By Ivan Pentchoukov and Kash’s Corner
Former President Donald Trump has heard that “there’s a lot coming” from the wide-ranging investigation led by Special Counsel John Durham, who is probing the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
“I hear there’s a lot coming,” Trump told former top aide Kash Patel on The Epoch Times’ “Kash’s Corner.” The interview will premiere at 8 p.m. Eastern on Feb. 7 on EpochTV.com.
“We’re gonna see what happens. But what he’s doing is one of the most important jobs being done right now in America.”
Attorney General William Barr assigned Durham on May 13, 2019, to investigate the origins of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane. In October 2020, with the presidential election approaching, Barr designated Durham as a special counsel to protect the criminal investigation in case of a change of guard at the White House in 2021.
Durham secured the first guilty plea in August 2020, prior to his appointment as a special counsel. Former FBI assistant general counsel Kevin Clinesmith admitted to forging an email used to prepare an application to surveil former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Clinesmith was sentenced to probation for a single charge of making false statements related to the forgery.
In September and November last year, Durham brought indictments against Russian national Igor Danchenko, the primary source of the infamous Steele dossier, and against Michael Sussman, the attorney for the Clinton campaign in 2016.
Trump has previously expressed frustration with the pace of Durham’s investigation. In March last year, he issued a statement saying, “Where’s Durham? Is he a living, breathing human being? Will there ever be a Durham report?”
The former president told Epoch TV he still wishes the investigation would move faster.
“I wish it were faster,” Trump said. “It is really the crime of the century and changed everything, including the election.”
Some of the earliest evidence of misconduct in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation emerged in a report prepared by the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee in early 2018.
After, an internal inquiry by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (OIG) yielded two significant reports. The first detailed a pattern of intense political bias against Trump by the key officials involved in the Crossfire Hurricane probe. The second found 17 major errors in the FBI’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court applications to spy on Carter Page. The responsibility for the mistakes ran to the top of the chain of command at the FBI, according to the inspector general, Michael Horowitz.
Horowitz ultimately concluded that, despite the errors, the FBI opened the investigation of the Trump campaign on lawful grounds. Durham publicly disagreed with that finding, issuing a formal statement in December 2019 explaining that his investigation reached beyond the Department of Justice and its components.
Recent court filings by Durham in the Sussman case show that Horowitz withheld vital evidence from the special counsel in the Sussman prosecution and the criminal leak investigation of former FBI General Counsel James Baker. According to the filings, Horowitz’s office failed to disclose that it was in possession of two of Baker’s cellphones.
The full exclusive interview will premiere on EpochTV.com at 8 p.m. Eastern on Feb. 7.
