justsecurity | Dear U.S. Attorney Durham:
On May 13, 2019, Attorney General William Barr appointed you
to review the origins of the 2016 Justice Department investigation into
Russian interference in the 2016 elections. At some point, this review
turned into a criminal investigation of the Justice Department’s
investigation into Russia’s efforts to undermine our democracy.
The need for your appointment was hard to understand at the time it
was made, since the Justice Department’s independent Inspector General
was already conducting a similar investigation that began in March 2018
into the same issues. On December 9, 2019, the Inspector General issued
his report
and concluded that the 2016 Russia investigation had had a legitimate
purpose and that there was no evidence of political bias against
President Trump in how the investigation had been initiated or
undertaken.
We are now in the closing stages of the 2020 presidential campaign.
Longstanding Department policies issued by the past three Attorneys
General who served during an election year make plain that Department
actions should not be taken in an election year that could influence or
affect an election. George J. Terwilliger III, who served as deputy
attorney general under Attorney General William Barr in the
administration of President George H.W. Bush, said in 2016, “There’s a longstanding policy of not doing anything that could influence an election.”
I strongly urge you to follow this policy and not to issue any
report, or bring any indictments, resulting from your investigation in
these closing weeks of the 2020 presidential election.
Any public action by the Justice Department in this pre-election
period that is associated with your investigation – which by its very
nature involves actions taken during the Obama-Biden Administration – is
bound to be used by President Trump for partisan political purposes to
promote his re-election effort against Vice President Biden.
In testifying
during his Senate confirmation hearings, Mr. Barr was asked whether
there are “policies in place that try to insulate the investigations and
the decisions of the Department of Justice and FBI from getting
involved in elections?” Barr said yes and explained that the party in
power has “their hands on the levers of the law enforcement apparatus of
the country, and you do not want it used against the opposing political
party.” But that is precisely what would occur here if a report is
issued on your investigation of the Russia investigation or if
indictments are brought at this critical stage of the presidential
election.
You should not permit your long and distinguished career in the
Justice Department to be permanently tainted, or your personal integrity
to be irreparably impugned, by what would plainly be an effort to use
your investigation to influence or affect the 2020 presidential
election.
