Dem congressman brutally reviews John Durham's record: 'You lost all the cases you brought to trial'Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) delivered a brutal review of former special counsel John Durham's record over the four years that he worked on investigating the origins of the FBI's probe into the 2016 Trump campaign's contacts with Russian agents.
In questioning Durham, Nadler highlighted not just the length of time that Durham had to complete his probe but also the lack of success he had in pursuing criminal charges.
"Did it take four years to complete?" Nadler asked Durham about his investigation.
"Correct," replied Durham.
"OK," said Nadler. "And with all these resources and all these people that were sent to help you investigate the investigators, you only filed three criminal cases. You only brought two cases to trial, correct?"
"Correct," replied Durham.
"And you lost all the cases that you brought to trial, correct?" Nadler asked.
"Correct," Durham acknowledged.
"In fact, two juries acquitted your defendants on all charges," Nadler continued. "And the one conviction you obtained, the defendant pleaded guilty to a single count that never went to trial. Correct?"
"Correct," said Durham.
Nadler went on to note that the primary investigatory steps taken in Durham's sole conviction were completed by Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz.
Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1671514389504053250John Durham's 'embarrassing' testimony shows why his probe was 'bungled from the start': legal experts
Former special counsel John Durham testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and saw his findings get picked apart by multiple Democratic lawmakers, including Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Jerry Nadler (D-NY).
Schiff in particular pelted Durham repeatedly about former President Donald Trump's actions throughout the 2016 campaign, where he openly encouraged the Russian government to hack his opponent's emails and where his son took a meeting with a Russian agent promising dirt on said opponent.
Durham at times appeared to be unfamiliar with some of the facts mentioned by Schiff, including the fact that Trump repeatedly encouraged people to read the hacked Clinton campaign emails that were stolen by Russian intelligence services and spread via WikiLeaks.
This exchange in particular drew the attention of some legal experts who said it showed that Durham was way out of his depth.
"This is embarrassing," commented former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance on Twitter after seeing that Durham said, "I really don't read the newspapers" in response to one of Schiff's questions.
National security attorney Bradley Moss, meanwhile, expressed astonishment at Durham's ignorance about Trump's behavior.
"This was the grand savior of Trump's vengeance quest?" he asked. "No offense to Durham, but you don't have to read newspapers to know this stuff. It was in the Mueller Report. It was in the GOP Senate Report. This is why this probe was bungled from the start."
And New York University Law professor Ryan Goodman highlighted how Durham seemed unfamiliar with the Mueller report's findings about how former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with a Kremlin-connected agent and gave him internal campaign polling data.
"Schiff is very effective at this," Goodman remarked. "It goes to the very heart of Durham’s fundamental flaws. And Durham is being completely exposed here."
https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1671566122594754560Nicolle Wallace busts John Durham for playing dumb about the Mueller report he was investigatingMSNBC host Nicolle Wallace highlighted testimony from former special counsel John Durham in Congress Wednesday and accused him of playing politics to dodge answering questions that were unflattering to him and his probe.
Speaking to NBC News reporter Garrett Haake, Wallace pointed out that Durham did not know the answer to basic facts about things he was supposed to be investigating.
"Durham's mandate is to investigate not just any investigators, not just investigators who happen to investigate while [Donald] Trump was president, not investigators who may have had one of the pieces of paper that cross their desk that pertains Russia, Durham's mandate was to investigate the investigators who investigated interference by Russia in the 2016 election," Wallace said. "And what a lot of people talk about when they revisit the Mueller report is the Trump figures that were charged that like Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos. Mueller also indicted a whole lot of Russians. Durham was the man in charge of the investigation, and he doesn't know basic facts? He either misstates or erroneously recounts the conclusions of the Mueller report. What was that?"
Haake said that his sense is that Durham didn't want to go down that road, so he simply refused to answer questions about it, saying that it wasn't part of his report.
Haake said that his sense is that Durham didn't want to go down that road, so he simply refused to answer questions about it, saying that it wasn't part of his report.
"You might have an issue with the bias Peter Strzok indicated in his text messages, but weren't these findings still findings?" Haake asked. "Were not Russians, in fact, trying to get involved in the Trump campaign or be involved in the 2016 election in a significant way? And nothing in the Durham report undercuts any of those findings by Mueller or the Crossfire Hurricane team that predated him under Jim Comey. I think that's why you would two wholly separate conversations, only tangentially dealing with that paper report in front of them going on in that hearing room for five hours today."
Wallace noted that the one somewhat legitimate finding from the Durham report is that there should have been a preliminary investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election before the larger investigation.
"At the end of the day, for both Charlie [Savage's] reporting and Garret's, he does not come out and refute the facts that predicated the opening of an investigation. It's simply this rather technical dispute about whether it should have been a preliminary instead of the full. But the wreckage, the blast radius, four years of Donald Trump and Sean Hannity, and everyone on the right building up the Durham report is coming!"
She recalled being in Washington with Trump-era DOJ officials ahead of the Mueller report dropping, and she said that all of them insisted that Durham would discount everything.
"They said, 'This is nothing, wait until you see what Durham's got.' And I said, 'Oh, yeah, what does Durham have?' Durham never had anything except a tip to open an investigation into Donald Trump," Wallace said. "And that was something he couldn't even answer for today."
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