and I don't think more training more rules is going to do it I think we have to fundamentally change the fisa process and we have to use the Appropriations process to limit how American tax dollars are spent at the Department of Justice I yield back gentlelady from Texas is recognized Miss Jackson Lee good morning good morning you uh value the independence of a special counsel do you not I do in a letter to attorney general Garland submitting your report you asked him to allow you to continue investigation unencumbered you said we want to thank you and your office for permitting our inquiry to proceed independently without interference as you assure the members of the Judiciary Committee would be the case during your confirmation hearings to become Attorney General of the United States you value your special counsel status so it is accurate that attorney general Garland let you proceed on your case as you wish is that true that's true and uh yes or no it was important to you that as a special counsel your investigation was supposed to be independent is that correct that's correct because special counsels and special attorneys are supposed to be independent right special counselors yes an independent they're supposed to be Independence is that correct special counsel is independent of the attorney generals thank you why is that the case in your view um so there can be some confidence in the part of people looking at the investigation that has done decisions uh which were made thank you special counsels and special attorneys are supposed to be for the American public to present the potential of a conflict of interest between the government and a sensitive investigation by appointing a special counsel attorney general is supposed to be finding an unbiased party to do the investigating this was at a very high level this was dealing with potential presidential candidates this was dealing with Russia collusion and undermining the very fabric of the United States of America and they are supposed to leave that person alone as you commended attorney general Garland for doing so unlike attorney general Garland attorneys in a bar was very involved in your investigation wasn't he he was not involved as a when I became a special counsel prior to that I worked under the supervision of the Attorney General he was very involved was he not let me just bring you to this point our established early on that he was very interested in your investigation on June 8 2018 he sent then Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein an unsolicited memo arguing that the Mueller investigation should not be able to force the president to submit to interrogation about obstruction in his text message sending the memo Barr wrote that he feels very deeply about some of the issues taking shape in a Mueller matter how often did you meet with attorney general Barr in 2019. before I was special counsel Maybe well would him himself you know maybe every two weeks three weeks something of that sort and then sometimes more free and then after after it became uh I had been appointed special counsel I don't know I mean I'm sure that I saw him but I didn't meet with him a lot investigation no it's not a lot how often did you speak or text with the attorney general this is during the investigation I wouldn't during these when I special counsel or prior to that special counsel sir um I don't know how many times I texted with him well according to now public records bar scheduled at least 18 meetings or calls with you between 2019 March and October 2019 and you and he text messages with each other frequently didn't you text messages yeah I was appointed a special counsel in October so before that yeah there were probably any number of uh text messages after that I don't know here are some examples on August 31 2019 he sent you a message that said John strongly suggests that you a lot of interesting things on February 6 2020 you text him sir just emerging from a skiff are you open to a call earlier this morning on February 14 2020 bar text you call me when you get a chance on March 19 2020 bar text can I call you later and you responded most certainly on March 27 2020 you sent him the best phone number for you all during the time of being special counsel and here's an interesting one on September 24 2019 the day that the speaker Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into president Trump attorney general bar text you call me ASAP and later that day you text back do you have a minute for a quick call Durham what was the purpose of this call Mr Durham were you discussing the impeachment inquiry I never had any conversation with the attorney general Barr about the impeachment inquiry Mr Durham this is an awful lot of direct interactions with the attorney general for impose supposedly independent Council prosecuted during these messages uh that sound to you like appropriate interactions do they sound like appropriate interactions between an attorney general and a prosecutor investigating the administration sure before uh his point in special counsel I worked for the Attorney General of the United States um but you subsequently became special counsel I know that right subsequently became not only did you interact with the attorney general frequently you also regularly engaged with one of his top deputies said to charm what was your relationship with Mr du term and assist the United States Attorney in the eastern district of New York he works with one of my son's friends and he at the time was working in the office of Attorney General it seems that rather than having an individual independent investigation there was a lot of interaction between the Attorney General lady which shows that generous with the time attorney general was actively directing your words the gentle lady yields back I think this is amazing Mr Durham you had eight text messages with the Attorney General of the United States and 11 months time period that's that's amazing I can't believe that Mr chairman parliamentary inquiry whose time is that that you were speaking that was that time that was yield to me earlier that I yielded back I think that's a selection Mr chairman that is that is absolutely inappropriate I was just pointing out something that I think is so Mr chairman that is not appropriate and we will go to Mr Klein for five minutes the gentleman from George or from Virginia excuse me is recognized thank you Mr Durham your your report is not just sobering as you stated it's it's outrageous and deeply troubling can you confirm these several main points that it that it found the FBI did not have an adequate basis on which to launch Crossfire hurricane correct that's correct the FBI failed to examine all available exculpatory evidence correct correct FBI leadership continued the investigation even when case agents were unable to verify the evidence correct that's correct the FBI did not