Bombshell Report Reveals Durham Probe Included Criminal Investigation of Trump Financial Deals After 2019 Tip From Italian Officials

The New York Times published a bombshell new report on Thursday detailing special counsel John Durham’s four-year-long investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. The Times reported Durham’s investigation actually turned on Trump – who had publicly called for and boosted Durham’s probe into what Trump called the “Russia hoax.”

As the Durham probe finally winds down after finding no wrongdoing in the Trump-Russia investigation and Durham is working on a final report, the Times spoke “with more than a dozen current and former officials” with knowledge of the investigation, who revealed stunning new details.

One of the major new revelations relates to Durham speaking with Italian officials in an attempt to tie intelligence agencies to the Trump-Russia report. Instead of helping Durham, however, Italian officials tipped him off to alleged financial crimes by Trump, which reportedly was concrete enough to launch a new investigation.

“Mr. Durham spent his first months looking for any evidence that the origin of the Russia investigation involved an intelligence operation targeting the Trump campaign,” the Times reported, noting both then-Attorney General Bill Barr and Durham “traveled abroad together to press British and Italian officials to reveal everything their agencies had gleaned about the Trump campaign and relayed to the United States.”

“Italian officials — while denying any role in setting off the Russia investigation — unexpectedly offered a potentially explosive tip linking Mr. Trump to certain suspected financial crimes,” the Times reports, adding:

Mr. Barr and [former special counsel John] Durham decided that the tip was too serious and credible to ignore. But rather than assign it to another prosecutor, Mr. Barr had Mr. Durham investigate the matter himself.

The Times also noted Barr and Durham “never disclosed that their inquiry expanded” into a criminal investigation of Trump based on the 2019 tip. “ The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it,” the report concluded.

The Times also noted that, among other episodes, the Durham probe resulted in investigators getting access to emails from a top aide to right-wing boogeyman George Soros:

Mr. Durham used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media. Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued.