Dan Abrams Breaks Down Durham Report — Says No ‘Knockout Blow’ For Media Critics of FBI’s Trump Probe
Mediaite founder, Newsnation host, and veteran legal expert Dan Abrams went over the Durham Report with a fine-toothed comb and concluded those seeking a “knockout blow” to the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe will be disappointed.
John Durham, the special counsel appointed by Trump Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the origins and conduct of the Trump/Russia investigation, released his report Monday to wildly disparate reactions in the conservative and non-conservative media.
On Monday night’s edition of NewsNation’s Dan Abrams Live, the host delivered a detailed commentary on the report that took media extremes to task, and promised to “play it straight” with an analysis based on his expertise, not partisan opinion.
“You will hear a lot of politicized analysis of this report on other networks from both sides. I’m going to try to play it straight for you and pull no punches with this analysis,” Abrams told viewers, then gave them the “bottom line”:
Here’s the bottom line. If you are one of those hoping for a knockout punch by Durham declaring that the FBI investigation was somehow criminal or even overtly politicized, then you likely will be disappointed. But there is also no shortage of criticism from Durham for the investigation, which he sure seems to believe never should have been opened in the first place. Now, he doesn’t come out and say that directly in the 360-page report. But John Durham declares, quote, “That the Justice Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law.”.
Abrams then spent several minutes giving chapter-and-verse details from the Durham Report and the DOJ inspector general’s report to show that while there were problems with the conduct of the probe that were already addressed before this release, those issues are “a far cry from criminality, or even a declaration that the FBI was on a mission to bring down Donald Trump.”
He concluded by noting that while the problems these reports exposed with the FBI “are real,” the evidence of corrupt politicization simply isn’t there:
Look, good people can disagree on the Russia investigation, but one thing everyone seems to agree on is that serious errors were made, particularly with the renewals in the FISA court. But to accuse the FBI and its leadership of politicized corruption requires evidence. And with the end of the Durham investigation, it seems that evidence does not exist.
Watch above via NewsNation’s Dan Abrams Live.
