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Attorney General William Barr has instructed a US attorney to examine the origins of the investigation in Russia and determine whether intelligence-gathering efforts targeting the Trump campaign were "legal and appropriate," said Monday night. Fox News a person aware of the facts.
John Durham, the Connecticut's US attorney, will conduct the investigation, the source said. This decision came as the Trump administration asked for explanations as to why the federal authorities carried out the surveillance – as well as whether the Democrats were the ones who complused with foreign actors.
Earlier in the day, two sources told Fox News that Barr was "serious" and had assigned DOJ staff to the investigation. Durham is known as an "accuser, bulldog" prosecutor, according to Fox News.
According to sources close to the subject, the purpose of the investigation includes the pre-transition period – prior to November 7, 2016 – including the use and initiation of informants, as well as possible abuses by FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act).
An informant working for the American intelligence pretended to be a research assistant at the University of Cambridge in September 2016 to try to extract any possible link between the Trump campaign and the Russia of George Papadopoulos, then advisor in Trump's foreign policy, appeared earlier this month. Papadopoulos told Fox News that the informant had tried to "seduce" him in the context of the "weird" episode.
Earlier, Durham had investigated the corruption of law enforcement, the destruction of CIA videotapes and the Boston FBI 's dealings with gangsters. He is about to continue to serve as Chief Federal Prosecutor in Connecticut.
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US lawyer John Durham has been tasked with probing the origins of the Trump campaign's surveillance, a source told Fox News.
(Department of Justice)
In January, Republican House representatives Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows wrote to Durham to request a briefing, claiming that they had "discovered" that the Durham office "was investigating[TheancienavocatgénéralduFBIJamesBaker"pourdesrévélationsnonautoriséesauxmédias"[FormerFBIGeneralCounselJamesBaker"forunauthorizeddisclosurestothemedia"[L’ancienavocatgénéralduFBIJamesBaker”pourdesrévélationsnonautoriséesauxmédias”[formerFBIGeneralCounselJamesBaker”forunauthorizeddisclosurestothemedia”
The new Durham review would coexist with the ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice's Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, who continues to investigate potential violations of the FBI's surveillance – an investigation. which started last March and of which Fox News would have completed the completion.
Republicans are also looking for answers from US Attorney General of Utah, John Huber, appointed by then Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, a year ago, to look not only at the abuses the FBI and DOJ, but also the manner in which the authorities conducted the investigation. Clinton Foundation.
Huber, warned the Republicans, have apparently made little progress and have only spoken to a few key witnesses and whistleblowers. But in January, the acting Attorney General, Matthew Whitaker, reportedly told a private meeting that Huber's work was proceeding rapidly.
FOX NEWS EXCLUSIVE: FBI INTERNAL TEXTS SHOW DOJ PUSHING ON "BIAS" IN KEY FBI FISA SOURCE
Durham's appointment comes about a month after Barr told congressional members that he thought "espionage had actually occurred" during the Trump campaign in 2016. He then said that he did not mean anything pejorative and that he was assembling a team to examine the origins of the special advocate. investigation.
The Democrats hammered Barr, frustrated by the revelations contained in the report of special advocate Robert Mueller, according to which the Trump campaign had not been conducted in concert with Russian actors, despite the many offers of Assistance from the Russians. Mueller's final report gave rise to a fierce battle over the limited number of editorials in the report, which, according to the GM, are legally necessary, as they relate to grand jury issues.
By obtaining a secret mandate from FISA to monitor Trump's former help, Carter Page, the FBI copied and pasted directly from a controversial Washington Post opinion piece to suggest that the campaign Trump could have been compromised. The office also repeatedly assured the court that it "did not believe" that former British spy Christopher Steele was the direct source of a Yahoo News article involving Page in a collusion with Russia.
However, the minutes of the London courts have shown that, contrary to FBI estimates, Steele had informed Yahoo News and other reporters in the fall of 2016 under the guidance of Fusion GPS – the company's research and development firm. Opposition to the origin of the file. GPS Merger was retained by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), an information not mentioned in the FISA application.
The FISA app quotes word-for-word the Washington Post article claiming that the Trump campaign had "worked behind the scenes" to "dump" the GOP platform on Russia and Ukraine. The FBI apparently did not make its own independent assessment of the piece, which was described as a "column of opinion" by mail, and Mueller's investigation ultimately revealed no fault on the part of the Trump team.
In addition, FBI internal text messages obtained exclusively by Fox News earlier this year showed that a senior DOJ official had expressed concerns about the bias of a key FISA mandate, but that the FBI officials insisted.
"There is a classified document that I will try not to file and that takes the record – all pages of it – and it has a side check", "Senate Judiciary Committee Chair, Lindsey Graham Fox News "," Sunday Morning Futures "" This weekend. "There's really no verification, other than the media reports generated by the reporters who received the file."
Graham specifically quoted The Hill's John Solomon report that the FBI was specifically informed that Steele, the office's confidential informant, had confessed to a contact at the State Department that "I'm not sure." he was "eager" to disclose his discredited record in order to influence the election.
Kathleen Kavalec, assistant deputy state secretary, reportedly recounted the written account of her meeting with Steele on October 11, 2016, according to information revealed in the case of the pursuit of the transparency of Citizens United.
Brooke Singman of Fox News and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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