The FBI had no evidence to investigate his campaign Donald Trump in 2016 and relied excessively on information provided by the Republican mogul’s political opponents to fuel the investigation, special counsel John Durham concluded in his report released today.

The report marks the end of a four-year investigation that began in May 2019, when then-Attorney General William Barr assigned veteran prosecutor Durham to look into possible slips the FBI made when it launched Operation Crossfire Hurricane to look into his possible contacts. Trump campaign staff with Russian officials. The Crossfire Hurricane investigation was later handed over to special counsel Robert Mueller who, in March 2019, concluded that there was no evidence that Trump’s staff colluded with Russia in 2016.

In this new 306-page report, Durham concludes that intelligence and law enforcement agencies had “no real evidence” of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia before they launched Operation Crossfire Hurricane. He also accuses the FBI of handling this investigation differently than other, politically sensitive investigations, such as those involving his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

“The Department (of Justice) and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of unswervingly upholding the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” he added. “Senior FBI officials demonstrated a serious lack of analytical accuracy in the information they received, particularly information (coming) from politically connected individuals and entities.”

Durham’s report was tabled in Congress today, without parts of it being withheld. Attorney General Merrick Garland was informed on Friday. Her findings could be used by Trump, who plans to run for president again in 2024 despite facing criminal charges in New York and at the federal level over his withholding of classified documents and his role in the coup attempt. of the 2020 election result.

Trump had hoped Durham would release his report before the 2020 election, which he believed would be a blow to Joe Biden. But Durham’s investigation had little impact, as in two cases grand juries acquitted the two suspects he tried to prosecute in 2022.

In one of those cases, a jury in Washington acquitted Hillary Clinton’s former campaign lawyer, Michael Sussman, of lying to the FBI when he met with agents in September 2016 to give them a information about Trump’s possible contacts with a Russian bank. A few months later, another jury, this time in Virginia, acquitted Russian investigator Igor Danchenko on charges that he lied to the FBI when asked about the sources of the information he provided. Based on his information, the so-called “Steele Dossier” was compiled by former British agent Christopher Steele, which contained allegations about Trump’s ties to Russia – many of which were never substantiated.

An investigation by the Justice Department’s Inspector General later found that the FBI continued to unduly rely on these unsubstantiated claims when, for example, it petitioned a court for permission to monitor the communications of Carter Page, a former Trump adviser. . Durham succeeded in getting former FBI attorney Kevin Kleinsmith to plead guilty to altering an email that was later used to prompt the agency’s surveillance of Page.