Washington: An independent US prosecutor stated in a report released Monday that the FBI investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign was based on flimsy evidence and seriously flawed.

Bill Barr, the attorney general under President Trump at the time, named Special Counsel John Durham in 2019 to address claims that the Russia investigation was a political "witch hunt," most notably those made by Trump himself.

Durham's over 300-page report is the result of a four-year investigation that was carried out under Barr's successor, Democratic President Joe Biden appointee Merrick Garland as attorney general.

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The long-awaited report, "Crossfire Hurricane," which examined claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, was highly critical of its inception.

According to the report, neither US law enforcement nor the intelligence community appeared to have any concrete proof of collusion in their possession at the start of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

The FBI and Justice Department, according to Durham, used a different standard when looking into Trump and his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

The report stated that the FBI's "speed and manner of opening and investigating Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans targeted at the Clinton campaign."

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Senior FBI agents "exhibited a serious lack of analytical rigour towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically-affiliated persons and entities," according to Durham.

The result was that investigators "acted without appropriate objectivity or restraint in pursuing allegations of collusion or conspiracy between a US political campaign and a foreign power," he claimed.

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In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, praised the Durham report.
“WOW! Special Counsel John Durham has concluded that the FBI should never have started the Trump-Russia Probe after conducting extensive research. Added Trump.

He continued, apparently alluding to the numerous ongoing criminal investigations aimed at him: "In other words, the American Public was scammed, just as it is being scammed right now by those who don't want to see GREATNESS for AMERICA!"

The FBI claimed in a statement that its current leadership has carried out numerous corrective actions.

The mistakes mentioned in the report could have been avoided if those reforms had been in place in 2016, according to a statement from the FBI.
Durham was assigned by then-attorney general Barr to investigate the beginnings of Crossfire Hurricane, which was launched in July 2016, as well as the subsequent investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, which began in May 2017.

Both focused on the numerous interactions between the Trump campaign and Russians as well as Russian hacking and social media manipulation in favour of Trump in 2016.

The Mueller investigation broadened that to include alleged obstruction by Trump.
Mueller ultimately succeeded in convicting six members of the Trump campaign and indicting 25 Russians.

Barr, however, disregarded Mueller's evidence of alleged obstruction by Trump and his findings that the Trump campaign had engaged in criminal collusion with Russia.

A Russian national and a well-known Washington lawyer were both charged as a result of Durham's investigation with making false statements to the FBI, but both were later found not guilty.

Igor Danchenko, a Russian, was accused of providing information for the "Steele dossier," which was compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele and contained unverified salacious information about Trump and Russia.