interview key Witnesses in crossfire hurricane correct correct and individuals within the FBI abused their Authority Under the foreign intelligence surveillance act correct correct the FBI immediately opened Crossfire hurricane as a full counterintelligence investigation what other options could the FBI have taken rather than immediately opening such an investigation attorney general Edward Levy essentially created the guidelines in this area these three divisions of Assessments preliminary and then full although there were different names at the time that it's evolved over time and become more particular in this instance the information that they had received from Papadopoulos about a suggestion of a suggestion and not anything about emails but just the suggestion of a suggestion was sufficient and would have been would have required the FBI to take a look at what is this about the opening is an assessment and then you would analytically go try to collect intelligence that either supports or refutes or explains that information that's the whole purpose of it you assess it and then you can move to a preliminary investigation and if the evidence Bears it out you go to a full investigation where you have all the tools available including the most intrusive physical surveillance and electronics balance of U.S citizens and here they just immediately want to open it is a full investigation without ever having talked to the Australians or gathered other evidence right so investigators relied on misstatements by the confidential human Source ignored exculpatory statements made by Papadopoulos in submitting the face application to surveil Carter page correct that's correct is it true that an FBI employee fabricated this evidence can you expand on that that fabrication and the Reliance to support that uh application in connection with the one of the extensions the final extension renewal of the five Zone Carter page one of the agents who had come on board wanted to be certain that there was some information that was their information as to whether our Carter page had been a source of information at the CIA and pressed Kevin kleinsmith in the general counsel's office of the FBI on that point Klein Smith got a hold of people at another government agency Intelligence Agency on the issue and that person indicated not indicated said that yes in the FBI parlance uh Carter page was the source and put that in writing when Klein Smith talked to the agent who was saying we want to be sure on this is was he or was he not a source Klein Smith said no he said he's not he said did we get that in writing Klein Smith said yes and they said well I want to see it and then Klein Smith altered the other government agency document to reflect this it to say that page was not a source when he in fact was a source that's the gist of it what did the investigators mean when they said they hope the Returns on the Carter page Vice application would quote self-corroborate and there's another Troublesome thing maybe AJ was they're saying well if we can get on um surveillance electronic surveillance of page then we'll find out essentially whether we really do have probable cause or not we would self-corroborate in that sense our investigators supposed to corroborate information before or after it's included in a fisa application yeah um you have to have that before you intrude in the Liberties of American citizens in fact the FBI is required to follow its Woods procedures at which the FBI adopted to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in fice applications correct that's correct and did Fisk did the Fisk ever criticize the FBI's handling of the page fights application yes and what were some of those concerns that they raised well ultimately the Fisk I should an order a memorandum indicating that um had the information and it was disclosed in the investigation done by Inspector General Horowitz a very thorough job and a good job in a well-written report had they known that at least the second and third renewal applications with none of established probable cause and I think the bureau I'm sorry the Department of Justice acknowledges that as well if the Fisk had all of the information that I think is included in this report I think it's highly doubtful that there would have ever been an application submitted and if it was submitted that the Fisk would have ever granted that order thank you yield back yields back the gentleman from Tennessee is recognized thank you Mr chair Mr Durham you were appointed by whom um who recommended you and appointed you as the special counsel no as a U.S attorney as U.S attorney um as president Trump at the time with two Democratic senators from Connecticut supporting the nomination Mr Trump appointed you believe Mr Trump has pretty good judgment on people and their abilities and their character I'm not going to characterize Mr Trump or my thoughts about Mr Trump Mr Barr appointed you special counsel is that correct that's correct Mr Trump has called Mr Barr gutless Pig a coward and a rhino which of those is correct which isn't in my experience none of those are correct so Mr Trump isn't that good of a expert on character and judging people in your opinion he isn't because he's he's none of those he's not a gutless pig but Trump says he is that's outside the scope of my report also outside the scope you report apparently also outside of the scope of your report or was was apparently the meeting at Trump Tower between the Russians and the Trump boys where they talked about allegedly adoptions but we know is really about sanctions how is that outside of your report yeah I'm not hey I'm sorry I didn't quite follow the Trump Tower attorney Uh Russian attorney came to the Trump and Donald Trump Jr was just wonderful wonderful we love it we love it uh Russian decisions to interact with the Trump campaign and influence the actions of the campaign allegedly for adoption law but really for sanctions relief the FBI came up with that did they not I'm a meeting took place at Trump Towers on June 9th the lures I understand it was that there was information derogatory information on Clinton that was going to be provided they met and is I believe in a hipsy report the hipsy report fully laid that out that the discussion then at Trump Towers was about adoption not about anything relating to Mrs Clinton it's totally it was totally about sanctions you're trying to get rid of the magnitsky law adoptions is a ruse should you not have gone it looked into that and seen what the Russians were wanting in return for that because that's the biggest thing Putin wanted at the time was to get Trump to relieve his people of magnitsky sanctions and I think that um director Mueller investigated that and I believe one of your house committees um explored that that was outside the scope of what we were looking at and and it was outside the scope of your authority