Senate

Graham on Durham’s Trump-FBI report: ‘It is done and it’s damning’

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaks during a Senate Appropriations hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, May 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Sunday that special counsel John Durham’s long-awaited report on the FBI investigation into former President Trump’s ties to Russia is “damning.”

“The Durham report is damning,” Graham told radio talk show host John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM’s “Cats Roundtable.” “It shows the FBI became a political weapon. They wanted to get Trump. They didn’t care how they did it.”

“It is done and it’s damning,” he added. “They took the rule of law and threw it over to try to get a political outcome.”

Durham’s report, which was released on Monday after a four-year investigation, concluded that the FBI didn’t have sufficient information to open the probe into Trump’s 2016 campaign and its potential ties to Russia. 

When asked why he thought it took Durham so long to complete his report, Graham said, “I have no friggin’ idea.” Still, he celebrated the results.

“They’re trying to make you believe that Trump was a Russian agent working for the Russians when he wasn’t,” he said. “We live in a very dangerous time. God bless the Durham report.”

The special counsel described the probe as “seriously deficient” and argued that the bureau relied on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence.”

He criticized the FBI for failing to corroborate the Steele Dossier, which contained salacious allegations about Trump and his possible ties to Russia, and for using the dossier to secure a warrant to spy on then-Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.

“Importantly, had the Crossfire Hurricane actors faithfully followed their own principles regarding objectivity and integrity, there were clear opportunities to have avoided the mistakes and to have prevented the damage resulting from their embrace of seriously flawed information that they failed to analyze and assess properly,” Durham said in the scathing 305-page report.