WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th August, 2021) Republican US senators demanded that Attorney General Merrick Garland allow a special counsel investigation of FBI spying on the Trump campaign to continue and publicly release a final report on the probe, Tennessee lawmaker Marsha Blackburn said on Thursday.
"We are over two years into the investigation of how the Obama-Biden FBI spied on an incoming president, and we still do not have answers. America's national security apparatus was weaponized to take down President Trump, and the American people deserve to know how this occurred," Blackburn said in a press release.
The release included a letter signed by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and more than 40 senators to Attorney General Merrick Garland. The letter requesting an update on an investigation by Special Counsel John Durham, a guarantee that the probe would continue and a pledge from Garland that Durham's final report will be publicly released.
"We ask that you provide an update on the status of Special Counsel Durham's inquiry and that the investigation's report be made available to the public upon completion," the letter read. "The truth pursued by this investigation is necessary to ensure transparency in our intelligence agencies and restore faith in our civil liberties. Thus, it is essential that the Special Counsel's ongoing review should be allowed to continue unimpeded and without undue limitations."
Durham was appointed by former Attorney General William Barr in 2019 to investigate the origins of the FBI's investigation into allegations that the 2016 Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russia.
Durham was subsequently elevated as a special counsel by the outgoing Trump administration - a move that guaranteed the investigation would continue regardless of who won the 2020 presidential election.
Russia has repeatedly denied any collusion, a claim subsequently backed in a final report by an earlier special counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, which also concluded that no collusion had taken place.
Durham's investigation reportedly involves allegations that the FBI misled a secret US court, which oversees wiretaps of US citizens in cases involving foreign nationals, for permission to eavesdrop on a key aide in the Trump campaign.
