House Judiciary Committee Democrats are asking the Justice Department (DOJ) to turn over information about a trip former Attorney General Bill Barr and special counsel John Durham took to Italy after reviewing a tip about possible financial crimes carried out by former President Trump.
Durham was appointed to investigate the FBI’s handling of the initial probe into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
But in the course of that investigation, the Justice Department received a tip from Italian officials alleging wrongdoing by Trump, spurring an unusual trip by both gentlemen.
“Because of the strength and seriousness of this evidence, Attorney General Barr acknowledged that the Department was compelled to investigate, but instead of allowing the investigation to proceed through normal channels, he asked Mr. Durham to handle the investigation secretly,” ranking member Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The investigation of the tip prompted Barr to give Durham criminal prosecution powers — a detail that fueled speculation there may have been criminal wrongdoing by those investigating Trump rather than possible wrongdoing by the president himself.
Instead, Durham lost the two trials he brought to court with juries quickly delivering not guilty verdicts.
In a June appearance before Congress, Durham said little about the trip, stressing that high level DOJ staff were needed to properly engage with the Italian officials.
He also said that “investigative steps were taken, and grand jury subpoenas were issued” but that he saw no reason to include information about the episode in his report.
Nadler described the move as an end run around special counsel statutes designed to “provide independence from political pressure and to ensure public confidence in the fairness of an investigation.”
“In this instance, it appears that Attorney General Barr turned the Special Counsel regulations on their head and used the Special Counsel not to promote independence and fairness, but to bury a potentially significant criminal investigation from the public,” Nadler wrote.
“Mr. Durham’s refusal to explain his decision not to charge former President Trump after secretly investigating him for alleged financial crimes is highly concerning, especially considering Mr. Durham’s extensive public discussion of evidence that was rejected by juries which acquitted the defendants that he charged.”
The letter asks DOJ to turn over specifics that were not included in Durham’s report, including more details about the tip provided by Italy, details about how it was investigated, and any rationale for not bringing charges, including in a so-called declination memo.
The trip even brought scrutiny from some Republican members of Congress, with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) joking that the two were just “looking for authentic pasta” as he griped that the special counsel’s work was insufficient in slamming the FBI’s work.
Durham provided little new information in his May report but confirmed a series of FBI missteps previously documented by the news media, including that the FBI failed to provide a full picture of the evidence when seeking a wiretap of Trump campaign aide Carter Page.