Report: Barr attorney can’t provide evidence Trump was set up by DOJ

The attorney handpicked by Attorney General William Barr to investigate the origins of the probe into the Trump campaign and Russia’s election interference has reportedly found no evidence to support claims from conservatives that the case was a setup by U.S. intelligence officials.

Sources told The Washington Post that John Durham, the U.S. attorney chosen by Barr to lead the investigation, told the Justice Department’s inspector general (IG), who conducted his own probe, that he has found no evidence to support claims that a Maltese professor who spoke with former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos was secretly a U.S. intelligence asset.

Allies of the president have claimed for months that the professor, Joseph Mifsud, who spoke with Papadopoulos about the possibility of obtaining Hillary Clinton’s stolen emails, was actually an asset of U.S. intelligence agencies seeking to set up the Trump campaign on criminal charges.

Sources close to the investigation added to the Post that the draft report written by IG David Horowitz is likely to detail instances of misconduct by FBI agents involved with the investigation but to conclude that top FBI officials did not act with political bias during the 2016 election.

“His excellent work has uncovered significant information that the American people will soon be able to read for themselves,” a spokeswoman for the Justice Department told the Post of the report’s upcoming release. “Rather than speculating, people should read the report for themselves next week, watch the Inspector General’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and draw their own conclusions about these important matters.”

Republicans have argued since the inception of the now-shuttered special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign that the probe was launched improperly based on unfounded accusations detailed in a dossier crafted by an ex-British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, and used by the Obama administration to hurt President Trump’s chances of being elected.

Top former officials at the FBI have roundly dismissed that claim, arguing that the investigation was conducted without political bias.