Last month, President Trump publicly expressed dissatisfaction with Attorney General Bill Barr over his failure to make public any findings about wrongdoing perpetrated by Joe Biden or Obama-era officials in relation to the investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
It was an October Surprise that went "bust," according to Murray Waas writing for New York Magazine this Monday.
The probe, headed by federal prosecutor John Durham, was anticipated by Trump to do damage to the Democrats before the 2020 election. But as Waas points out, Justice Department guidelines restrict prosecutors from releasing such information within 60 days of an election because it might affect the outcome. "Both Durham and [his since-resigned deputy Nora Dannehy] believed that if they complied with Barr’s demands they would be violating this doctrine, according to two people familiar with their thinking," Waas writes.
According people speaking to Waas, Durham and Dannehy were "troubled that Barr had purposely misrepresented their work in numerous public comments." Sources familiar with the matter also told Waas "there has been no evidence found, after 18 months of investigation, to support Barr’s claims that Trump was targeted by politically biased Obama officials to prevent his election."
Trump was reportedly hoping for a situation similar to the 2016 election when then-FBI Director James Comey announced the reopening of the bureau’s Hillary Clinton email investigation with just 11 days left before people went to the polls -- a move that many think sealed Clinton's fate. Trump was convinced that Durham's investigation would reveal evidence of a "Deep State" plot against him.
"The Justice Department’s inspector general last year reported finding no 'evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions' of the Russia investigators, and so far, the only charge brought by Durham’s office has been against an ex-FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to falsifying an email used to obtain a warrant for electronic surveillance on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page," Waas writes.
Read the full article over at New York Magazine.