A long-awaited report has strongly criticised the FBI’s handling of its investigation into alleged ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.
In a 306-page report, special counsel John Durham said the agency’s inquiry lacked “analytical rigor”.
He concluded the FBI had not possessed evidence of collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia before launching an inquiry.
The FBI said it had addressed the issues highlighted in the report.
In the report, Mr Durham – who was appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr in 2019 – accused the FBI of acting on “raw, unanalysed and uncorroborated intelligence”.
The report noted significant differences in the way the FBI had handled the Trump investigation when compared with other potentially sensitive inquiries, such as those involving his 2016 electoral rival Hillary Clinton.
Mr Durham noted that Hilary Clinton and others had received “defensive briefings” from the FBI while in Trump’s case the Department of Justice and the FBI had failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law