Don’t expect former President Barack Obama to be charged in special counsel John Durham‘s criminal inquiry into the conduct of the Russia investigation that has its origins stretching back to 2016.
That was the message conveyed Friday by former Attorney General William Barr, sticking to an assertion he made nearly two years ago when he was still running the Justice Department and overseeing Durham’s work under then-President Donald Trump.
“If he can prove criminal acts beyond a regional doubt, he’ll bring the case. I don’t suspect that they’re going to involve someone at Obama’s level,” Barr told Fox Business host Elizabeth MacDonald in response to her raising the question.
Durham is in the midst of two active prosecutions, legal fights playing out in the public view, but so far any charges brought in the investigation have been dealt only against a former FBI lawyer, a Democratic lawyer tied to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and the main source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier.
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Barr did stress that Durham, a former U.S. attorney who remains a special counsel in the Biden administration, is expected to come out with a report. “He is going to, I think, go through everything that happened. Some things he may be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said, adding later that “people can read what happened, and even though you cannot prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, I think most Americans will understand what’s going on.”
Trump has chastised Obama in the past over what he has dubbed “Obamagate,” accusing his predecessor and top national security veterans of undermining his campaign and presidency.
President Joe Biden, who was Obama’s vice president, has also been thrown into the mix for his involvement in a small Oval Office meeting in which the FBI’s intercepts of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were discussed and for being listed as an authorized recipient of unmasking intelligence on Flynn.
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To this day, Barr questions the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. In a recent Fox News interview, he called that inquiry and “collusion” narrative a “manufactured scandal.” But he has long cast doubt on the possibility that Obama and Biden will be subject to a criminal investigation by Durham.
“I have a general idea of how Mr. Durham’s investigation is going. … There’s a difference between an abuse of power and a federal crime. Not every abuse of power, no matter how outrageous, is necessarily a federal crime,” Barr said during a press conference in May 2020. “Now, as to President Obama and Vice President Biden, whatever their level of involvement, based on the information I have today, I don’t expect Mr. Durham’s work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man. Our concern over potential criminality is focused on others.”
Barr noted during his interview with MacDonald that nothing he witnessed before leaving the Justice Department in late December 2020 would have changed his mind. “I have not seen anything that would justify — and I said this when I was in office — a criminal investigation of Obama,” he said.
