Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, gave his thoughts on upcoming closed-door testimony by Special Counsel John Durham on Sunday.
Turner appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and was interviewed by Jake Tupper about the Intelligence Commission’s plans. (Related: Exclusive: National security leaders urge Congress to investigate FBI into security clearances after Durham report)
“On Tuesday, the committee will hear closed-door testimony from President Trump-appointed Special Counsel John Durham. I concluded that it shouldn’t have started.The preliminary stuff was fine, but the full-blown stuff wasn’t.What do you want to know from former special counsel Durham?”Tupper asked.
“So this is very disturbing, especially after reading the Durham report after years of these accusations of Trump-Russia collusion and how these accusations were completely false. And this is going to be troublesome for you,” Mr. Turner replied.
“Every investigation to date, including this Durham report, has conclusively concluded that this was the result of politically biased people conducting investigations based on investigations fully funded by the Clinton campaign. But that investigation turned out to be unsubstantiated and not even true, and that’s where we have to worry,” Turner said.
When your government lies to you, when your government tells you that what happened did not happen, that’s when our commission must get involved, and when That’s why we have to find out what happened here, how are we going to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Turner added.
Durham’s final report said the FBI used “unverified information” in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into alleged collusion between former President Donald Trump and Russia ahead of the 2016 presidential election. (Related: FBI admits Durham report is correct)
“Our investigation found that Crossfire Hurricane investigators did not and could not corroborate any of the substantive allegations contained in Steele’s report,” the Durham report states. .
The Steele Dossier, an opposition investigative document funded by Hillary Clinton in the failed 2016 presidential election, played a key role in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Since then, that credibility has been lost. Similarly, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into allegations of Trump and Russia found no collusion between Trump and Russia.