to look at Columbia and and manafort meeting and exchanging polling data was that I'm sorry I'm not following you manage remember manafort the crook that managed the campaign for nothing but got tons of money from the from different Russian people over the years that y'all pardoned your Mr Barr later got helped him with the commutation or pardon I think pardon manafort I know who Miss manafort is yeah he met with kalimnik and they discussed polling data you don't know about that I know that Mr Columbia met with a lot of people including people he met with manafort and discussed polling data do you not know about that I'm aware of that all right why did you then not think it was a good idea for you to look into it and see if the FBI wasn't correct and that there was collusion connection between Russia and the Trump campaign to elect Trump my assignment was to look at the conduct of the intelligence Community agencies not to conduct a separate investigation that was done by the house or that's done by the senator was done by director Mueller you don't think that if there was if the intelligence communities the FBI others came up with this information and did good work that that should be part of your balance report yeah well I'm I'm not I'm not following your question I apologize well I tried to follow your report the Trump Junior would have called it a a nothing Burger you got no convictions you got nothing it was all set up to hurt the Mueller report which was correct and was redacted to hurt the bidens and to help Trump and you were a part of it you have a good reputation you had a good reputation that's why the two Democrats supported you but the longer you hold on to Mr Barr and this report that Mr Barr gave you a special counsel your reputation will be damaged as everybody's reputation who gets involved with Donald Trump is damaged he's damaged goods there's no good dealing with him because you will end up on the bottom of a pyre I yield back the balance of my time sure we presume the gentleman's undecided on how he feels about the former president yeah gentlemen the witness can respond yeah my concern about my reputation is with the people who I respect and my family and my Lord and I'm perfectly comfortable with my reputation with them sir well said God bless you um the um the the the chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin uh Mr Fitzgerald Mr Durham uh thank you for being here today on October 3rd 2016 the FBI met with Christopher Steele who confessed to relying heavily on a Russian national living in Washington DC as a sub source that subsource was later identified as Igor denchenko steel not only used danchenko to create the dossier but according to your report Steele was unable to corroborate any of the substantial allegations made in the dossier is that correct that's correct even after the FBI offered steel a million dollars if somehow he could actually follow through and and underscore some of those specific items is that correct that's correct so the FBI interviewed Dan changko and steals subsource the steel sub source for three days from January 24th through January 26 of 17. however according to your report dancheco could not provide any evidence corroborating allegations contained in the dossier is that correct that's a fact and yet the FBI paid danchenko 220 thousand dollars during this time as a confidential human source is that correct that's correct and did the FBI propose making continued future payments to Dan changel totaling more than three hundred thousand dollars that's correct the anchenko becomes a confidential human source that enlists his own subsource Charles Dolan as was brought up earlier who was a Democrat operative and had previously served as an advisor to Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign is that is that your understanding is that correct that's correct did danchenko ever disclose his relationship with Charles Dolan to the FBI that you're aware of he did not during the interviews that were conducted in January subsequently he was specifically asked in an interview with his then Handler you know Charles Dolan you listen to the recording he hesitates for some awkward period of time and I said yes I know who Dolan is so he acknowledged knowing Mr Dolan do you think it had anything to do with he was simply worried that disclosing a Democrat operative as a substores might jeopardize the whole payroll deal that the FBI had set up with them and we lay these facts out as we do other facts in the report and leave it to others through to all the reasonable conclusions or inferences from those facts very good of a hundred of the hundreds of individuals who the FBI interviewed through the course of Crossfire hurricane and Miller's special Council investigation um this came up earlier was Charles Dolan ever interviewed by the FBI it was not do you have any insight as to why the FBI would not interview him or Overlook such a high-profile person in this whole investigation and that's something or a mystery going back to October 3rd according to the Ayla the assistant legal attest Schaefer the bureau when he first oh I'm sorry going back to July 5th when he first met with Steele um Steele had indicated to him at the time that HC was aware of what he still was doing when the bureau went back to interview Steele on October 3rd about matters relating to Crossfire hurricane Steel in fact had provided the bureau with Dolan's name as somebody who might have information relating to Trump but he's never interviewed um so yeah I'm not I don't know why they never interviewed Trump I'm sorry why they didn't interview Mr Mr Dolan but they didn't um the explanation that was given to the um intelligence analyst who's referred to in the report essentially was that that would be outside the scope of their mission outside their role very good you note in your report on page 168 that one of the analysts of the Miller team was told quote to cease all research and Analysis related to Dolan unquote this was the same analyst who according to your footnote prepared a timeline in the event she were later interviewed about her role on the Miller special counsel investigation is that correct that's correct Igor donchenko had also relied on other sub-sources Nami namely Olga galkina and Sergey Millen when the FBI interviewed those two sub sources were either of them able to verify the information in the steel dossier well speaking first to million we interviewed Milian as well he's outside the country he claims to fear for his safety and whatnot but he adamantly denied ever talking to denchenko providing any information akin to what was in the steel reporting in fact he's a supporter of President Trump which made it seem highly unlikely that he would be providing derogatory information to somebody he had never met or spoken to so that says to uh Milian with respect to his uh galkina Ms galkina