Donald Trump hails John Durham report slamming FBI over Russian collusion probe

Donald Trump has responded to Justice Department special counsel John Durham's report on the origins of the FBI 's Trump-Russia probe, saying the findings vindicate his claims of baseless persecution.

'It's a great vindication and it feels good, and the report has been widely praised,' Trump told Newsmax in a phone interview Tuesday night, his first televised interview since Durham issued his report on Monday.

'All of these people are -- I guess you could call it treason. You could call it a lot of different things. But this should never be allowed to happen in our country again,' added Trump.

The former president went on to heap blame on his 2016 election opponent, Hillary Clinton, for the controversial FBI probe into his own campaign.

'This was really started by, when she lost the election,' said Trump. 'They called this a big, big surprise, and they didn't know what to say. And they said, "Let's blame it on Russia." Somehow somebody came up with the idea, let's blame her loss on Russia.

'This was really an excuse for why she lost the election. She blamed it on Russia. And it's very sad, very very bad for our country,' added Trump.

Donald Trump has responded to Justice Department special counsel John Durham's report on the origins of the FBI's Trump-Russia probe, saying the findings vindicate his claims

Trump heaped blame his 2016 election opponent, Hillary Clinton, for the controversial FBI probe into his own campaign

In his report, Durham noted he interviewed Clinton as part of his probe into her campaign's purported effort to tie Trump to Russian election interference, but found no 'provable criminal offense' on the part of the Democratic candidate.   

Durham's 306-page report is refocusing negative attention on one of the most politically significant investigations in FBI history: the probe into whether Trump's 2016 presidential campaign was conspiring with Russia to tip the outcome of the election.

The findings aren't flattering for the FBI, with Durham asserting that the agency rushed into the investigation without an adequate basis and routinely ignored or rationalized evidence that undercut its premise. 

The report catalogs a series of errors - though many had already been documented years ago by a separate Justice Department inspector general report. The FBI says it's taken several dozen corrective steps on its own.

Trump has long branded the FBI's Trump-Russia probe, which the bureau code-named Crossfire Hurricane, as a politically motivated 'witch hunt', a label he has also applied to a myriad of other criminal and civil investigations targeting himself and his business dealings.

Durham's 306-page report is refocusing negative attention on one of the most politically significant investigations in FBI history, the Trump-Russia probe

In Tuesday's interview, Trump said the Durham report justified his controversial 2017 move to fire FBI Director James Comey, which he described as 'a very wise thing to do.

'I inherited him but we got rid of him and it's lucky thing I did, otherwise it would have been far worse,' said Trump.

Trump, the leading candidate in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, went on to argue that the current legal issues he faces are a continuation of the FBI's 'fake investigations' in Crossfire Hurricane.

'You look at the boxes hoax,' he said, apparently referring to a DOJ probe into classified records Trump took to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office, 'you look at all of the different things and all of the people that they tried to terrorize. It's a disgrace.

'It goes on, it just continues with these people. And they're sick, you know, they're sick people,' he added.

In the Newsmax interview, Trump also declined to take a position on Florida's six-week ban on abortions, a measure spearheaded by Governor Ron DeSantis, who is widely expected to seek the GOP presidential nomination against Trump.

'Now DeSantis, or Ron DeSanctimonius as I call him, he came out with the six weeks. Other people agree with it, and a lot of people don't,' said Trump.

Trump touted his Supreme Court nominations for paving the way to overturn Roe v Wade's federal protections for abortion rights, saying that it would pave the way for a national compromise on the issue. 

'We're in a position now where we can get something that the whole country can agree with,' said Trump, without offering further details. 

'On pro-life, I will tell you what I did on Roe v Wade, nobody else for 50 years -- they've been trying to do and I got it done. And now we're in a position to make a really great deal and a deal that people want,' he said.

In Tuesday's interview, Trump said the Durham report justified his controversial 2017 move to fire FBI Director James Comey, which he described as 'a very wise thing to do'

The interview came shortly before Trump-endorsed Daniel Cameron won the Republican primary for Kentucky governor on Tuesday.

Cameron, Kentucky's current attorney general, becomes the first major-party black nominee for governor in the state's history, and will face Democratic incumbent Andy Beshear in November. 

Cameron secured Trump's endorsement but had faced off against another candidate closely allied with the former president, Kelly Craft, who served as United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration. 

In his report on Monday, Durham found that the FBI did not have enough 'factual evidence' to investigate allegations of Trump-Russia collusion.

Durham's report is a comprehensive summary of findings related to investigations into whether the then-Trump campaign in 2016 colluded with Russia to meddle with the election outcome.

It found that the Department of Justice and the FBI 'failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law' when launching the Trump-Russia probe .

The special counsel transmitted the report on his four-year investigation, costing over $6 million in taxpayer dollars, to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday. 

The attorney general then provided a copy Monday to top members of Congress.

Durham writes in the report: 'Based on 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 commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.'

'The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election inference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign,' the report continues.