John Durham: The low-profile Connecticut prosecutor leading a high-profile hunt for the origin of Trump collusion claims
Dec 04, 2019 at 6:00 am
U.S. Attorney John H. Durham was back in Connecticut for a retirement dinner earlier this fall and one of the other attendees observed, half facetiously, that he showed no obvious signs of bruising or broken bones.
When Attorney General William Barr put Durham at the center of the most contentious national controversy in years. He is digging into the origins the FBI’s counter-intelligence, Russia-collusion investigation of President Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Durham, a career prosecutor with a gold-plated resume, will be excoriated no matter what he does. The president’s allies have created formidable expectations, predicting Durham will prove Democrats have maligned Trump with a succession of made-up controversies. Top Democrats are calling Durham a tool Trump is using for revenge.
Speculation increased last week with the impending release Monday of Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s report..
Durham’s colleagues say there is no one better able to tune out the partisan noise. They predict he will immerse himself in the work and he may end up frustrating everyone.
“They opened Pandora’s Box, when they chose John,” said Bill Reiner, a retired FBI agent and longtime Durham colleague. “He is going to go wherever the evidence goes. And he does not care where it goes. There is no politics in John. There is no politics in anything he does.”
Durham hasn’t been a stranger to contention. He helped break up the New England Mafia,…
None of those cases ignited the partisan rancor associated with the so-called “investigation of the investigators,” especially after the stakes grew last month when it was widely reported that Durham and his hand-picked, inner circle of Connecticut colleagues have criminal authority.
Analyzing allied intelligence
Durham and his team — including former assistant U.S. Attorney Nora Dannehy and retired FBI agent John Eckenrode, both of Connecticut — have had remarkable success keeping most of what they are doing secret.
It was Barr who disclosed that Durham has conferred with European governments to learn what friendly intelligence services channeled to their U.S. counterparts about Russia and the Trump campaign. Some governments, including the Baltic states and Ukraine, were early opponents of a Trump candidacy..
Durham has been asked to decide — if such intelligence was a basis for the collusion investigation — whether it was obtained and used appropriately under U.S. laws that govern foreign intelligence collection and restrict spying on Americans.
“A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries … played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,”
While traveling to Italy together, Barr and Durham pressed for information about Joseph Mifsud…
This is not the first time Durham been encircled by hostile forces.
Durham wears his regard for law enforcement on his sleeve — in particular for the FBI agents with whom he has worked for decades. …
Durham’s chief target turned out to be one of the most decorated agents in FBI history, John Connolly….
No one could accuse Durham of folding under pressure.
No leaks
Durham has rarely spoken in public of his work in Boston, or anywhere else. Colleagues trade stories about his reticence. Investigators said he is obsessed by leaks.
FBI agents said Durham — a Republican — threatened to polygraph investigators whenever he suspected a leak.
“I’ve never been able to find out what he is working on — even when he worked for me, ” said Supreme Court Justice Richard Palmer, a former U.S. attorney, half seriously.
“I can’t believe that any of them actually know what Durham is doing,” Mukasey said. “I wouldn’t dream of asking him. And If I did, I’m sure he wouldn’t answer.”
Durham may have spoken in public about his work just once….
“This may be their only chance to hearJohn speak about his work, other than in a courtroom," Boyle said. "He’s notoriously shy about speaking about himself.”
“One thing that I try to bear in mind, and try to encourage in new young prosecutors, particularly those who are making their bones or cutting their teeth, is an awareness of the incredible power that is wielded by law enforcement, and perhaps federal law enforcement in particular. Issuing a subpoena can destroy somebody’s reputation…
“It is as important for the system as for prosecutors to protect the secrecy of proceedings, not because we want them to be secret, but because we’re not always right.”
https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-john-durham-investigates-the-investigators-20191126-20191204-2psplwx7dfhrdi4wx5qoxdnh5i-story.html