Republicans hope to find out whether U.S. Attorney John Durham as “adequate resources” to conduct his ongoing criminal investigation into the origins of the “Spygate” operation against President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign when Attorney General William Barr appears before a House committee next month.
Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) discussed the issue Sunday, touching on some questions he and Republicans on the panel might ask about Durham’s tight-lipped probe.
“I want to hear more about the Durham investigation,”he said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with host Maria Bartiromo. “Is there still adequate resources, everything needed there?”
Barr was summoned by majority Democrats on the committee who are demanding answers about Justice Department conduct to include scaling back a sentencing recommendation for longtime Trump associate Roger Stone, as well as matters pertaining to Russia and Ukraine.
But GOP members have their own list of priorities. Collins said that Republicans will instead focus on why the Justice Department abandoned its criminal investigation into former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, as well as Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reform after a scathing report on FISA court abuses involving the FBI by the DoJ inspector general.
The hearing is scheduled for March 31.
Durham, the top prosecutor in Connecticut, was given the task of reviewing how the Russia investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign began by Barr.
The AG said last spring “some of the facts” surrounding the inquiry “don’t hang together with the official explanations of what happened.” Democrats have criticized the review as a politically motivated scheme to undermine the work of former special counsel Robert Mueller and attack President Trump’s perceived enemies.
In October, Fox News reported that Durham expanded the investigation as well as his team to include more resources and agents, as the period of time they began probing began to include 2017.
Some weeks later, it was revealed that Durham launched a criminal inquiry in his investigation, which then gave him authority to impanel a grand jury and hand down indictments.