Washington, DC, December 1, 2020 – Today, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, released the following statement:
More than eighteen months after Bill Barr first appointed John Durham to ‘investigate the investigators’ as part of an effort to distract from the President’s Russia and Ukraine related misconduct, Barr is seeking to continue the investigation into another administration.
In an appointment secretly conferred on Durham prior to the election and only disclosed now that Barr concedes there is no evidence of election fraud to overturn the results, Barr is using the special counsel law for a purpose it was not intended: to continue a politically motivated investigation long after Barr leaves office.
As multiple investigations have found, the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and their contacts with people associated with Donald Trump was properly predicated and free from political influence, something that can hardly be said of Barr’s leadership at the Department of Justice.
Having politicized the Department of Justice from his first days in office, it is a fitting coda that Barr should seek to do so in his last. Yet, none of this will ever change the truth about what the Trump campaign did, why Trump lied about it, and why he obstructed justice.