NBC host Chuck Todd said Sunday on “Meet the Press” that special counsel John Durham’s report on the origins of the Russia probe showed a need for an investigation like the Church Committee in the 1970s that looked into the government’s intelligence activities.
Todd said, “If you only consume media on the right you might be excused to think that the 306-page Durham report was a bombshell and damning and that the investigation was an abomination and a soft coup, but Special Counsel John Durham’s actual sharpest conclusion after a four-year investigation were that the FBI suffered from confirmation bias and, quote, ‘discounted or willfully ignored materiel information that countered the narrative of collusion between Donald Trump and Russia.’ The report recommended no wholesale changes to FBI rules for wiretaps and Durham did not send a single person to jail although former President Trump predicted that Durham would uncover the crime of the century.”
He continued, “This is not an FBI that should feel good about what Durham discovered. Because at a minimum, this issue of confirmation bias goes to the heart of how James Comey seemed to worry so much about what the perception of the FBI was that he — whether it was overdid or under-did Hillary stuff, and then overdid or under-did Trump stuff.”
Todd added, “Trust in the FBI is eroding left and right. Feels like we’re in the moment that we need a real Church Committee. This is a moment like when the J. Edgar Hoover FBI clearly was no longer helping the American people. There was a moment. This feels like we might be in one of those moments.”
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