was somebody Who provided some information that anchenko provided some information to Dolan I think it was cheer him out of time gentlemen gentleman yields back the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia Thank you Mr chairman special counsel Durham in March of 2019 before releasing the Mueller report to the public attorney general Barr released a statement mischaracterizing its findings and conclusions and shortly thereafter attorney general Barr announced that he was investigating the FBI for investigating Putin's interference in the 2016 presidential election and then in April or May of 2019 attorney general Barr appointed you to lead that investigation isn't that correct he did appoint me to leave the investigation yes sir and then in October of 2020 attorney general Barr appointed you as an independent special counsel so that you could continue investigating the origins of the Russia Russia Russia investigation once Trump was out of office correct I support I was appointed special counsel in October yes and by that time your investigation had already cost the American taxpayers over six and a half million dollars isn't that correct um at that point probably not no well at this point how much has it cost as I understand the figure having looked at it it's around six and a half million dollars and and after three and a half years of investigation and six and a half million dollars of taxpayer money spent your investigation led to the indictment of only three individuals correct that's correct well it's indictment and contrary to the fervent prayers of some on this panel uh former FBI director Jim Comey and former CIA director John Brennan were not among those three who were indicted isn't that correct that's correct and to the extreme disappointment of some on this panel your investigation failed to produce indictments against Hillary Clinton correct that's correct didn't indict Barack Obama that's correct didn't but indict Joe Biden that's correct couldn't even indict Hunter Biden we didn't investigate Mr Hunter Biden and of your three prosecutions one ended with a guilty plea to an unrelated uh uh unrelated to the origins of the FBI investigation and that individual received a probated sentence with no jail time correct parts of that are correct and the other two men you prosecuted went to trial on the charges uh charging they were accused of lying to the FBI and both were slam dunk acquitted isn't that correct they were acquitted and none of the individuals you prosecuted were ever charged with being part of a hoax or a fraud or a Witch Hunt or a politically motivated deep state conspiracy against Donald Trump isn't that correct I would not say that that's accurate you mean you did charge somebody with being a part of a hoax we charged Mr Sussman with having knowingly provided false information to the FBI regarding Alpha Bank he was acquitted though right after that wasn't your question well he was Mr Sussman was acquitted after you charged him correct grand jury found he was found innocent by a jury of uh by a unanimous jury of 12. that's not true well what's true is the grand jury found probable cause to indict Mr Sussman a jury of his childhood has acquitted him though correct and a trial you're not you're not going to disagree on that are you uh Mr Durham I'm going to try to answer your question as well let me ask you this because in your report you uh related or alluded to allegations of misconduct against Mr Sussman and Mr danchenko as if those allegations had been proven have been proven true at trial when in fact both those individuals had been acquitted and your allegations disproven do you believe that it's ethical to State something as a fact in an official government report when the court system found that you could not prove those allegations well I think if you read the report you'd see that we talked about the results of the trial and we included all of the evidence that we had available unfortunately not all of which was admitted at trial well let me ask you about Mr Durham you closed your investigation after you failed to find that the FBI investigation into Putin's interference in the 2016 election was politically motivated and was a deep state conspiracy against ex-president Trump you are unable to prove that that was true that is not what I was investigating well but you did not find that that was true correct you found it to be false as a matter of fact if you if um that correct you have a chance to read the reports Mr chairman the time is expired because the gentleman will be allowed to answer the question someone can respond time to gentleman from George's expired the witness can respond is saying if you if you read the report we lay the facts out in the report as of these matters I'm not here to talk about Mr Trump I'm not here to talk about deep state or whatever other characterizations you made this report is factual nobody's raised any issues as to whether it's factually inaccurate in any way people can draw their own conclusions based on those facts yep Mr Jim you've been at it an hour and a half here we could keep going if you can keep going uh just let us know when if and when you I'm fine whatever you're not recognize the gentleman from California Mr Isa Mr Durham uh each of us on the panel has a different background and a different uh idea of what's best to get out of this report and the work that you've done so Faithfully not just for the last four years but for your entire career so I'm going to start off by asking is it true that you have the Attorney General's exceptional service award uh decoration for your service that's true is it also true that you have the Attorney General's distinguished service award that's true and uh who awarded you that you know that goes back in times attorney general Reno had no no 2012. oh I'm sorry in 2012. I'm trying to remember what award it was I don't frankly reply just just for the record it's Eric Holder yeah that was that was the CIA investigation that's right it's uh attorney general holder it was and uh you uh you had to deal with some of the most despicable people and and and do the things that we do sometimes when wrong has been done uh so I want to thank you for that it seems like for your entire career you've been a go-to for difficult situations uh uh not necessarily the standard I'm trying to rise quickly award but in fact you're a career investigator and uh I would imagine pretty closely that you've got your 82 percent overall but I want to talk about something that I'm not qualified to talk about but I can ask you are there what you would call unindicted co-conspirators in this in other words are there people at all levels who did things wrong who were not charged with crimes because of the limitation of the ability to bring charges against them for what they did even if it was wrong I brought charges where we thought in