Former Attorney General William Barr defended special counsel John Durham after a federal jury acquitted prominent Democratic attorney Michael Sussmann, saying that despite the failure of his flagship prosecution, Durham “did an exceptionally able job.”
Fox News host Jesse Watters asked Barr in an interview on Wednesday if he was disappointed in Durham or if he felt “any way responsible for how this Durham situation’s unfolding,” as he appointed the special prosecutor.
“No, I’m very proud of John Durham, and I do take responsibility for his appointment, and I think he and his team did an exceptionally able job, both digging out very important facts and presenting a compelling case to the jury,” Barr responded.
“While he did not succeed in getting a conviction from the D.C. jury, I think he accomplished something far more important, which is he brought out the truth in two important areas,” he continued.
Barr said he believed Durham “crystallized the central role” that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign played in espousing a narrative that former President Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russia.
He said that Durham also “exposed really dreadful behavior by the supervisors in the FBI, the senior ranks in the FBI, who knowingly use this information to start an investigation of Trump and then dupe their own agents by lying to them and refusing to tell them what the real source of that information was.”
Barr picked Durham to look into the FBI’s probe of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign in early 2019, being given the status of special counsel in late 2020 so Durham could finish his work even after Trump left office.
Sussmann, a key figure in the Durham probe, stood accused of not being forthcoming in an October 2016 meeting with the then-FBI’s general counsel regarding who he had represented.
He had reportedly been meeting with FBI official James Baker to present evidence of supposed questionable traffic online between Russian financial institution Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.
A federal jury acquitted Sussmann on Monday on one count of lying to the FBI, a decision that was slammed by Trump.
“Our Legal System is CORRUPT, our Judges (and Justices!) are highly partisan, compromised or just plain scared, our Borders are OPEN, our Elections are Rigged, Inflation is RAMPANT, gas prices and food costs are ‘through the roof,’ our Military ‘Leadership’ is Woke, our Country is going to HELL, and Michael Sussmann is not guilty,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, the social networking site he founded.