Prosecutor on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Team Shut Down FBI Investigation into the Clinton Foundation in 2016

Clinton Foundation

A top prosecutor on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team recommended that the FBI shut down an investigation into the Clinton Foundation in 2016, despite ample evidence of suspicious activity related to hundreds of thousands of dollars in foreign transactions, Fox News reported.

In his May 2023 report on the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, Special Counsel John Durham identified Ray Hulser, the former chief of the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section (PIN), as the official who “declined prosecution” of the Clinton Foundation. Hulser now serves on Smith’s team currently prosecuting former President Donald Trump for alleged crimes related to January 6.

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From January 6 Informants to FISA Abuses, FBI Boss Had Few Answers to Congress’ Most Pressing Questions

FBI Director Christopher Wray declined to answer direct questions from lawmakers on several hot-button issues at a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing.

The performance on Wednesday generated frustration on both sides of the political aisle, and a rebuke from FBI alumni.

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Impeachment Talk Moves up GOP House Agenda After IRS Whistleblower Revelations, Durham Testimony

The Republican House agenda has in recent weeks been dominated by impeachment resolutions following testimony from former special prosecutor John Durham on the Russian collusion probe and IRS whistleblower revelations about the Hunter Biden investigation – with calls ranging from ousting Attorney General Merrick Garland to expunging the two impeachments President Trump received.

In addition to Garland, whom critics say runs a “two-tiered” justice system in America, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is also a target – largely over his handling of record migration and its often overwhelming consequences from U.S. borders to the rest of the country.

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Durham: Feds Had No Real Evidence to Investigate Russian Collusion, Monitor Trump Campaign

Former President Donald Trump has a slight lead against President Joe Biden in national polling even after being charged with 37 criminal counts in an indictment related to his handling of classified documents. 

Real Clear Politics’ polling average has Trump ahead of Biden by 2.4 points in a general election matchup, showing that the federal indictment against Trump has so far not sunk his chances to return to the White House. In fact, it may have bolstered them.

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Commentary: Combating the Censorship Industrial Complex

It’s been nearly six months since the first installment of the Twitter Files — the journalistic effort by Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and many others to expose the myriad channels by which the U.S government cooperated with Twitter on content moderation and censorship — was first published. Twitter Files One, perhaps the mildest of more than 20 unique reports, details the social media company’s internal deliberations in the days before the New York Post’s story about Hunter Biden’s laptop was removed from the site. Later reports have exposed the tendrils of a governmental apparatus that influenced some of the most significant media distortions in recent American history, from the fraudulent Hamilton 68 misinformation tracking dashboard to the FBI’s intimate involvement with Twitter’s content-moderation practices.

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Senators Want to Know Why Former FBI Officials Refused to Cooperate With Durham Investigation

U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) want Special Counsel John Durham to explain why former high-level government officials refused to cooperate with his investigation exposing the FBI for its many failures in the bogus Trump-Russia collusion probe. 

Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and Johnson, ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent Durham a letter Tuesday asking why former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and former FBI Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division Peter Strzok declined to fully cooperate.

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Durham: FBI Dropped Four Different Probes into Clinton Family Ahead of 2016

One of the claims made by Special Counsel John Durham in his official report is that the FBI dropped at least four criminal investigations into Bill and Hillary Clinton just before the 2016 election.

According to the New York Post, the FBI had previously been investigating attempts by multiple foreign nations and other foreign entities to influence the Clinton family through donations to their non-profit, the Clinton Foundation, as well as donations to Hillary’s failed 2016 presidential campaign.

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Commentary: Look Ahead, Not Backwards, to Hold the Justice Department Accountable

Release of Special Counsel John Durham’s report on law enforcement and intelligence misconduct related to the 2016 presidential election has been met with outrage, recriminations, and a justified amount of vindication for those, including President Donald Trump, who helped expose the brazen operation from the start. 

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Commentary: Congress and President Must Oversee the FISA Court and All FISA Warrants After Durham Report Revelations

Special Counsel John Durham has finished his voluminous report outlining the Justice Department, State Department, intelligence agencies and FBI’s “confirmation bias” that led to a years-long investigation of former President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, transition and then administration falsely alleging that Trump and his campaign were Russian agents who had helped Moscow hack the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and put their emails onto Wikileaks despite the fact that the FBI could not “corroborate a single substantive allegation in the [Christopher] Steele dossier reporting,” which was sourced to the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC.

