Attorney General Bill Barr appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham as special counsel to continue investigating Obamagate and the illicit origins of the Russia probe. “On May 13, 2019, I directed John Durham, U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, to investigate certain intelligence and law-enforcement activities surrounding the 2016 presidential election,” Barr wrote in a letter to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. “Although I had expected Mr. Durham to complete his work by the summer of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as additional information he uncovered, prevented him from doing so.”
Barr reveals in his letter that he appointed Durham as a special counsel prior to the election, on October 19, to ensure that regardless of the outcome, that the investigation would be able to continue. “In advance of the presidential election, I decided to appoint Mr. Durham as a Special Counsel to provide him and his team with the assurance that they could complete their work, without regard to the outcome of the election,” Barr continued. Durham has had “the powers and authority of a Special Counsel” since that time.
Text of AG Barr’s letter notifying Congress today that US Attorney John Durham will be special counsel reviewing FBI’s Russia probe of Trump heading into Biden administration pic.twitter.com/M6eT9sbf6y
— Steven Nelson (@stevennelson10) December 1, 2020
This move means that should Joe Biden emerge as the victor in the 2020 election, that Durham can continue his investigation and cannot be easily fired by the Biden administration. The Associated Press notes that “a special counsel can be fired only by the attorney general and for specific reasons, such as misconduct, dereliction of duty, conflict of interest of other violations of Justice Department policies,” and that an attorney general must “document those reasons in writing.”
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Matt Margolis is the author of Airborne: How The Liberal Media Weaponized The Coronavirus Against Donald Trump, and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis