John Durham — the former special counsel appointed during President Donald Trump’s first term to investigate the origins of the Russia probe — “undercut” the Trump DOJ’s case against former FBI Director James Comey, a new report revealed Monday.
According to ABC News, Durham spoke with prosecutors in August and told them that during the course of his nearly four-year long special counsel investigation, he could not uncover any evidence in support of charges against Comey for obstruction of false statements. Prosecutors specifically cited Durham’s investigation — and its lack of findings of wrongdoing by Comey — in a memo explaining their recommendation that there was no probable cause to charge the former FBI director.
Durham, in his May 2023 report summing up the findings of his investigation, said that his probe “did not yield evidence sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any FBI or CIA officials intentionally furthered a Clinton campaign plan to frame or falsely accuse Trump of improper ties to Russia.” It was one of three investigations — along with one conducted by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, and the one conducted by prosecutors in Virginia in the summer of 2025 — in which prosecutors said they lacked the probable cause to bring a case against Comey.
Still, Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan disregarded the findings of all those prosecutors and took the case to the grand jury just days after starting her job. That grand jury brought back a two-count indictment, while rejecting a third count of false statements sought by Halligan.
Furthermore, Durham’s investigation directly addressed a key point of Halligan’s case against Comey. From the ABC News report:
“The case pursued initially by Halligan, according to sources, centers on two elements of Comey’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020 — that he allegedly lied about approving leaks to the media, and that he was unaware of an unverified intelligence report that then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tried to create a “scandal” by linking Trump’s campaign to Russia.
“Durham’s team extensively investigated whether Comey’s testimony that he was unaware of the intelligence report and that the allegation ‘doesn’t ring any bells’ was intentionally misleading. According to sources, Durham did not believe he could support false statements charges for Comey’s purported lack of memory, and that evidence never fully established that Comey had seen the intelligence report.”
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