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John Durham Releases Final Report Concluding FBI Had No Verified Intel When It Opened Probe on Trump

Special Counsel John Durham released his final report Monday after more than three years investigating the Russia collusion probe, declaring the FBI has no verified intelligence or evidence when it opened up a probe of President Donald Trump’s campaign in the summer of 2016.

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Unchastened by Russiagate, The New York Times Doubles Down in Its Special Counsel Coverage

Special Counsel John Durham, leading a multi-year probe of how U.S. intelligence officials conducted the Russia investigation, has yet to issue his final report. But according to the New York Times, Durham has already come up empty.  

Durham’s team, the Times declared in a widely circulated Jan. 26 article, has gone “unsuccessfully down one path after another” and ultimately “failed to find wrongdoing in the origins of the Russia inquiry.”  The three bylined reporters, Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman, and Katie Benner, base their conclusion on a “monthslong review,” including interviews “with more than a dozen current and former officials.”  

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Jury Finds Danchenko Not Guilty on All Counts of Lying to the FBI

A jury on Tuesday found Steele dossier contributor Igor Dancheko not guilty on all counts pursuant to charges of lying to the FBI about his relationship with the sources for the Trump opposition research documents. 

The case was led by Special Counsel John Durham who led much of the prosecution’s questioning of witnesses in the case and whose intent for the trial was at least in part intended to expose the FBI’s mishandling of the large Russia-2016 Trump campaign collusion probe.

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John Durham Puts FBI on Trial Alongside Its Russian Collusion Informant

Igor Danchenko is the named defendant at this week’s trial, charged with lying as an informant in the now discredited Russia collusion investigation. But with probing questions and searing redirects, Special Counsel John Durham has turned the Russian researcher’s trial in the U.S. District courtroom in Alexandria, Va., into an expose of stunning FBI failures and omissions in its now-infamous pursuit of Donald Trump for crimes that turned out to be nonexistent.

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Durham Shows Jurors Emails to Prove Danchencko Concealed, Lied to FBI About Steele Dossier Sources

In the opening of the second day of Special Counsel John Durham’s case against Russia intelligence expert Igor Danchencko, Durham walked jurors through a series of emails to bolster his case that Danchenko lied to the FBI about gathering information in the agency’s 2016 Russia collusion probe.

Danchenko faces five counts for allegedly lying to the FBI about his role in gathering information about then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump during his 2016 White House bid, as part of a federal investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

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FBI Intel Analyst Tells Durham Agency Offered Steele $1 Million to Corroborate Dossier

An FBI analyst on Tuesday in federal court told Special Counsel John Durham the agency offered former British spy Christopher Steele “up to $1 million” to corroborate evidence in his now-discredited dossier that was central to a federal investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.

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Commentary: Durham Prosecutes FBI Informants, Protects Their Handlers

Since being named special counsel in October 2020, John Durham has investigated or indicted several unscrupulous anti-Trump informants. But he has spared the FBI agents who handled them, raising suspicions he’s letting investigators off the hook in his waning investigation of misconduct in the Russiagate probe.

In recent court filings, Durham has portrayed the G-men as naive recipients of bad information, tricked into opening improper investigations targeting Donald Trump and obtaining invalid warrants to spy on one of his advisers.

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New Durham Bombshell: FBI Paid Russian Accused of Lying as a Confidential Informant Against Trump

In a bombshell revelation, Special Prosecutor John Durham revealed Tuesday in court filings that the FBI paid a Russian businessman as a confidential human source in the investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign even though it had prior concerns that businessman was tied to Moscow’s intelligence services.

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John Durham Asks Federal Court to Issue 30 Subpoenas for Steele Dossier Source Igor Danchenko’s Trial

Special counsel John Durham on Tuesday asked a federal court to issue 30 subpoenas for testimony in the trial against Igor Danchenko, the primary source of the discredited Steele dossier.

The court filing asked the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to issue the subpoenas for an “appearance before said Court at Alexandria, Virginia,” starting on Oct. 11 “to testify on behalf of the United States.”

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Commentary: It’s Time to Dismantle the Dysfunctional, Self-Serving, Gluttonous Company Town That Is D.C.

Gertrude Stein famously warned that it was important to know how far to go when going too far.

It pains me to admit that Democrats seem to have a far better sense of all that than do Republicans. Perhaps it’s because Democrats have a visceral appreciation of William Hazlitt’s observation that “those who lack delicacy hold us in their power.” The Democrats, that is to say, long ago became expert at the game of holding their opponents to standards that they themselves violate not just with impunity but with ostentatious glee.

