In the summer of 2019 Attorney General William Barr and the special prosecutor John Durham went to Italy to investigate the possibility that our country’s secret services had information on the origins of Russiagate.
After special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation was concluded, Donald Trump had asked and obtained that Barr open a counter-investigation in order to demonstrate that Russiagate had been a fabrication generated by the FBI, based on unreliable spies from Europe.
Today, after four years of investigations, the Durham investigation has not yet dismantled any of the allegations of “repeated contacts” between the Trump campaign and Moscow, contained in the Mueller report, nor has it found evidence that the “deep state” had plotted by creating false trails of those contacts to prevent the election of Trump. On the contrary the counter-investigation seems destined to end in nothing.
But with a scoop resulting from “months of work”, the New York Times reveals that Durham found something in Italy, exactly the opposite of what he expected: “Italian officials, while denying any role in initiating the Russia investigation, unexpectedly offered a potentially explosive tip linking Trump to some suspected financial crimes ”, write Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman and Katie Benner, the three journalists who thoroughly studied the Durham investigation and published the long reconstruction.
As Attorney General, Barr found himself faced with the awkward position of having to evaluate the “tip”, and together with Durham concluded that “it was too serious and credible to ignore”. However, Barr entrusted Durham himself with the task of investigating, and possibly arriving at indictments.
We do not know what the Italian authorities had communicated to Durham, what they were the “financial crimes” of which they had knowledge. What the investigation of the New York Times makes clear is that Durham has never made any allegations. Did he cover up? Didn’t he find anything to prove what the Italians had told him? The three journalists write that it is not known “what steps he took, what he learned and whether anyone in the White House was informed about it”. Indeed, to put it plainly: “The extraordinary fact that Durham opened a criminal investigation that included the examination of President Trump has remained a secret.”
