Trump hails Durham report but findings fall short of a crushing blow to 'Deep State'

The last word on disputes from the 2016 presidential election may have dropped Monday when the U.S. Justice Department released special counsel John Durham's report — an investigation that also buttressed a failed lawsuit by Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton filed in a South Florida court.

Durham's report repeatedly faulted the FBI for what it said were fact-finding failures and biased critical thinking on the evidence it unearthed while investigating the investigation known as Crossfire Hurricane.

"An objective and honest assessment of these strands of information should have caused the FBI to question not only the predication for Crossfire Hurricane, but also to reflect on whether the FBI was being manipulated for political or other purposes," the report stated. "Unfortunately, it did not."

The 400-page report, however, did not seem to fully fulfill the legal aspirations that Trump or his allies had so ardently sought from the moment Durham was appointed special counsel in May 2019.

Trump, his supporters and conservative media personalities predicted and projected the probe would unravel the "Deep State," be a "colossal step forward" for cracking down on weaponized federal law enforcement and intelligence officials and result in "many indictments" and prison sentences.

But, overall, Durham's conclusions appeared to point to what at worst amounted to "bad judgment."

"Moreover, the law does not always make a person's bad judgment, even horribly bad judgment, standing alone, a crime," Durham wrote in the report. "Nor does the law criminalize all unseemly or unethical conduct that political campaigns might undertake for tactical advantage, absent a violation of a particular federal criminal statute."

Nonetheless, Trump hailed the report's findings on Monday afternoon.

"WOW! After extensive research, Special Counsel John Durham concludes the FBI never should have launched the Trump-Russia probe," the former president wrote on his Truth Social platform.

So did the Durham investigation result in prosecutions?

Yes, but two highly publicized cases Durham prosecuted through the justice system ended in acquittals.

Last October, a jury found think tank analyst Igor Danchenko not guilty of lying to the FBI about his role in the production of a discredited dossier about then-candidate Trump ahead of the 2016 election. Five months earlier, attorney Michael Sussman also was found not guilty of lying to the FBI in a case also brought by Durham.

But, back in 2020, FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith did admit to altering an email used to seek surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

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How did the Durham report compare with the Mueller report?

Well, they were both about the same number of pages even though special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation clocked in at about half the timeframe, 22 months versus Durham's 48 months.

But, overall, Durham's prosecutorial record paled in comparison with Mueller's investigation of suspicions that the 2016 Trump presidential campaign courted Russian assistance.

Mueller did not find "collusion," but his report presented compelling evidence that Russian entities helped Trump's 2016 campaign. And it detailed and documented ways the Trump White House subsequently worked to obstruct the Mueller probe.

In the end, Mueller charged more than two dozen people, although many were foreigners who have not been brought to justice. He also landed a guilty plea from Trump's first national security adviser, Mike Flynn, now a Southwest Florida resident, and the conviction of Trump political confidant Roger Stone, who lives in South Florida. Trump ultimately pardoned both men for their crimes.

In a July 2020 op-ed, Mueller said the probe "was of paramount importance" to the nation and its electoral system and revealed "a detailed picture of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election" that otherwise would have remained concealed.

"Russia’s actions were a threat to America’s democracy," Mueller wrote. "It was critical that they be investigated and understood.

Didn't Trump also file a lawsuit over the 2016 presidential election?

Yes, Trump's complaints about the 2016 election, in which he lost the popular vote but won the determinant Electoral College vote, were also the substance of a civil lawsuit he filed a year ago.

But that case, which borrowed from Durham's prosecutions, was dismissed by a federal judge who ridiculed its assertions.

The lawsuit was filed in March 2022 in a South Florida federal court against a slew of people and entities. The defendants included 2016 Democratic nominee Clinton as well as her campaign chairman John Podesta, the Democratic National Committee and Weston Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who was DNC chair seven years ago.

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The complaint drew from the criminal cases Durham brought, said Boca Raton attorney Peter Ticktin.

"If you look at our complaint, you'll see a great deal of our material came from those indictments," Ticktin, who assisted Trump's legal team in filing the lawsuit, said in interviews with The Palm Beach Post over the past year.

But in tossing the case last September, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks agreed with the defendants' attorneys saying the 193-page complaint read like "a fundraising tool, a press release, or a list of political grievances" and "had no merit as a lawsuit."

"What the (lawsuit) lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances," Middlebrooks concluded.

Ticktin said he disagreed with the judge.

"We knew that there would be scrutiny of this. What we did was we wanted to make sure that nobody would be able to do what Judge Middlebrooks did, at least not fairly do," Ticktin said of the dismissal.

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In an interview last year, David Becker, executive director and founder of The Center for Election Innovation & Research, said Trump's litigation over the 2016 election seemed nonsensical as "the winning candidate doesn't file a lawsuit very often" over an electoral contest.

"I don't know of another suit like that," Becker said at the time, and added he couldn't think of a legal remedy even if Trump were to have won the case.

"Waiting six years to request relief regarding an election that you actually won I can't think of anything that is analogous to that in American history," Becker said.

But Ticktin said the goal of the lawsuit was to unearth the impetus for all the investigations into the Trump campaign and the first years of his administration.

"How did all of this happen and nobody is responsible?" Ticktin said.

Asked if the infamous political dossier on Trump, and other actions, were simply political dirty tricks, Ticktin said they had crossed the line into criminal activity.

"There are some dirty tricks that are torts. There are some dirty tricks that are crimes. And there are some dirty tricks that are just unethical, or sneaky, or not nice. Just dirty," he said in insisting illegal acts were committed.

But Durham's last word on Monday suggested otherwise.

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Trump hails John Durham report that blames Russia probe on bad judgment