U.S.
Attorney John Durham has been assigned to probe the origins of the surveillance
of the Trump campaign, a source told Fox News. (Justice Department)
Attorney General William Barr has appointed a U.S.
attorney to examine the origins of the Russia investigation and determine
if intelligence collection efforts targeting the Trump
campaign were "lawful and appropriate," a person familiar
with the situation told Fox News on Monday evening.
John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut,
will conduct the inquiry, the source said. The move comes as the Trump
administration has pushed for answers on why federal authorities conducted
the surveillance -- as well as whether Democrats were the ones who
improperly colluded with foreign actors.
Two sources told Fox News earlier today that Barr was
“serious” and had assigned DOJ personnel to the probe. Durham is known as a
"hard-charging, bulldog" prosecutor, Fox News is told.
Sources familiar with matter say the focus of the probe includes the pre-transition period -- prior to Nov. 7, 2016 -- including the use and initiation of informants, as well as potential Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses.
Sources familiar with matter say the focus of the probe includes the pre-transition period -- prior to Nov. 7, 2016 -- including the use and initiation of informants, as well as potential Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses.
An informant working for U.S. intelligence posed as a
Cambridge University research assistant in September 2016 to try extracting any
possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia from George Papadopoulos,
then a Trump foreign policy adviser, it emerged earlier this month. Papadopoulos told Fox
News the informant tried to "seduce" him as part of the
"bizarre" episode.
Durham previously has investigated law enforcement
corruption, the destruction of CIA videotapes and the Boston FBI office's
relationship with mobsters. He is set to continue to serve as the chief federal
prosecutor in Connecticut.
In January, House Republican Reps. Jim Jordan and
Mark Meadows wrote to Durham seeking a briefing, saying they
had "discovered" that Durham's office was "investigating [former
FBI General Counsel James Baker" for unauthorized disclosures to the
media."
Durham's new review would exist alongside the ongoing probe by DOJ Inspector General (IG)
Michael Horowitz, who is continuing to review potential surveillance
abuses by the FBI -- an investigation that began last March and that Fox
News is told is nearing completion.
Republicans also have been looking for answers from U.S.
Attorney for Utah John Huber, who was appointed a year ago by then-Attorney
General Jeff Sessions to review not only surveillance abuses by the FBI and
DOJ, but also authorities' handling of the probe into the Clinton
Foundation.
Huber, Republicans have cautioned, apparently has made
little progress and has spoken to few key witnesses
and whistleblowers. But, in January, then-Acting Attorney
General Matthew Whitaker reportedly indicated at a private
meeting that Huber's work was continuing apace.
Durham's appointment comes about a month after Barr told
members of Congress he believed "spying did occur" on the Trump
campaign in 2016. He later said he didn't mean anything pejorative and was
gathering a team to look into the origins of the special counsel's
investigation.
Democrats have pummeled Barr in frustration following revelations in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's
report that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russian actors, despite
numerous offers by Russians to assist the campaign. Mueller's final report has
led to a bitter D.C. battle over the limited number of redactions in the
report, which the DOJ says are legally necessary because they pertain to grand
jury matters.
In obtaining a secret FISA warrant to surveil former
Trump aide Carter Page, the FBI copy-pasted directly from a disputed Washington Post
opinion article to suggest the Trump campaign may have been
compromised. The bureau also repeatedly assured the court that it "did not
believe" British ex-spy Christopher Steele was the direct source for a
Yahoo News article implicating Page in Russian collusion.
But, London court records showed that contrary to the
FBI's assessments, Steele briefed Yahoo News and other reporters in the fall of
2016 at the direction of Fusion GPS -- the opposition research firm behind the
dossier. Fusion GPS was retained by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic
National Committee (DNC), a piece of information not stated in the FISA
application.
The FISA application cribbed word-for-word from the Washington Post article that claimed the Trump
campaign had "worked behind the scenes" to "gut" the GOP
platform on Russia and Ukraine. The FBI apparently did not conduct its own
independent assessment of the piece, which was labeled an "opinion"
column by the Post, and Mueller's probe ultimately found no wrongdoing by the
Trump team.
Additionally, internal FBI text messages exclusively
obtained by Fox News earlier this year showed that a senior DOJ official
raised concerns about the bias in a key FISA warrant, but that FBI
officials pressed on.
"There's a document that's classified that I'm gonna
try to get unclassified that takes the dossier -- all the pages of it -- and it
has verification to one side," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham Fox
News' "Sunday Morning Futures" this weekend."There
really is no verification, other than media reports that were generated by
reporters that received the dossier."
Graham specifically cited the report from The
Hill's John Solomon that the FBI was expressly told that Steele, the
bureau's confidenial informant, had admitted to a contact at
the State Department that he was "keen" to leak his discredited
dossier for purposes of influencing the 2016 election.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen
Kavalec’s written account of her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with Steele
was apparently sent to the FBI, according to records unearthed in a
transparency lawsuit by Citizens United.
Fox News' Brooke Singman and The
Associated Press contributed to this report.
