House Intelligence leaders who met with special counsel John Durham said his review of the FBI’s handling of the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign would serve as a basis for laying down reforms to an agency whose work must withstand scrutiny.
Durham uncovered little new information in his report capping his nearly four-year investigation, but he documented multiple missteps taken by the FBI as they probed the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential election, offering a scathing assessment of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
Appearing in tandem after the closed-door session, both Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and Ranking Member Jim Himes (D-Conn.) said the FBI was in need of reform when it comes to high stakes investigations of political candidates, which Durham’s impressions of the agency would help guide.
“The committee really was focused on – particularly on something so sensitive as an investigation that pertains to political candidates – how can we make sure that the behavior of the investigative authorities, in this case the FBI, is beyond reproach,” Himes said.
He pointed to Crossfire Hurricane as well as then-FBI Director Jim Comey’s decision to release information about the investigation into then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton days before the election.
“We have to learn from the mistakes made in these investigations to make sure that Americans can have confidence in both the prosecutorial power of the federal government and in their elections.”
While Durham’s report didn’t lay out any concrete reforms for the bureau, the FBI contends it has taken numerous reforms amid backlash over its handling of the Trump investigation.
That includes more oversight and limitations for both foreign and domestic wiretapping, a nod to a lack of due diligence in the FBI’s spying on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
“The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time. Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented,” the FBI said when Durham’s report was released last month.
But Turner said the reforms don’t go far enough.
“I don’t think anybody on our committee is completely satisfied with the reforms that the FBI has undertaken,” Turner said.
“It’s certainly a great start. And they are responding to some of the issues and problems that are identified in the Durham report and some of the issues that and angst that members of Congress have themselves. But I think our goal in reforms probably go beyond that.”
The House Intelligence Committee is weighing a series of reforms, including on the warrantless wiretapping authority the FBI and other intelligence agencies have for foreign nationals overseas.
But both men agreed the bureau needs additional guardrails.
“He gave us the impression that some of the misconduct is individualized, that there were bad people doing bad things. But then some of it is systemic. And some of it is where we need changes so that there’s higher reviews, there’s higher requirements for this to ever happen again. And he did share those with us. And I do think that that gives us an opportunity,” Turner said.
Durham determined the FBI had little to go on in opening its investigation into the Trump campaign.
“The objective facts show that the FBI’s handling of important aspects of the Crossfire Hurricane matter were seriously deficient,” Durham wrote in the 305-page report, arguing that the bureau relied on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence.”
Himes said Durham did not find evidence that the bureau was politicized but stressed the bureau has a long way to go in recovering its reputation.
“He found confirmation bias, which is bad, but that’s just we’re moving in a direction and we’re going to keep moving maybe without being reflective enough. That’s different than saying it was politicized,” he said.
“We have found collectively, that culturally and procedurally, the FBI has a lot of work to do.”