Democrats aren’t buying a yearslong, independent investigation’s findings that the FBI lacked “actual evidence” to justify its probe into whether Donald Trump colluded with Russians to win the 2016 presidential election.
Democrats on Capitol Hill said Tuesday that the report by special counsel John Durham is “a huge nothingburger” and “flat-out wrong” in its conclusion that the FBI based its decision to surveil the Trump campaign on shoddy, uncorroborated intelligence.
They said Mr. Trump aligns himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin even as he leads the 2024 Republican presidential primary field.
“Donald Trump acts like his intern,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who helped prosecute Mr. Trump’s second impeachment trial. He was referencing Mr. Trump’s wavering support for U.S. aid to Ukraine as it fends off Russia’s military invasion.
Mr. Raskin said Mr. Trump’s ties with Russians before the 2016 campaign were evident. Mr. Trump’s campaign team met with Russian nationals, he said, and plenty of evidence shows that Mr. Putin worked to destabilize presidential elections, he said.
“Obviously, the Durham investigation was a huge mega-flop, and this is an attempt to divert everyone’s attention from the fact that they wasted millions of dollars of taxpayer money on this wild goose chase,” Mr. Raskin said.
Many Democrats in the House and Senate didn’t want to discuss the bombshell findings that Mr. Durham released Monday.
The 300-plus page report concluded that the FBI’s decision to surveil the Trump campaign was based on “uncorroborated intelligence,” namely the now-debunked Steele dossier that made outlandish allegations involving, among other claims, prostitutes urinating on a bed in a Russian hotel room.
The report found potential political bias in the FBI’s decision to investigate Mr. Trump. It noted marked differences from the bureau’s dismissal of similar collusion allegations involving the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
After years of railing against Mr. Trump over collusion, many Democrats weren’t interested enough to read the report.
“I have not seen it yet, and I don’t want to comment,” said House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, a Massachusetts Democrat who once said Mr. Putin had “an unusual hold” over Mr. Trump.
Ms. Clark, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer of New York made the Trump-Russia collusion allegations the centerpiece of their political messaging after Mr. Trump won the White House and throughout his presidency.
In 2017, Mrs. Pelosi touted “cold, hard evidence” that Mr. Trump and his family worked with Russians to manipulate the presidential election’s outcome.
“With him,” Mrs. Pelosi said repeatedly before the 2020 election, “all roads lead to Putin.”
She did not respond to a request seeking her response to the Durham report’s findings.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat, also declined to comment. The former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was booted from the panel by Republicans this year. In 2017, Mr. Schiff said there “was more than circumstantial evidence” that Mr. Trump colluded with Russians to secure the White House.
Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, another former Intelligence committee member who accused Mr. Trump of working with Russians, said the Durham report merely identified “process issues” with the FBI investigation and did not recommend concrete changes.
Like other Democrats interviewed about the report, Mr. Swalwell accused Mr. Trump of coercing Russia to hack the Democratic Party’s emails during the 2016 presidential campaign. Mr. Trump called on Mr. Putin during a press conference to “find the 30,000 emails that are missing” from Mrs. Clinton’s personal server that she used as secretary of state.
Although Mr. Trump may have extended the invite in jest, Democrats say the statement is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that the Republican candidate was working with Mr. Putin to win the White House because Russians hacked the DNC’s emails soon afterward.
“Everyone can go back in time and find a process foul,” Mr. Swalwell told The Times. “But it doesn’t change the fact that Trump had extraordinary ties to Russia, and Russia sought to interfere in our elections. Trump asked for it, they did it.”
One lead Trump investigator, former Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, New York Democrat, told The Times that he agreed with the conclusions in the Durham report that dismissed the tawdry allegations in the Steele dossier.
“It was a mistake,” Mr. Nadler said.
He reasoned that the FBI did not base its decision to investigate Mr. Trump on the unverified and salacious report. Rather, he said, the bureau surveilled the Trump campaign after learning that campaign aide George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat that Russians had incriminating emails that could hurt Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.
“I think the Durham report is much ado about nothing,” Mr. Nadler said. “He’s giving a lot of his own opinions, and I disagree with him saying there was no evidence of collusion.”
According to Mr. Durham’s report, the FBI proceeded with its investigation even after agents secretly recorded Mr. Papadopoulos repeatedly denying “Russian assistance to the Trump campaign.”
The report also criticized the FBI for proceeding with the investigation after failing to validate a “single, substantive allegation” in the Steele dossier.
Rep. Ted Lieu, California Democrat, told The Times that the Russian collusion investigation led to several convictions of Trump associates, including his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
The convictions did not tie Mr. Trump directly to Russians. Mr. Manafort was convicted of tax fraud and bank fraud and later pleaded guilty to other financial crimes and witness tampering. Mr. Trump pardoned him.
Mr. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI regarding his conversations with an alleged Russian agent, but he claimed he was entrapped and forced to take the plea under the threat of charges with a stiffer sentence related to his lobbying as a foreign agent.
Mr. Trump, who distanced himself from Mr. Papadopoulos’ actions, later pardoned him.
“The facts speak for themselves,” Mr. Lieu said. “There were multiple convictions because the FBI opened their investigation. The fact that John Durham wants to reverse all that, he should be ashamed of himself.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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