good faith that we could prove a case Beyond A Reasonable Doubt evidence beyond that of course sure so in your experience as a career prosecutor when when people break the rules and it changes the outcome of something like launching an investigation without a predicate like the president the vice president the attorney general and a host of others FBI director knowing that this had been started with a false predicate knowing that Hillary Clinton's campaign with her approval in fact had authorized this not OP research but this weaponizing of a false claim when they did that they in fact changed the outcome whether criminal or not of many things including certainly some things in voters Minds isn't that correct I mean generally speaking there are lots of bad things that people do that aren't crimes um we can only charge those that aren't crying I appreciate that so when people are constantly making this point that somehow you didn't put enough people in jail you gave us 300 pages that give us a responsibility and as I said I I'm not going to try to pretend that I'm the smart lawyer up here at all or even a lawyer but I am somebody that understands organization oversight and transparency in your report you you do note the changes made and so on but unless we make changes in transparency to outside individuals who can be counted on to be Ombudsman to the process isn't it true that if the president the vice president the attorney general and a host of other top people at the FBI and Department of Justice choose in the future to push to make to make outcomes occur that would not occur according to their own printed rule that no rule per se is going to change that I think that's true as we say in the report ultimately what this comes down to is the Integrity of the people who are doing the job that they adhere into their oath or are they not adhering to those are they following the law are they not following the law well in my 20 plus years on this side of the Deus what I've found is that people when the light of day is shed on them follow the rules much better than they aren't so for all of us up here I want to thank you for your contributions and your service hopefully I know you're going to gone into retirement but hopefully in the future as we begin looking at reforms that can be counted on and believed by the American people at reforms that create better transparency that reforms that do not allow fisa judges to be misled by people with an agenda that you'll be available to at least give us some of the guidance from your Decades of knowing how it's done right at the Department of Justice and Mr chairman I want to thank you for your Indulgence in so many people I will not take excess time I believe this Witnesses 300 plus Pages speaks extremely well for itself and I yield back gentleman yields back the gentleman from California is recognizing Durham just so people remember what this is all about let me ask you the Mueller investigation revealed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in sweeping and systemic fashion correct that's correct and Russia did so through a social media campaign that favored Donald Trump and disparaged Hillary Clinton correct the report says yes and Mueller found that a Russian intelligence service hacked computers associated with the Clinton campaign and then released the stolen documents publicly is that right that report speaks for itself as well Mueller also reported that though he could not establish the crime of conspiracy Beyond a reasonable doubt he also said quote a statement that the investigation did not establish certain facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts and also appears in the report doesn't it it's the language of that effect yes in fact you cited that very statement in your own report did you not as a way of distinguishing between proof Beyond A Reasonable Doubt and evidence that falls short of proof Beyond A Reasonable Doubt correct as an illustration of this both Mueller and Congressional investigations found that Trump's campaign chairman Paul manafort was secretly meeting with an operative linked to Russian intelligence named Constantine kalimnik correct that's my understanding yes and that manafort while chairman of the Trump campaign gave that Russian intelligence operative the campaign's internal polling data correct that's what I've read in the news yes and that manafort provided this information to Russian intelligence while Russian intelligence was engaged in that social media campaign and the release is stolen documents to help the Trump campaign correct you may be getting Beyond uh depth of my knowledge but well let me say very simply while manafort the campaign chairman for Donald Trump was giving this Russian intelligence officer internal campaign polling data Russian intelligence was helping the Trump campaign weren't they I I don't I don't know that you really don't know those very basic facts of the investigation I know the general um facts yes do I know that particular fact myself no I mean I know that I've read that in the media anywhere uh Mr Durham that Mueller and Congressional investigations also revealed that Don Jr was informed that a Russian official was offering the Trump campaign quote very high level and sensitive information unquote that would be incriminating if Hillary Clinton was part of quote Russia and its government support of Mr Trump you aware of that sure people get phone calls all the time from individuals who claim to have information like that really the son of a presidential candidate gets calls all the time from before in government offering dirt on their important opponent is that what you're saying I don't think this is unique in your experience so you you have other instances of the Russian government offering dirt on a presidential candidate to the presidential candidate's son is that what you're saying would you repeat the question you said that it's not uncommon to get offers of help from a hostile foreign government a presidential campaign directed at the president's son you really stand by that Mr Durham saying that it that people can make phone calls um making uh claims all the time that you may have experienced you're really trying to diminish the significance of what happened here and the secret meeting that the president said Sons set up and Trump Tower to receive that incriminating information trying to diminish the significance of that Mr I'm not trying to diminish it at all but I think the more complete story is that they met and it was a reason they didn't talk about Mrs Clinton uh and and you think it's insignificant that he had a secret meeting with the Russian delegation for the purpose of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton and the only disappointment to express that meeting was that the dirt they got wasn't better you don't think that's significant I don't think that that was