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After several years and millions of taxpayer dollars spent, special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI's Trump-Russia probe face-planted on Tuesday.
And former Attorney General Bill Barr, who initiated the Durham probe in 2020, is having trouble coping with that reality.
To catch up: A jury needed just a few hours to find Michael Sussmann, a former lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and a key target of Durham’s investigation, not guilty of lying to the FBI.
Durham said Sussmann met FBI officials in 2016 to discuss alleged communications between the Trump Organization and the Kremlin-linked Alfa Bank. Durham said Sussmann falsely claimed he wasn’t acting on Clinton’s behalf when he tipped off the FBI. A jury disagreed with Durham's allegation.
This was the first trial stemming from the Durham investigation, which was essentially authorized to placate right-wing conspiracy theorists, including then-President Donald Trump, who claimed the DOJ’s Russia investigation was a collaborative hit job waged by the government and the Clinton campaign.
Sussmann’s acquittal blew a huge hole in that baseless claim.
But, facts be damned, Barr was on Fox News on Wednesday spouting the same conspiracy theories that were undermined by the Sussmann ruling a day earlier. Barr said Durham’s failed case “crystallized the central role played by the Hillary campaign in launching, as a dirty trick, the whole Russiagate collusion narrative.”
As some viewers online noted, it’s wild to hear Barr admit that releasing information — misleading information, as the jury can attest — about the Clinton campaign was “far more important” than obtaining a conviction.
It’s also wild to hear Barr continue to lie about the origins of the DOJ’s Russia investigation. The DOJ opened the investigation in summer of 2016 after emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were leaked to the public, and after a then-Trump adviser told an Australian diplomat that the Russian government had political dirt on Clinton. It also followed Trump’s open request for Russia to retrieve the Clinton campaign’s emails. Sussmann’s meeting with the FBI came in September 2016, months after the Trump-Russia investigation was opened, and the FBI quickly dismissed his tip.
Barr knows full well the Trump-Russia investigation was legitimate. The Justice Department’s own inspector general said as much in a 2019 report. But just as he did then, Barr is still trying to run defense for Trump and downplay one of the biggest scandals of his presidency.
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