Former federal prosecutor Brett Tolman weighed in after MSNBC's Andrew Weissmann, a former top prosecutor in the Russia investigation, downplayed the findings from John Durham's report as "a big fat nothing." On "Fox & Friends" Tuesday, Tolman said some on the left are acknowledging the "shocking" revelation that the Russia investigation had no backbone to begin with.
FBI RESPONDS TO SCATHING DURHAM REPORT ON TRUMP-RUSSIA PROBE, TOUTS ‘DOZENS OF CORRECTIVE ACTIONS’
BRETT TOLMAN: You have a hoax that was made to look real like a real investigation, and it's endorsed and pursued by the FBI, DOJ, the AG, the CIA, the vice president and the president at the time in 2016. And then fast-forward just a bit, and you have the same agencies, same organizations and many of the same people making real evidence on the Hunter Biden laptop, of real corruption, real collusion. And what do they do? They make that look like the hoax. So you have to look at both of these to understand that this is an op, not a real investigation. This is an effort by those with power. And why do they get to do it, Brian? They get to do it because they have no transparency and no accountability.
[…]
They have to say that at this point, but you'll start to notice many that are looking at it closely, even on CNN, have started to suggest it's shocking that this had little and no backbone behind it and no foundation. It was an operation, Brian. It wasn't an investigation.
The FBI and Justice Department jumped to investigate former President Trump's campaign despite a lack of sound evidence, a "notable departure" from the way it resisted efforts to investigate claims against Hillary Clinton's campaign, according to Special Counsel John Durham's final report on the probe into alleged election collusion between Trump and Russia.
Durham's long awaited report from his investigation into FBI's "Crossfire Hurricane" probe was delivered to Congress on Monday and revealed that FBI and DOJ "failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law" when it launched the Trump-Russia investigation.
Durham's report also highlighted that the Trump investigation was "markedly different" from the government's level of interest in Clinton's campaign.
Durham's report said the FBI briefed Clinton staffers on information of possible threats aimed at the Clinton campaign, but ignored intelligence it received from "a trusted foreign source pointing to a Clinton campaign plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin so as to divert attention from her own concerns relating to her use of a private email server."
Fox News' Brianna Herlihy contributed to this report.