a well-advised thing to do oh oh not not well advised all right well that's that's the understatement of the year so you think it's perfectly appropriate or or maybe just ill-advised for a presidential campaign to secretly meet with a Russian delegation to get dirt on their opponent you would merely say that's inadvisable yeah if you're asking me would I do it I hope I wouldn't do it but as it was not illegal it was it was stupid foolish ill-advised well it is illegal to conspire to get incriminating opposition research from a hostile government that is of financial value to a campaign wouldn't that violate campaign laws I don't know I don't know all those facts to be true well your report Mr Durham doesn't dispute anything Mueller found did it no our object our aim was not to dispute director Marlow I have the greatest regard highest regard for director Mueller he's a patriot the only distinguishment between his investigation and yours is he refused to bring charges where he couldn't prove guilty on a reasonable doubt and you did I yield back gentleman yields back the gentleman from Colorado is recognized thank you Mr chairman Mr Durham I want to as a fellow Alum of doj I want to thank you for your service number one and number two welcome you to Congress it's a real pleasure to be here I want to ask you some questions about uh fisa and some of your most recent experiences as the special counsel and and what your specific advice would be I guess I I am concerned with the conclusions in your report and I just want to have been mentioned several times here but uh in your opening statement you talk about lack of investigative discipline a failure to take logical investigative steps and bias it's appears to me that the lack of an investigative discipline and the failure to take logical investigative steps are a result of bias is that fair it's I think that that's fair when you look at what uh is involved here this is a presidential campaign um it's not a run-of-the-mill uh investigation this is um so highly sensitive it could affect the outcome of a presidential election and the future of the nation you would expect that the discipline that would have been followed would have been higher than ever and that didn't happen here the sort of analytical rigor the discipline and how we investigate criminal matters that was just absent here in large measure fair to say that there was a rush to judgment I'm sorry fair to say that there was a rush to judgment in other words the Judgment of uh proceeding with the investigation before following proper procedure has been alluded to here the information that they had received from the Australian diplomats not Australian intelligence or law enforcement about Australian diplomats about something that was said at a bar within three days of that information having been received at FBI headquarters the deputy director of the FBI according to Mr strzok told him to immediately open that and it was opened as a full investigation on a weekend with Mr strzok not only writing the opening electronic communication opening memo but approving that memo as well and this is the same Mr strzok who we saw the text message from that had a clear bias regarding president Trump it's the same person yes and how long did director Comey serve in the FBI before he became director and I'm not saying Department of Justice I'm saying FBI right my knowledge he was not in the FBI prior to becoming director and he promoted the people Andy McKay Peter struck others to the position and headquarters and then dealt with them there is that fair he would have certainly had a role in the advancement of people in the upper management of the FBI yes my concern is that the the bias that has been demonstrated there whether it has been eradicated or dealt with could exist in any of these agencies and these agencies have access to very sensitive information information that we and Congress allow for counterterrorism counterintelligence activities and it really goes around the Constitution because it does not deal with U.S citizens and I'm talking about the fisa rules now uh have you heard of backdoor searches I've heard the term yes sir and it refers to the ability of an agency to look at a U.S Citizen's Communications because the communication was with a foreign individual and it was recorded because that foreign individual was being looked at is that fair that's fair and the uh if there was this bias in an agency like the FBI um that that we saw previously and they wanted to go after a U.S citizen they could use that technique to go after that Citizen and my question to you is how do we prevent that how do we in Congress take a look at fisa try to maintain the National Security interests but at the same time protect U.S citizens from a rogue agency a biased agency or agent I shouldn't say agency and condemn everyone but but individuals in the agency how do we protect American citizens from what could occur and let me give you another quick example uh going out and buying infamous Nation from private data sellers to to obtain information that you couldn't obtain with a search warrant because you don't have probable cause those techniques are all available under fisa what should we do you know that's clearly beyond my um my background and experience these are very complicated uh questions particularly when we know the adversaries are doing the same thing and you know what what do we do under those circumstances I think you've got a very tough job in figuring out how how do you balance the Liberties of the American people and protect the Liberties American people while at the same time protecting um the country and on the nation and the people of the United States um I don't feel qualified really to provide you with any um helpful information along those lines but I know that it is a serious issue it's a serious concern I thank you and I yield back gentleman yields back uh before going to the general from California generally from Texas has the unanimous content I think okay Mr chairman uh I asked unanimous consent to submit records from the Department of Justice reflecting meetings with the U.S attorney John Durham these records were in response to American oversight's requests for doj communications between the officers of the Attorney General and the deputy attorney general and the Durham or his first assistant Financial consent the places in the record of this hearing it's not objection so ordered this chairman of the unanimous California the chairman you and your colleagues have continually cited to Steve de Union's transcribed interviews using selected statements taken out of context I move for unanimous consent to enter the entire transcript into the record so the American public Can See For Itself exactly what he said yeah we will work on that yeah we'll work on that we don't want to we gotta we'll talk with the chairman we want to