NBC: Durham submits report. calls for rule changes for fbi, new details on UK involvement

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WASHINGTON--John Durham, the special prosecutor reviewing the FBI's Russia investigation, has submitted his report to Attorney General Merrick Garland, according to four officials within the Department of Justice familiar with the development.

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According to two investigators working for the Special counsel and multiple individuals interviewed by Mr. Durham's team, the report is said to harshly rebuke the FBI's handling of raw intelligence, while also concluding there was no criminal conduct apart from former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith's alteration of a document submitted to the surveillance court.

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The report will include findings that go well beyond inspector general Michael Horowitz's 2019 conclusions. Durham will describe in detail a previously unreported operation that will likely draw the ire of Trump allies and Republicans in congress eager to discredit Robert Mueller's findings. According to a London Lawyer familiar with the report, Mr. Durham will describe the United Kingdom's and the US embassy in London's early 2016 attempts to connect the Trump Campaign to Russia.

An important but elusive person who is the focus of much of the report is the Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud, who for many years has been described as a conduit between the Kremlin and Trump campaign officials. According to two officials familiar with the report, Durham will make the surprising conclusion that Mr. Mifsud's April 2016 meetings with George Papadopoulos, which themselves were the impetus for the FBI's opening of the Russia probe, were in fact part of a separate operation carried out by UK intelligence services.

Mr. Mifsud handed over financial receipts to Mr. Durham and former Attorney General Bill Barr in Italy in the fall of 2019. The receipts, which will be included in the report according to officials familiar with the contents, show that Mr. Mifsud was financially remunerated for attempting to connect Mr.Papadopoulos to fake Russian nationals.

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The Special Counsel's report will explain in detail why they were not able to pursue a criminal investigation of the international intelligence operations. According to a DOJ lawyer aware of the report's contents, the British Government's lack of cooperation and the constitutional difficulty of accessing the records of an ex president made it unfeasible for Mr. Durham to investigate to what extent President Obama's White House staff was aware of the intelligence activities of foreign allies, nor to what extent Obama officials were involved in the payments to Mr. Mifsud.

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