CNN anchor Jake Tapper admitted Monday that John Durham’s report investigating the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe is “devastating” for the FBI.
However, he still found a way to blame Donald Trump.
What did Tapper say?
Tapper opened his show Monday afternoon with a sobering statement about the report.
Tapper acknowledged that the report “might not have produced all of what Republicans had hoped; but it is still devastating to FBI and in a way, it exonerates Donald Trump.”
TAPPER: Durham report is “devastating to the FBI and to a degree, it does exonerate Donald Trump.” pic.twitter.com/DC30fNpEve
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) May 15, 2023
CNN reporter Evan Perez expanded on the “devastating details” contained in Durham’s report. The investigation lasted for four years.
Perez said that Durham concluded that confirmation bias caused the FBI to continue investigating allegations of Trump-Russian collusion in spite of evidence exculpatory that would have otherwise led the bureau to drop the investigation. According to Durham, the FBI did not follow standard investigative practices to vet evidence, and it ignored evidence that didn’t support the Trump-Russia narrative.
How did Tapper accuse Trump?
Tapper, despite Durham’s conclusions later said that Trump was responsible for the FBI aggressively prosecuting a case Durham claims was tainted with bias because “there was a lot of smoke.”
“So, what are the conclusions?” Durham says that the FBI shouldn’t have conducted a full-scale probe into Trump and Russia. Tapper explained that he seemed to suggest that there was unprofessional behavior in the DOJ and FBI and that people had a “predisposition” — his word — to investigate Trump.
“It is also true that a lot was smoke, right?” He continued.
“I mean, the meeting between Trump’s campaign, Kushner and Don Jr., the whole thing of, ‘if that’s what you said it was, I love that, especially later in summer’. You know, there’s [Paul] Manafort providing Konstantin Kilimnik with polling data. As the communications director of the Senate Intelligence Committee points out, there are things that should raise suspicions,” he added.
CNN’s Sara Murray, who agreed with Tapper and suggested that the FBI was guilty of a “sloppy” investigation, echoed Tapper.
“Yeah. She said that Donald Trump’s public cozy relationship with [Vladimir] Putin and his comments about Russia raised red flags throughout the entire campaign.”
Murray went on to say, “I believe what you saw was that there were some valid concerns among investigators at both the Justice Department and Hill investigators who wanted look into this.” “You know, it was done in a sloppy manner, as you pointed out.”