make that fully available Mr chairman you're connecting to a unanimously sent request then to somebody Mr chairman I object okay so if I understand correctly Mr chairman you're happy to decide selected portions of the transcript out of context people you're not happy Mr chairman there's an objection Is there further action you don't want the American public to see this Mr Nice roll call vote please yeah there's no vote on that there's I just want to I just want to clarify for the gentleman uh we want to put the transcript out there's a couple we got a little work to do on certain names that have to be redacted for for obvious reasons but um yeah we want to we definitely put the transcripts the minority to make sure that happens I want I want I thought it was an amazing interview by Mr dantuano the former head the Washington field office we want that information out to the public and we'll make sure it happens can I suggest the chairman that you grant the request subject to redactions to protect personally private information without objection somewhere thank you very much gentlemen from California is is you have accepted my submission I didn't hear that right away thank you thank you gentleman from California is recognized Mr Durham uh many of my Maga colleagues want you to be someone who you are not and to say something that you clearly won't and so I want to just start by thanking you for your many years of service to our country as a federal prosecutor I want to talk a little bit more about the independence of a special counsel and just clarify you did send multiple texts to the attorney general after you were appointed a special counsel did you ever text message with attorney general Garland once he took over as Attorney General no um attorney general Garland and me communicate through the principal Deputy attorney general Mr wine uh weinsteiner did you ever travel overseas with attorney general Garland no with the attorney general but I didn't travel overseas with him and President Biden through the Attorney General could have had you removed fired is that right um I'm sure he could have and you stayed on I completed my Dharma special counsel was there anyone you wanted to indict that you were prohibited from indicting by attorney general Garland no so if you wanted to you could have indicted Hillary Clinton but you never asked is that right if I had the evidence um yeah he could have for sure if you wanted to indict President Biden you could have asked right yeah that was not part of our mission we weren't really looking at that but if you could have indicted director Comey you could have asked is that right and you didn't yeah the attorney general attorney general Garland had never asked me not to indict somebody great so I just want to get clear to my colleagues you had all the power in the world to indict anyone that you had evidence to indict and you were never blocked from doing it that's correct that's correct I also want to compare you to the last major special counsel investigation that we have you agree special counsel Mueller charged dozens of individuals and you indicted three is that correct indicted to and another a third pleaded guilty right and special Council Mueller had dozens of convictions Summit trial but no defendant was outright acquitted is that right in the Mueller investigation outright acquitted across the board every charge acquitted right I don't believe there are any acquittals I'm not sure there were dozens of convictions there were dozens of their yeah more than a dozen people who are indicted you were wise earlier to not weigh in on Donald Trump's character you are under oath after all um but did anything in your report prove false that Russians met with Trump's family during the campaign at Trump Tower after an offer of dirt on Hillary Clinton anything prove that that meeting didn't happen I don't have any evidence that that did not happen anything in your proof false that in the 2016 campaign Donald Trump tried and concealed from the public a real estate deal he was seeking in Moscow I don't know anything about that there's nothing in the report about it it's not something we investigated anything in your proof false that Donald Trump publicly asked Russia to hack Hillary's emails and then hours later they did my record if you're referring to um did you prove that Donald Trump not say at a press conference Russia if you're listening you should get Hillary's emails did you prove that he didn't say that yeah no we didn't okay didn't investigate did you prove false in the 16 campaign that Trump's campaign manager gave polling data to a spy for a Russian intelligence service we didn't investigate that anything in your report say that Donald Trump in 2016 acted the way that Americans would want a presidential candidate to act with regard to Russia I'm sorry could you repeat are you signing off on the way Donald Trump acted with Russia in 2016. yeah I report uh doesn't address that and you agree that Russia interfered in the 2016 election agree that there's some substantial evidence to show that thank you Mr my Maga colleagues want you to be someone you're not and they want you to say something you won't they want you to join the law firm of insurrection LLC which incidentally and probably appropriately is chaired by a guy who never passed the bar exam and you're wise not to do that you see my colleagues today they are making themselves footnotes and foot soldiers in the history books that will Chronicle Donald Trump's corruption and I yield my remaining time to Mr Schiff returning to your decision to speak out during the penalty of your investigation [Music] did you have staff on your team advise you against making statements during the Penance of your investigation they didn't advise me either way no any of your staff raise ethical concerns about your speaking out either in an interim report or after the Inspector General investigation any of you your staff raise ethical concerns when you're doing so not that I recall no it raised a technical concern no not that I'm aware of do they raise concerns with your speaking out during the penalty of the investigation Simon the gentleman has expired the witness can respond I'm sorry did any of your staff raise concerns about your speaking out during the pendency of your investigation in contrast to doj policy not that I recall thank you gentlemen yields back generally from Florida is recognized good morning Mr Durham just complete that answer Warren but I don't want to lay any blame at their I made that decision to make a statement they they were not involved in it a friend of mine a um a very good lawyer an honest person why did she resign that's why we brought her on why did she resign the gentleman's time has expired that the gentleman answer the question if you'd like Mr chairman who's in charge here because it's not Mr Schiff I don't say it's it's