John Durham, the former special lawyer who spent almost four years examining the origins of FBI’s investigation into the 2016 presidential campaign of President Donald Trump and his alleged links with Russia, told federal prosecutors that they investigated James Comey that he could not discover evidence that he would support false statements or obstruction against the former director of the FBI, sources familiar with the matter that told the issue of ABC.
Federal prosecutors in Virginia gathered remotely with Durham in August to understand the results of their investigation, according to sources familiar with the meeting, and their conclusions increased the possibility that Durham, which was once elevated by Trump and other Republicans, believing that he would prosecute high -level officials involved with the investigation of the 2016 president’s campaign, now he could become a key figure Comey
Prosecutors also met with a team of lawyers in the United States prosecutor’s office in Washington, DC, who had investigated Comey for years, including calling him to testify to a large jury in 2021, but they could not identify any loadable offense committed by Comey, sources familiar with the meeting.
After conducting their own two -month investigation, prosecutors in Virginia reached the same conclusion as both Durham and DC prosecutors: they could not prove that Comey made false statements to Congress to obstruct their investigation. Presenting their findings in a long decline memorandum, the prosecutors explicitly mentioned the other two investigations to strengthen their recommendation that the probable cause does not exist to accuse Comey, according to sources familiar with the content of the note.
Lindsey Halligan, a former insurance lawyer chosen by Trump to serve as an American prosecutor for the East district of Virginia, quickly rejected that recommendation and sought an accusation of three charges against Comment. Last month, a grand jury voted to accuse Comment for two positions of making a false statement to Congress and obstruction, while rejected an additional count of false statements requested by Halligan. Before appointing Halligan, Trump said “he would do things in motion,” he indicates that he would bring cases against Comey and others.
Durham did not respond to a message in search of ABC News comments. A spokesman for the Department of Justice also did not respond to a request for comments.
The politically tense case, which goes against the judgment of at least two prosecutors appointed by Trump himself, occurs when the president presses more charges against some of his political enemies, seeking compensation for the multiple criminal cases he faced after his departure of the position.
The former FBI director James Comey is a jury while testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee in the Hart Senate Office building in Capitol Hill, on June 8, 2017.
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“There will be others. Look, that is my opinion: they put together the Department of Justice as nobody in history. What they have done is terrible,” Trump told reporters one day after Comey was accused. “And so, I would do it, I hope, frankly, I hope there are others, because you can’t let this happen to a country.”
However, the circumstances surrounding the Prosecutor’s Office, including that at least three other teams of prosecutors declined to present the positions, could not only reinforce the argument that Comey was attacked, but also highlighted the weaknesses that experienced prosecutors had already identified in the case, the sources said. The main leadership in the Department of Justice had repeatedly expressed skepticism about the case, and no career prosecutor was willing to present the case to the Grand Jury on behalf of Halligan, the sources added.
The case initially pursued by Halligan, according to the sources, focuses on two elements of the testimony of Comey before the Judicial Committee of the Senate in 2020, which allegedly lied about passing leaks to the media, and that he was not aware of an unseed intelligence report that the presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tried to create a “scandal” by linking the Trump campaign to Russia.
Durham’s team was widely investigated if Comey’s testimony was not aware of the intelligence report and that the accusation “does not sound any bell” was intentionally misleading. According to the sources, Durham did not believe that he could support the positions of false statements due to the alleged lack of memory of Comey, and that evidence never completely established that Comey had seen the intelligence report.
Speaking with federal prosecutors during a one -hour videoconference at the end of August, Durham reiterated the discovery of his team that Comey’s testimony does not support the positions of false statements, sources familiar with Durham’s interview said. The 2025 research of Comey followed the same evidence and coincided with the conclusion achieved by Durham, whose vast research covered four years and two presidential administrations.
The grand jury, which last month heard evidence against Comey, seemed to reach the same conclusion that Comey did not lie to Congress on the Intelligence Report, returning a bill for the first count of false statements requested by Halligan.
The Grand Jury returned an accusation for two positions requested by Halligan on Comey, supposedly, on the approval of an information leak to the media with respect to Russia’s investigation. According to the sources, the first charge of the accusation focuses on the alleged role of Comey using his friend and former lawyer Daniel Richman to provide journalists with information about a FBI investigation of Clinton.
In the course of four years, prosecutors of the United States prosecutor’s office in DC had also investigated Comey for allegedly filtering information, including the use of Richman as a conduit for the press. By 2021, prosecutors called Comey to testify to a grand jury about the accusations; However, they chose to reject the case because they believed that there was no conclusive evidence that Comey has used Richman as anonymous source or leaked classified information.
These DC prosecutors provided their evidence to prosecutors in Virginia and met to discuss their decision making, according to Fuentes. The team that investigated Comey this summer finally reached the same conclusion, telling Halligan that pursuing an accusation without a probable clear cause would be not very ethical. She did it anyway.
“The balance of power is a principle of the mother rock of our democracy, and is based on responsibility and a direct presentation of acts of executive leadership to the supervision of the congress,” said Haligan in a press release after the accusation.
During the course of his investigation, Durham only brought three criminal cases, none of which involved higher ranges of the FBI or the Department of Justice involved in the investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016. Two of the cases that went to trial resulted in absolute result, including one that took place in the East district of Virginia.
In his final 306 pages report detailing the results of his investigation, Durham used a part of the document to delineate the high bar required to initiate federal prosecutions by explaining why his office could have chosen not to seek charges against specific people, even when he determined that his actions were incorrect.
“If this report and the result of the special lawyer’s investigation leave some with the impression that injustices or misconduct have not been addressed, it is not because the office concluded that such injustices or misconduct did not occur,” Durham said in his report. “It is, rather, because not all injustices or transgressions are equivalent to a criminal offense, and criminal prosecutors have the exclusive task of investigating and prosecuting violations of US criminal laws.”
