What does the future hold for Donald Trump? - threadbans in OP

In a statement to Fox News Digital, the agency touted what it said were "dozens of corrective actions" already implemented as a result of the Durham investigation.

"The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time. Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented," the FBI said. 

"This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect," it added.

In filings and other court appearances over the course of his probe, Durham at times put forward allegations and supplementary information that suggested he, too, believed the investigation into Trump was politically tainted -- though he never ultimately charged any criminal conspiracy stemming from those assertions.

The conclusion of Durham's four-year investigation stands in contrast to former special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, which resulted in indictments against 34 individuals and three Russian businesses on charges ranging from conspiracy to hacking to lying to the FBI and financial crimes. The indictments led to seven guilty pleas and five people sentenced to prison.

While Mueller's final report determined there was not sufficient evidence to charge a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, he detailed dozens of instances of contacts between people close to Trump and his campaign and Russian nationals, and found the Russian government believed it would have benefitted from Trump's presidency and that it "worked to secure that outcome," with actions often welcomed by Trump's campaign.

A poorly redacted court filing from Mueller’s team inadvertently revealed that Manafort gave Kilimnik detailed polling information during the campaign and discussed a Ukrainian peace plan, then lied about both to Mueller, even when he was supposedly cooperating. Mueller charged Kilimnik with conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice for allegedly attempting witness tampering during the Manafort investigation.

On Nov. 15, longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone was found guilty of all seven counts he faced, including lying to Congress, tampering with a witness and obstructing a congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Mueller charged Stone with lying to the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 about his contacts with WikiLeaks and tampering with a key witness who could discredit his version of events.

As a foreign policy adviser on the Trump campaign, a member of the presidential transition and the first National Security Adviser in the Trump Administration, Michael Flynn had valuable insight into key moments in the investigation. In 2017 he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations with then Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and agreed to cooperate with the investigation. A year later, he asked a federal judge to delay his sentencing so that he could have more of an opportunity to assist the probes. Mueller’s team asked for him to receive little to no jail time, a sign that they viewed his cooperation as helpful.

Facing up to six years in prison, Gates pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to investigators and conspiring to commit other offenses.

Cohen also pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his work on the Trump Tower Moscow project during the campaign and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation.

 After he told an Australian diplomat in a bar that the Russians might have damaging information on Clinton, the diplomat passed the information to the FBI. When prosecutors first approached him in January of 2017, Papadopoulos repeatedly lied about his contacts with Russian agents. He pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and was sentenced to 14 days in prison, a year of probation and a $9,500 fine. 

Dutch attorney Alex van der Zwaan pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with Rick Gates and an unnamed person in Ukraine. He served 30 days in jail and was deported from the United States.

1. Factual background The Office also considered as part of its investigation the government's handling of certain intelligence that it received during the summer of 2016. That intelligence concerned the purported "approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services." 391 We refer to that intelligence hereafter as the "Clinton Plan intelligence.'' DNI John Ratcliffe declassified the following information about the Clinton Plan intelligence in September 2020 and conveyed it to the Senate Judiciary Committee:

• In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking of the Democratic National Committee. The IC does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.

• According to his handwritten notes, CIA Director Brennan subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the "alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services."