A US attorney’s review into the origins of the Russia investigation is going “full throttle” and adding top prosecutors who are breaking down individual aspects of the case, including the prosecution of former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn, according to a report on Monday.
Jeff Jensen, the US attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, who reviewed the Flynn case for the Justice Department, and interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia Timothy Shea are assisting the probe being headed up by US Attorney for Connecticut John Durham.
“They farmed the investigation out because it is too much for Durham and he didn’t want to be distracted,” Fox News reported, citing a source. “He’s going full throttle, and they’re looking at everything.”
Attorney General William Barr was asked last week whether he thought the FBI under then-Director James Comey conspired against Flynn.
“I think, you know, that’s a question that really has to wait [for] an analysis of all the different episodes that occurred through the summer of 2016 and the first several months of President Trump’s administration,” Barr told CBS News.
Barr also said Durham was looking at events before and after Trump’s election.
The Fox News report said Durham is looking into whether the FBI misrepresented its FISA application to obtain warrants to monitor former Trump campaign associate Carter Page.
“Barr talks to Durham every day,” a source told Fox News. “The president has been briefed that the case is being pursued, and it’s serious.”
Transcripts of interviews from the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation revealed that top officials in the Obama administration acknowledged they knew of no “empirical evidence” of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
“I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified in 2017. “That’s not to say that there weren’t concerns about the evidence we were seeing, anecdotal evidence. … But I do not recall any instance where I had direct evidence.”
Former special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of criminal coordination between Trump and the Russians during the 2016 election.
