The results of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the FBI’s investigation into Donald Trump’s hypothetical ties to Russia turned out to be complex. For clarity, there are several headings, in each of which the content of the document is interpreted in its own way. “U.S. Special Counsel sees no grounds for investigating Trump-Moscow ties,” “U.S. Special Counsel accuses FBI of baseless investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia,” or even: “Durham Attorney’s Report Shows Trump’s Russian Collusion Story Was a Giant Hoax.”
In fact, the 300-page report was the culmination of a three-year investigation into whether the FBI investigation into Trump was the result of the actions of some deep state conspiracy of American elites. The conclusion turned out to be ambiguous: there was no collusion as such, but at various stages of the investigation, the FBI made decisions biased and in some cases ignored information that contradicted the premise of the billionaire’s guilt. CBS News Senior Producer Robert Leger continues:
“Much of the information was contained in the report of the Inspector General of the US Department of Justice, which was released several years ago. Each of the departments has a similar official who controls its activities. And the inspector general of the Ministry of Justice has already considered many of these facts and came to the conclusion that in the course of the investigation, flaws were indeed made. At the same time, that report concluded that there was no bias towards Trump in the actions of the FBI. Here, Special Counsel Durham insists the agency was at least “inclined” to open an investigation. In addition, even when the report of the Inspector General of the Ministry of Justice was released, the special prosecutor issued a statement that he did not agree with the conclusions of his colleagues, and urged to wait for the release of his own report.
In any case, Donald Trump did not fail to use the report. As the former and possibly future US president wrote on social media, the FBI “deceived” the public or “made a scam,” and the investigation did not even need to be started. The report does not directly conclude this: the special prosecutor says that the department had enough grounds to start a “preliminary check or preliminary investigation,” but in general, the decisions made are called redundant.
Considering that the investigation into Trump’s connections, now somewhat discredited by the Durham report, was one of the reasons for the deterioration of relations between Russia and the United States and the mutual reduction of diplomatic missions, is it reasonable to expect at least some warming? Konstantin Blokhin, a leading researcher at the Center for Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, comments:
“There can be no question of any warming between Russia and the United States, Russia and the West. Then it was just a pretext for the deterioration of Russian-American relations. Today Russia is in a state of a new cold war with the West, with the United States, and not for a year or two, but for decades. The West is lowering a new “iron curtain” on Russia. And then, after all, the goal was not only Russia, the goal was also Trump, because in this way the Democratic Party used the method of non-competitive struggle. All sane people understood that this was an instrument of political struggle. If you look at Trump’s speeches, people are holding Witch hunt posters behind him. The Democrats are just getting into this witch hunt, the Trump hunt.”
The Kremlin also commented on the report. As Dmitry Peskov put it, “this is not the first time that the Americans (…) have come to the conclusion that there is no interference from Russia.” According to the presidential press secretary, the document confirms the “absurdity” of the accusations against Moscow.
At the same time, the publication of the report is unlikely to restore the good name of Russia – the investigation concerned precisely the circumstances of the FBI investigation against Trump, and not hypothetical attempts by Russia to interfere in the American elections, the fact of which the US authorities consider proven.