VIDEO - ‘Pretty Damning For the FBI’: CNN’s Jake Tapper Says Durham Uncovered ‘Confirmation Bias’ In Trump-Russia Investigation

‘Pretty Damning For the FBI’: CNN’s Jake Tapper Says Durham Uncovered ‘Confirmation Bias’ In Trump-Russia Investigation

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CNN’s Jake Tapper reported on Special Counsel John Durham finally releasing his long-awaited report on Monday, breaking down some of the key takeaways from the Trump-era investigation into the origins of the FBI’s probe into Trump’s 2016 campaign ties to Russia.

“Durham finally released his report, finding that the FBI in his view should have never launched a full investigation into possible connections between Donald Trump, his campaign, his advisers and allies, and Russia during the 2016 election,” Tapper began before introducing CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez.

“And, Evan, this report, it’s more than 300 pages long. He spent about four years on it. What else did he have to find?” Tapper asked Perez.

“Well, Jake, the bottom line that John Durham finds is that, you know, there was reason for the FBI to at least do some preliminary investigation, some lower-level types of investigations. But he repeatedly says that he doesn’t believe that the FBI took into account a lot of information that was, that they had in their possession,” Perez replied.

“That was exculpatory?” Tapper asked.

“That would have been exculpatory, that would have explained some of their suspicions that they have had about Donald Trump, about some of the people surrounding his campaign,” Perez replied, adding:

Of course, we know that, you know, there was plenty of suspicions, in part because the former president brought on a person in Paul Manafort as his campaign chairman, who was deeply indebted to a Russian oligarch, somebody who was very close to the Kremlin. That is just one of the many points of data points that the FBI was following up on in why they did this investigation.

And the bottom line, he says, is that, you know, ‘the evidence gathered in the multiple, exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the instant investigation, neither U.S. law enforcement nor the intelligence community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencements of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.’ He’s saying, look, he spent four years looking at this. He investigated a lot of different things. The FBI made a lot of mistakes.

Perez then read a statement from FBI Director Chris Wray saying the bureau has already “made a lot of reforms” relevant to Durham’s criticism.

“A lot of people who follow law enforcement might not be surprised that in general, sometimes there is an overzealousness and an effort to,” Tapper replied as Perez cut to say, “Confirmation bias is what Durham calls it.”

“Yeah, confirmation bias,” agreed Tapper.

“Not political bias,” Perez clarified, referring to a common criticism lobbed at the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe.

“It doesn’t only happen with presidential candidates and presidents, though. It happens with, you know,” Tapper said as Perez added, “To the little guy.”

“To the little guys on the street. And they don’t get four-year multimillion-dollar investigations to exonerate them,” Tapper continued. “But, you know, it’s good to have accountability.”

Tapper then introduced his next guest former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL). “Let’s start with your reaction to the Durham report. And on first blush, I mean, there’s nothing, no criminality that he found but pretty damning for the FBI,” Tapper said to Kinzinger.

“Yeah, it is,” Kinzger agreed, adding:

I mean, I think you guys hit it on the head when you talked about confirmation bias. I mean, we went into 2016. This is the first presidential candidate, at least in my lifetime, that had expressed sympathy for Vladimir Putin. You had the Paul Manafort issues.

You remember, at the Republican convention, they pulled support for Ukraine out of the platform there. So I think a lot of people are looking going what’s going on here? And including myself, we had some real concerns with, you know, the sympathy that the former president, frankly, still has for Vladimir Putin.

But that shouldn’t govern what the FBI does. The FBI should not allow their, either bias on that or whatever to come to fruition. And hopefully, this report by the independent counsel will change things at the FBI. Hopefully, some stuff has already been implemented.

Watch the full clip above via CNN.

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