House Select Committee on Intelligence chair, Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner, shared his thoughts Sunday about the upcoming closed-door testimony from Special Counsel John Durham.
Turner appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and was interviewed by Jake Tapper about his plans for the Intelligence Committee. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: National Security Leaders Urge Congress To Investigate FBI Over Security Clearances In Wake Of Durham Report)
“On Tuesday, your committee is going to hear closed door testimony from Trump-appointed Special Counsel John Durham. His report concluded that the FBI should not have launched the full Trump-Russia investigation as it did. It would have been ok to do a preliminary one but not the full-bore one. What do you want to know from former Special Counsel Durham?” Tapper asked.
“So this is very troubling. This is going to be troubling for you, especially as you read that the Durham report after the years of which there were these accusations of Trump/Russia collusion, and that these accusations were absolutely false,” Turner replied.
“Every investigation that has occurred, including now the Durham report, is — conclusively states that this was the result of people who had political bias who undertook an investigation based upon total Clinton campaign-funded research that was uncorroborated and turned out to be even untrue. And that’s where you have to be concerned,” Turner said.
When your government is lying to you, when your government is telling you that something has happened that has not happened, that’s when our committee has to be involved and that’s when we have to look at what happened here, how do we make certain this doesn’t happen again,” Turner added.
Durham’s final report said the FBI used “uncorroborated intelligence” in its Crossfire Hurricane investigation of alleged collusion between former President Donald Trump and Russia ahead of the 2016 presidential election. (RELATED: FBI Admits Durham Report Is Right)
“Our investigation determined that the Crossfire Hurricane investigators did not and could not corroborate any of the substantive allegations contained in the Steele reporting,” the Durham report reads.
The Steele Dossier, an opposition research document funded by Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, played a major role in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. It has since been discredited. Likewise, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the Trump-Russia allegations found no collusion between Trump and the Russians.