Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said an interim report from special counsel John Durham should be released as a deterrent against President-elect Joe Biden trying to shut down the federal prosecutor’s inquiry into the Russia investigation.
President Trump’s spy chief also told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures that now that the election is over, publicizing Durham’s findings is not a political issue anymore.
“I think the American people should know what’s happening in a two-year investigation into this, and I hope that that report will be forthcoming,” Ratcliffe said, adding, “The American people deserve a full accounting, but the special counsel regulations not only require a final report, they allow for interim reports, so I’d like to see an interim report that talks about this from the angle of someone that has not only the intelligence community documents that I have but the law enforcement documents.”
It remains unclear what a Biden administration will do with Durham’s work, but Attorney General William Barr elevating him to special counsel in October provides some protection against a swift dismissal. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and other Democrats have suggested that Biden could end Durham’s inquiry, to which Ratcliffe pointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses detailed in Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s lengthy report from late last year.
“Chairman Schiff has indicated he thinks that the Durham investigation should end — which is exactly why an interim report is appropriate. It would show whether or not there’s a good-faith basis to continue. It would protect the work that’s been done,” Ratcliffe said. “So, I would encourage my colleagues over at the Department of Justice and at the FBI and, in particular, now special counsel Durham to consider doing that, so that the American people can get the full accounting that they deserve.”
“Look, it’s not a question anymore whether or not there was illegal spying,” he added. “This idea that there was not FISA abuse and it was a bunch of nonsense — look, someone is going to prison over that. It’s just a question now of how wide and how deep it was, and I know John Durham has been investigating that, and I’m confident, and I’ve said that based on what I’ve seen I think there should be additional indictments, I’m not backing off of that, but he’s the prosecutor I’d like to hear from him in an interim report, and I think the American people would agree with me.”
Horowitz’s report criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the FISA warrants against former Trump campaign associate Carter Page and for the bureau’s reliance on the Democrat-funded discredited dossier by British ex-spy Christopher Steele.
John Brennan, the former CIA director under President Barack Obama, was asked about Durham’s appointment during an interview on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, and he said, “I think that is fine. I have no problems with it.” Brennan, a vocal Trump critic, also admitted that “looking back at 2016, were there are mistakes made in terms of FISA application and other types things, yes, apparently they were,” but claimed, “that doesn’t mean that there was criminal intent.”
Kevin Clinesmith, a former FBI lawyer on the Crossfire Hurricane team, admitted in August that he falsified a document during the bureau’s efforts to renew FISA authority to wiretap Page.
Brennan said, “It’s very clear from Robert Mueller’s investigation that there were a lot of things that I think were very unprincipled and unethical, and it’ll be up to individuals in the future to determine whether or not there was any criminal activity.”
Mueller’s investigation concluded the Russians interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.”
Although Brennan said “there was no spying on Donald Trump’s campaign,” Ratcliffe noted that “it is illegal spying — the current FBI director has admitted that.” FBI Director Christopher Wray, who called the FISA findings “utterly unacceptable” during House testimony this year, concurred with the DOJ’s conclusions that at least two of the four FISA warrants against Page amounted to illegal surveillance.
“One of the things I wanted to look at was from the intelligence community perspective was there any intelligence at all, anything to support the opening of Crossfire Hurricane,” Ratcliffe said, “And from the position that I’m in now, I’m able to tell everyone, there wasn’t.”
Horowitz concluded the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation was adequately predicated, but Barr and Durham disagreed last year.
“I think people point to the Steele dossier as this reason why the whole thing as a hoax — no,” Brennan said. “There was so much other evidence end intelligence to support those judgments, so I am very comfortable with how the intelligence community came out on the 2016 election.”
Horowitz concluded Steele’s discredited dossier played a “central and essential” role in the FBI’s effort to surveil Page. Declassified footnotes from Horowitz’s report indicate the bureau became aware that Steele’s dossier may have been compromised by Russian disinformation, and FBI interviews show Steele’s primary subsource undercut the credibility of the dossier.
The January 2017 assessment concluded with “high confidence” that Russia worked to “undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency” and “developed a clear preference” for Trump. Adm. Mike Rogers of the NSA diverged from Brennan and FBI Director James Comey on one key aspect, expressing only “moderate confidence” rather than “high confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin “aspired to help” Trump by “discrediting” Clinton.
A report from the Republicans leading the House Intelligence Committee in 2018 concluded there were “significant intelligence tradecraft failings that undermine confidence in the [2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian election interference] judgments regarding Putin’s strategic objectives.”
Durham is investigating the Steele dossier and the assessment, and Ratcliffe has begun the declassification process related to that House GOP report.
