Gowdy: U.S. Attorney Durham looking beyond FBI role

FPI / February 17, 2020

U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General William Barr to look into the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, is reviewing "three important things" in his investigation, said former Rep. Trey Gowdy.

"He's looking at three things — the factual predicate for this Russia investigation. And I'm not talking about the summer of 2016. I'm talking about stuff that happened in late 2015 and early 2016," Gowdy told Sunday Morning Futures host Maria Bartiromo.

"Remember, the DOJ and the FBI told Paul Ryan and Devin Nunes and myself repeatedly and exclusively that nothing happened before June of 2016. No payments were made, no contacts with the Trump campaign," he added, referring back to his time as a lead GOP investigator in Congress. "I'm sure John Durham is looking to see whether or not that's true."

Gowdy said officials have some explaining to do because, he said, the Department of Justice and FBI repeatedly told lawmakers "nothing happened with respect to the Trump campaign before June of 2016."

"If something did happen, then either the FBI misrepresented facts to us, or it wasn't the FBI, it was another agency that was doing it. Both of those are important to know. And John Durham, I hope, is going to be able to answer that question," Gowdy said.

Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, added the Durham is “also looking at the FISA process and misrepresentations made to the FISA court. I think he's also looking at that ICA, that intelligence community assessment, that (former CIA Director) John Brennan got done towards the end of the Barack Obama tenure, to make sure whether or not that was thoroughly investigated and whether or not all the right information made its way into that ICA."

The New York Times reported last week that Durham is reviewing Brennan’s analysis of Russian election interference, including scrutiny of the former Obama CIA director’s handling of a secret source said to be close to the Kremlin.

Durham is also scrutinizing the intelligence community’s interagency turf war over viewing secretive foreign intelligence and the government restricting access to Obama's emails that were hacked by Russians but obtained by a foreign ally.

Free Press International