D21 Letter Calls on US Attorney Durham to Resist Any AG Barr Effort to Improperly Use Durham Investigation
Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer sent an open letter today, September 14, 2020, to U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut John Durham following up on a previous open letter sent to Durham on August 6, 2020 and published in Just Security.
U.S. Attorney Durham was appointed by Attorney General William Barr to review the origins of the 2016 Justice Department investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
According to recent reporting in the Hartford Courant, Durham’s top aide, federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy, resigned last week “at least partly out of concern that the investigative team is being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done, colleagues said.” The article also noted that Dannehy “has been concerned in recent weeks by what she believed was pressure from Barr—who appointed Durham—to produce results before the election.”
“Attorney General Barr appears determined to use U.S. Attorney Durham as cover to undertake a blatantly political effort to assist President Trump’s reelection in violation of longstanding Justice Department policy,” said Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer. “Barr’s apparent desire to issue a report on the Durham investigation in the closing weeks of the November election has no plausible explanation other than to misuse the Justice Department to provide political assistance to President Trump’s re-election campaign.”
“U.S. Attorney Durham’s professional reputation and personal integrity, and the institutional integrity of the Justice Department are on the line here,” Wertheimer said. “U.S Attorney Durham must refuse to allow Attorney General Barr to use him as cover for improperly intervening in the election to assist President Trump. If necessary, Mr. Durham should resign from the Justice Department.”
The letter to Durham stated:
In light of last Friday’s resignation of your top aide, Nora Dannehy, I am writing on behalf of Democracy 21 to again urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to refuse to participate in what appears to be a coming, blatantly political effort by Attorney General William Barr to issue an interim or final report—prior to the November 3, 2020 election—on your investigation into the origins of the Justice Department’s 2016 Russia investigation.
Issuing any such report now would patently violate longstanding Justice Department policy, embraced by both Republican and Democratic Attorneys General, to take no action within the 60-to-90-day period before an election that could influence the election. As of today, September 14th, we are just 50 days away from the presidential election. There is no doubt that President Trump would use such a report, if issued by the Attorney General, to attack his opponent and promote his re-election.
The letter noted:
If Attorney General Barr nonetheless insists on issuing a report based on your work, it is your professional and personal responsibility to refuse to be associated with the report and to ensure that your name is not on it. If necessary, you should resign from the Justice Department to uphold both your personal integrity and the institutional integrity of the Justice Department, where you have served for more than three decades as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and U.S. Attorney.
According to the letter:
In an August 13, 2020 interview on Fox News, President Trump all but demanded that you and Attorney General Barr take action on the criminal investigation you are leading. President Trump made the absurd claims that officials in the prior Administration had committed treason in opening the Department’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and that opening the 2016 investigation was “the single biggest political crime in the history of our country.”
Attorney General Barr’s apparent desire for the Department to issue a report on your investigation before the November 3 election has no plausible explanation other than to use the work of the Justice Department to provide partisan political assistance to President Trump’s re-election campaign in the closing weeks of the election, and to support Trump’s attacks on the previous Administration and on his opponent, former Vice President Biden.
Although Barr publicly claims that the release of a report on your investigation will not affect the election, these claims belie reality.
The letter stated:
We call on you to resist [any] “pressure,” not just for the sake of your own professional reputation and personal integrity, but for the sake of the institutional integrity of the Justice Department to which you have devoted the great bulk of your professional career. As a Justice Department employee, you have an obligation to comply with longstanding Justice Department policy that exists to safeguard the integrity of our elections and to protect the rule of law by ensuring that the administration of justice is not exploited and misused for political purposes.
If Attorney General Barr insists on issuing a report or interim report on your investigation in violation of longstanding Department non-interference rules, we call on you to resign from the Justice Department.
The letter concluded:
Democracy 21 strongly urges you during this 60-day pre-election period to refuse to participate in, and to publicly dissociate yourself from, any announcement, report release, issuance of indictments, or other public statements or actions relating to the criminal investigation you are conducting into the origins of the 2016 Russia investigation.
And if it is necessary to make clear your position, Democracy 21 urges you to resign from the Justice Department. As we said in our August 6 letter, “your professional reputation and personal integrity are on the line here.”