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Commentary: Stolen Elections, a Tale of Two D.C. Courtrooms

The Elijah Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, D.C. is center stage this month to two competing tales of stolen presidential elections.

In the courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper, federal prosecutors have presented a detailed account of the greatest scandal in U.S. political history: the conspiracy of the country’s most powerful interests to fabricate the Trump-Russia collusion hoax in order to sabotage Donald Trump before the 2016 election.

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Hillary Factor: Evidence Now Shows False Russia Collusion Story Began and Ended with Clinton

In an era where the hunt for disinformation has become a political obsession, Hillary Clinton has mostly escaped having to answer what role she played in spreading the false Russia collusion narrative that gripped America for nearly three years.

On Friday, that dodge ended with a most unlikely witness: her former campaign manager Robby Mook, who was supposed to be a witness helping the defense of her former campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann on a charge of lying to the FBI.

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Blocking Evidence: Clinton Campaign Tries to Keep Memos from Durham’s Upcoming Trial

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and its former top officials are intervening in Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation, seeking to block the release of memos about its Russia research on Donald Trump on grounds that it is covered by attorney-client privilege.

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Durham Says Clinton Lawyer Engaged in a ‘Political Deceit’ When Giving Trump Dirt to FBI

Former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann engaged in “political deceit” during his contacts with the FBI and deprived agents of critical information that could have influenced the course of the Russia probe, Special Counsel John Durham declared in a new filing asking a court not to dismiss his criminal case.

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Fast-Growing Number of Democrats Want Hillary Clinton Investigated for Her Role in Russiagate

An increasing number of Democrats believe Hillary Clinton should be investigated by special counsel John Durham in connection with her alleged involvement in manufacturing ties between 2016 presidential rival Donald Trump and the Russia, according to a recent survey.

The survey, by TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics, found 75% of respondents who follow the story think Clinton and her campaign advisers should be investigated for her role in so-called Russiagate, according to several news reports.

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Commentary: The Russiagate Evidence Builds

As indictments and new court filings indicate that Special Counsel John Durham is investigating Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for feeding false reports to the FBI to incriminate Donald Trump and his advisers as Kremlin agents, Clinton’s role in the burgeoning scandal remains elusive. What did she know and when did she know it?

Top officials involved in her campaign have repeatedly claimed, some under oath, that they and the candidate were unaware of the foundation of their disinformation campaign: the 35-page collection of now debunked claims of Trump/Russia collusion known as the Steele dossier. Even though her campaign helped pay for the dossier, they claim she only read it after BuzzFeed News published it in 2017.

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Commentary: Durham vs. Horowitz and the FBI’s Trump-Russia Reckoning

As he documents the role of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in generating false allegations of Trump-Russia collusion, Special Counsel John Durham has also previewed a challenge to the FBI’s claims about how and why its counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign began. At stake is the completeness of the official reckoning within the U.S. government over the Russiagate scandal – and whether there will be an accounting commensurate with the offense: the abuse of the nation’s highest law enforcement and intelligence powers to damage an opposition presidential candidate turned president, at the behest of his opponent from the governing party he defeated.

The drama is playing out against the clashing approaches of the two Justice Department officials tasked with scrutinizing the Russia probe’s origins and unearthing any misconduct: Durham, the Sphinx-like prosecutor with a reputation for toughness whose work continues; and Michael Horowitz, the Department of Justice inspector general, whose December 2019 report faulted the FBI’s handling of the Russia probe but nonetheless concluded that it was launched in good faith.

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Durham Zeroes In on Clinton Campaign, Could Call Some Aides to Testify, Court Memo Reveals

Hillary Clinton’s team long fought to keep its ties to Christopher Steele’s dossier from public view, but Special Counsel John Durham is now making clear he has a strong interest in her campaign’s behavior during the Russia collusion probe. He is even suggesting some of her aides could be summoned as trial witnesses.

Durham’s earth-shaking revelation came inside a routine court filing this month in the case of Igor Y. Danchenko, a Russian analyst who was a primary source in 2016 for Steele’s now-infamous dossier. Danchenko has been charged with repeatedly lying to the FBI during the Russia collusion probe and has pleaded innocent.

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Analysis: The Biggest Loser of the Durham Indictments May Be James Comey’s FBI

Special Counsel John Durham’s latest criminal case is as much an indictment of James Comey’s FBI as it is of the primary source of the Steele dossier, whom Durham accuses of repeatedly lying to agents.

