John Durham distances himself from far-right interpretation of his court filings: report

The Fox News effort to hype a filing by Trump DOJ special counsel John Durham was undermined as the prosecutor "distanced himself on Thursday from false reports by right-wing news outlets that a motion he recently filed said Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid to spy on Trump White House servers," The New York Timesreports.

Durham defended himself in a filing on Thursday.

“If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the government’s motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the government’s inclusion of this information,” he wrote.

Trump has suggested people should be executed based on the far-right interpretation of Durham's filings.

READ: Trump will end up 'in a orange jumpsuit' after 'legal showdown': biographer

The newspaper reported conservative media has significantly embellished what was actually written in Durham's filing.

"Mr. Durham, some outlets inaccurately reported, had said he had discovered that the Clinton campaign had paid [Rodney] Joffe’s company to spy on Mr. Trump. But the campaign had not paid his company, and the filing did not say so. Some outlets also quoted Mr. Durham’s filing as using the word 'infiltrate,' a word it did not contain," the newspaper explained. "Most important, the coverage about purported spying on the Trump White House was premised on the idea that the White House network data involved came from when Mr. Trump was president. But Mr. Durham’s filing did not say when it was from. Lawyers for a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who helped analyze the Yota data said on Monday that the data came from the Obama presidency. [Michael] Sussmann’s lawyers said the same in a filing on Monday night complaining about Mr. Durham’s conduct."

Read the full report.