Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Sunday urged Special Counsel John Durham to issue an interim report as his team investigates the origins of the Russia probe since Democrats seem loathe to allow the probe to continue.
“The special counsel regulations not only require a final report, they allow for interim reports, so I’d like to see an interim report that talks about this from the angle of someone that has not only the intelligence community documents that I have, but the law enforcement documents that show there was no proper predicate for Crossfire Hurricane because there certainly wasn’t any given by the intelligence community to the FBI before this illegal spying began,” Ratcliffe told “Sunday Morning Futures.”
RATCLIFFE URGES BIDEN TO LET DURHAM PROBE RUN ITS COURSE, SAYS MORE DOCS ‘SHOULD BE’ DECLASSIFIED
“[House Intelligence] Chairman [Adam] Schiff has indicated he thinks that the Durham investigation should end, which is exactly why an interim report would be appropriate,” Ratcliffe continued. “It would show whether or not there’s a good-faith basis to continue. It would protect the work that’s been done. So I would encourage my colleagues over at the Department of Justice and at the FBI and, in particular, now Special Counsel Durham to consider doing that, so that the American people can get the full accounting that they deserve.”
Attorney General William Barr made public Tuesday that Durham, who has been investigating the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, was appointed in October as special counsel to continue his probe in the next administration.
John H. Durham. United States Attorney’s Office, District of Connecticut
Durham’s investigation has produced one criminal charge so far, against former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who was accused of altering an email related to the surveillance of a former Trump campaign aide. That prosecution, though, did not allege a broader conspiracy within the FBI, and the conduct it involved had largely been laid out in a Justice Department inspector general report from last December.
“Look, it’s not a question anymore whether or not there was illegal spying,” Ratcliffe said on Sunday. “It’s just a question now of how wide and how deep it was, and I know John Durham has been investigating that, and I’m confident and I’ve said that based on what I’ve seen I think there should be additional indictments. I’m not backing off of that, but he’s the prosecutor. I’d like to hear from him in an interim report, and I think the American people would agree with me.”
Ratcliffe, during his tenure as director of National Intelligence, has declassified a slew of documents, which allies of President Trump have cast as significant, citing their content as proof that the investigation into the president and his 2016 campaign was baseless.
RATCLIFFE URGES BIDEN TO ‘BE HONEST’ ABOUT CHINA THREAT, WARNS AGAINST ‘POLITICIZING INTELLIGENCE’
In May, prior to Ratcliffe’s Senate confirmation, acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell cleared for release more than 6,000 pages of transcripts of interviews from the House Intelligence Committee’s long-running Russia investigation. Fox News first reported that top Obama officials, like former DNI James Clapper, testified that he “never saw any direct empirical evidence” of collusion or a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.
Meanwhile, Ratcliffe pointed to other intelligence to “reflect that the Trump-Russia collusion was a narrative created by Democrats — specifically the Clinton campaign.”
Ratcliffe was referring to declassified handwritten notes belonging to former CIA Director John Brennan, which appeared to show Hillary Clinton’s purported “plan” to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server” ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Ratcliffe also declassified a CIA memo sent to then-FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok, referring to Hillary Clinton’s “plan” to the bureau for potential investigative action.
Ratcliffe also discussed the national security threat that China poses to the U.S. and intelligence reports that China is altering its soldiers’ DNA during his “Sunday Morning Futures” interview.
“The People’s Republic of China has 2 million strong in its military, and it’s trying to make them stronger through gene editing, and that’s just one of the ways that China is trying to essentially dominate the planet and set the rules and the world order,” he said. “People need to understand this is an authoritarian regime. It doesn’t care about people’s individual rights. We’ve seen what they’ve done to the Uighurs. We’ve seen what they’ve done in Hong Kong. It’s about putting the state first, and that is the exact opposite of what has always made America great.”
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Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
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