it's uh the ladies time from Florida good morning Mr Durham good morning as a former Federal prosecutor I want to begin by telling you how much I appreciate your work that of your team and your presence here today and you may Begin by answering the prior question if you wish with respect to Ms Danny I have the greatest respect for her she's a friend of mine she's very well educated she's an honest person we had some disagreements on issues and I don't really have any comment uh beyond that I'm not going to discuss the internal management and decision making I'll tell you this that every agent and every lawyer who worked on this project had a full voice in the decisions that were going forward I made the final decisions thank you Mr Durham I'd like to focus on the department of Justice's procedures as to fisa Applications when that process is conducted appropriately to begin with so fisa surveillance application must include an affidavit from a federal law enforcement officer correct that's correct and that affidavit must demonstrate cause to believe that the target of the surveillance is an agent of a foreign power is that also right right if it relates to a U.S citizen it has to be that they're a knowing agent if it's a non-us person a knowing element is not required and it is intended that that affidavit should rely upon reasonable trustworthy information is it not that's correct right and in some cases in including the case of Carter page those affidavits that information can include the use of information obtained from a confidential human Source correct that's correct and when information from a confidential human source is included would you agree that it's important that material related to the reliability or trustworthiness of that confidential human source is disclosed within the affidavit yes and I believe you testified here earlier today that in this case information in that Carter page application related to the reliability and credibility of the confidential human Source was not included in these in these applications is that right I think I believe that's correct would you tell us in your experience in your many years working with the Department why is it important that that type of information is included and disclosed to both Federal prosecutors and to the court there's um when when matters are submitted to the courts for a reason or to a judge and still let an independent judicial officer uh weigh the question so whether probable cause exists or not and providing that information to Independent objective judicial officers judicial magistrates if there's confidential human Source information that's being provided it's important for the person the judge who's reviewing this to know what's the basis of the person's knowledge is it hearsay or do they have personal knowledge as an example and then whether or not there's some track record or basis to believe that the information would be credible coming from this person and of course at this stage of the proceeding the person who's the subject of the investigation has no idea that this application is even being made or considered or reviewed by the court in most cases so it's solely less rest with the government the responsibility to ensure that this power that the surveillance power that's being used is being done in a way that is appropriate and compliant with the law that's correct and you mentioned something earlier about that in this case agents immediately move to the most intrusive investigative means that were available referring of course to the interception of live communications correct that's correct in this instance the bureau almost immediately when they opened it as full investigations was the umbrella case um across our hurricane and then the four sub-files they immediately uh went to try to get visor coverage um on Papadopoulos which they weren't able to do and then Carter page and some of the techniques for LA law enforcement you know there have other things they can do to collect surveillance information short of this interception of communications like pole cameras pin registers trap and Trace trash poles correct are there many other things that in investigations are often utilized prior to taking this step of attempting to intercept live communications right those are typically building blocks for electronic surveillance So based on your testimony so far what we're hearing is that here a fisa application was pursued without disclosing some relevant information to prosecutors or the court without following standard procedural rules utilizing investigative techniques that that were the most intrusive without first exhausting other techniques and instead pursuing the most invasive method possible from the outside against Mr Page that's essentially correct yes now testimony that is identified during your investigation they were not addressed they would result in National Security risks and continued public lack of confidence in our institutions of justice that there were no overnight fixes but we needed accountability standards and consequences would you elaborate please witness can respond the National Security interests here include Liberties of the uh the American people one of the things that was most disturbing about the dossier the steel dossiers whether or not this is so at least some of it was Russian disinformation whether Igor denchenko who personally wrote that he was responsible for 80 percent of the intelligence and these in the dossier and 50 of the analysis whether or not mrchenko was the source of Russian disinformation if you don't run some of those things to ground it does affect the Liberties or potentially affects the Liberties of the American people and the National Security interests of this country thank you sir generally yields back the gentleman from California is recognized thank you Mr chairman before I begin my questioning I want to say that the house Judiciary Committee is responsible for helping to ensure the rule of law the chairman of this committee ignored a bipartisan Congressional subpoena the president sent by this chairman has damaged ability of congressional committees to get information from Witnesses and damaged the rule of law now Mr Durham thank you for being here voluntarily today in your report not only did the FBI have information as stated before that their Australians knew that Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos has suggested that the Russians were going to release Anonymous information damage to Hillary Clinton the FBI also knew and had information that the Democratic National Committee was hacked by the Russians and information was being released to the American public the fa also had information from various media reports that Trump

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Id: KffHch1jxeg

Length: 226min 0sec (13560 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023