The testimony and report of Special Counsel John Durham show clearly that there was “political coordination” at the FBI in the investigation into former President Donald Trump over alleged collusion, according to Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro made the comments on his Thursday show while discussing Durham’s testimony on Wednesday before Congress. Durham conducted a nearly four-year investigation that painted a damning picture of an FBI that disregarded its mission and central principles in order to pursue a partisan investigation into Trump.
“That report, if you’ll recall, was just an absolute disaster for Democrats. I called it maybe the worst political scandal in American history. Nobody actually took it seriously in the press, because to do so would have been devastating for the Obama administration. In particular, as I wrote at the time, Crossfire Hurricane was initiated based on sheer conjecture,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro explained that the investigation was based on shoddy evidence that was in part begun by agents who had voiced political opposition to Trump.
“The FBI basically greenlit the investigation within days of receiving that flimsy information. Peter Strzok, who’s an ardent Trump hater, he helped initiate that investigation. The investigation from notes was launched well before any dialogue with Russia, with Australia, or the intelligence community prior to any critical analysis of the information itself,” Shapiro said.
Durham found in his report that the FBI opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump’s campaign “based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” and took allegations about Trump far more seriously than allegations about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP
During his testimony, Durham said that investigators at the FBI suffered from confirmation bias, and ignored evidence that didn’t fit the narrative that Trump was colluding with Russia.
“Well, all of this ticked off the Democrats to no end, because what he is suggesting here is systemic failure. And it’s not just a question of a few bad apples,” Shapiro said.
Durham said during his Wednesday testimony that some current and former agents at the FBI had apologized to him for the investigation.
“Let me give you some real-life views,” Durham said. “I have had any number of FBI agents who I’ve worked with over the years — some of them are retired, some of them are still in place — who have come to me and apologized for the manner in which that investigation was undertaken.”