The Steele dossier was the central evidence used by the FBI to win four consecutive FISA warrants targeting Trump’s campaign — and in 39 pages of painstaking detail the indictment lays out just how flawed and fake central elements of the dossier were.

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Russian Analyst, Primary Source for Steele Dossier Charged with Repeatedly Lying to FBI

Special Counsel John Durham on Thursday unsealed a federal grand jury indictment charging the primary source for the now-discredited Steele dossier with repeatedly lying to the FBI during the Russia collusion investigation that falsely tarred Donald Trump’s presidency.

The 39-page indictment alleges Russian analyst Igor Danchenko misled the FBI about his contacts with Russian government officials and a Democrat-connected public relations executive, falsehoods that materially affected the FBI’s investigation and its representations to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get warrants targeting Trump’s campaign and one of its advisers.

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Commentary: To Save America, Durham Must Reveal the Whole Russiagate Story and Punish the Guilty

A bit more information has emerged from the John Durham investigation into Russiagate (or “Spygate,” as it is known hereabouts).

This is due to what is likely a leak from one or more of the targets to their loyal propagandists at CNN. (In the article, the reporters do their best to downgrade the scandal they fanned for years as no more than a trivial “dirty trick” that all campaigns do. There’s a well-known word for that adapted into the English language.)

The import of these leaks is usually to soften the impact on the target(s), but it also gives us another indication Durham is still active.

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Report: Durham Subpoenas Law Firm Tied to Steele Dossier, Hillary Clinton

Special Counsel John Durham reportedly issued subpoenas to Perkins Coie, a law firm tied to the Steele Dossier, the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The subpoenas are part of Durham’s probe into the origins of the investigation into allegations that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russia, CNN reported.

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Commentary: Democrats Repeat the Mistakes of 2016

Donald Trump waving

As we get to the midpoint between the last presidential election and next year’s midterms, all political sides are expending extraordinary effort to ignore the 900-pound gorilla in the formerly smoke-filled room of American politics. This, of course, is Donald Trump.

The Democrats are still outwardly pretending Trump has gone and that his support has evaporated. They also pretend they can hobble him with vexatious litigation and, if necessary, destroy him again by raising the Trump-hate media smear campaign back to ear-splitting levels.

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Commentary: John Durham’s Vast Conspiracy

John Durham

Special Counsel John Durham’s 27-page false-statement indictment of lawyer Michael Sussmann avers a thus-far uncharged conspiracy by Democrat operatives, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and others to fabricate, leak, and purvey the most successful and destructive political smear in American history.

Judging from the detailed contents of the indictment, Durham appears to be well on his way to exposing the lies and corrupt schemes that were used to kneecap Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for president and hamstring his administration for the next four years.

This article is the second in a series regarding the Sussmann indictment which, given its detailed content, strongly indicates that Durham has in hand documentary and supporting evidence to prove how Sussmann and others conspired to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful functions of the United States government by dishonest means in order to, among other goals, subvert our political and electoral processes, including the 2016 presidential election.

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Investigation: Biden Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Tied to Alleged 2016 Clinton Scheme to Co-Opt the CIA and FBI to Tar Trump

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan figures prominently in a grand jury investigation run by Special Counsel John Durham into an alleged 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign scheme to use both the FBI and CIA to tar Donald Trump as a colluder with Russia, according to people familiar with the criminal probe, which they say has broadened into a conspiracy case.

Sullivan is facing scrutiny, sources say, over potentially false statements he made about his involvement in the effort, which continued after the election and into 2017. As a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton, Sullivan spearheaded what was known inside her campaign as a “confidential project” to link Trump to the Kremlin through dubious email-server records provided to the agencies, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

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Durham Indicts Democrat Lawyer for Making False Statement When He Fed Russia Dirt to FBI

Special Counsel John Durham on Thursday secured an indictment against a prominent Democrat lawyer alleging he developed and fed information to the FBI during the 2016 campaign suggesting Donald Trump was colluding with Russia without disclosing he was being paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

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Republicans Demand Update on Long-Awaited Durham Report

After two years of waiting for a federal report on allegations of Democratic spying on the Trump campaign, Republicans are demanding answers.

More than 40 Republican U.S. senators sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland Thursday requesting the release of the Durham report, the long-awaited results of an investigation into the controversial origins of the FBI investigation into Russian collusion.

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Durham File: A Documentary Roadmap to Special Counsel Probe of Rogue FBI Pursuit of Trump

Freed from his double duty as Connecticut’s chief federal prosecutor, Special Counsel John Durham is zeroing in on the final phase of his far-reaching investigation into whether FBI officials or others committed crimes while conducting the Russia collusion probe, such as misleading federal judges or Congress.

All expectations were that Durham would wrap up his probe with final indictments and/or a report last fall after a plea deal was reached with former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted he falsified a document submitted to substantiate an application for a surveillance warrant targeting the Trump campaign.

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John Durham Resigns from U.S. Attorney’s Office; Is Expected to Continue Investigation into the FBI’s Russia Probe

U.S. Attorney John Durham on Friday announced his resignation from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, but he will reportedly be staying on as special counsel in the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.

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John Durham Sought Christopher Steele’s Notes from a Meeting with The FBI in Which an Agent Said the Ex-Spy ‘Wasn’t Truthful’

John Durham, the U.S. attorney investigating aspects of the Trump-Russia probe, has sought notes that former British spy Christopher Steele took during his interviews in 2016 with the FBI regarding a since-debunked dossier he penned that accused the Trump campaign of colluding with the Russian government.

An FBI agent who took part in one of the interviews with Steele told Justice Department investigators that the ex-spy “clearly … wasn’t truthful” regarding his contacts with members of the media.

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Report: DOJ Closes ‘Unmasking’ Investigation

The Justice Department has closed its investigation into whether Obama administration officials improperly unmasked the identities of Trump associates mentioned in intelligence reports, according to a report.

According to The Washington Post, the investigation was recently closed and is unlikely to lead to criminal charges. A report of the investigation will also not be released, according to the newspaper, which cited government sources familiar with the matter.

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Commentary: In This Election Donald Trump Is the Candidate of Honesty, Competence, and Legality

The election campaign, now finally approaching its climax, will long be studied because of the paradoxical reactions of American public opinion to an astonishing series of events and revelations. It is now clear from intelligence declassifications—now temporarily taking the place of indictments by the special counsel on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation—that the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, knew that she was transmitting reports compiled by Russian intelligence agents and transmitted via former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. These were presented to the U.S. intelligence and justice communities and ultimately to the public through the media as hard intelligence evidence of treasonable conduct by her opponent Donald Trump. The solid evidence of these facts is now in the public domain.

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John Durham Aide Resigns, Reportedly Because of Pressure to Complete Trump-Russia Probe

A top prosecutor in the office of U.S. Attorney John Durham submitted her resignation on Friday, The Daily Caller News Foundation has confirmed.

The Hartford Courant reported that Nora Dannehy resigned because of political pressure from Justice Department headquarters regarding Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe.

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AG Barr Says There ‘Could Be’ More Charges in Durham Probe

Attorney General William Barr said Wednesday that more charges are possible in the investigation led by John Durham, the U.S. attorney investigating the origins of the Trump-Russia probe.

Barr was asked about the status of the probe during an interview with NBC News. He declined to say whether Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, is nearing the end of the probe, which began in April 2018.

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Ratcliffe Says He Is Coordinating with John Durham, Plans to Declassify More Trump-Russia Documents

John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, has been coordinating with U.S. Attorney John Durham and plans to soon declassify more documents related to the Trump-Russia probe, he said Sunday.

“The question now is did the FBI have a proper predicate to begin a counterintelligence investigation at all, and that’s the issue that John Durham is looking at, and also the issue that I’m continuing to look at,” Ratcliffe said in an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

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Trump: Clinesmith Guilty Plea Is ‘Just the Beginning’ with ‘More to Come’

President Trump on Friday said that news of former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith’s plea deal with Department of Justice prosecutors was “just the beginning,” signaling that U.S. Attorney John Durham is zeroing in on other targets in his investigation.

Clinesmith is expected to plead guilty in connection with his alteration of an exonerating email during the Crossfire Hurricane (CH) investigation, which targeted members of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, including foreign policy adviser Carter Page.

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Ex-FBI Lawyer to Plead Guilty in Durham Probe of Russia Investigation’s Origins

A former FBI attorney will plead guilty to making false statements in documents used to obtain a surveillance warrant against former Trump aide Carter Page, his lawyer told the Associated Press Friday.

The guilty plea from Kevin Clinesmith is the first legal action taken in an investigation led by John Durham, a U.S. attorney looking into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe and other intelligence-gathering activities related to the Trump campaign.

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Attorney General Barr Tells House Judiciary Committee There Is a Separate Investigation Into Unmaskings

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH-04) asked Attorney General William Barr about “unmaskings” in a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday.

The committee grilled Barr on a number of other topics as well, including police reform.

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