(NewsNation) — Special counsel John Durham ended his four-year investigation into possible FBI misconduct in its probe of ties between Russia and former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, which NewsNation political analyst Mick Mulvaney said vindicates Trump “to a great extent.”
Mulvaney, who served under the Trump administration as the acting White House chief of staff, said there should not have been an investigation against Trump to begin with since there was no hard evidence of collusion.
Now, Mulvaney said Trump will certainly use this to his advantage and as fuel to undermine any sort of credibility to the ongoing investigations against him.
“It’s going to allow Trump to say, ‘Look, that was a witch hunt, the first impeachment was a witch hunt,'” Mulvaney said.
Trump will also most likely claim that every investigation against him is political, he explained. Durham even said in his report that the first investigation in 2016 was in fact politically motivated. It’s one of the differences between what Durham put in his report and what the inspector general put out about a year ago.
However, if Democrats were to look at Durham’s report, Mulvaney suggested that they may perceive it as the same as the inspector general’s report, saying there isn’t really anything new that they didn’t already know.
The FBI responded to the report, blaming prior leadership for the missteps that were made in 2016 and 2017.
“Current 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’s statement said.
Mulvaney said the biggest issue about the whole investigation is that the U.S. government spied on a political candidate during a campaign. He said this should bother every single American, regardless of political affiliation.
“What ordinary folks should care about is, is it right, that the government has been weaponized, or at least was in this particular circumstance, to go after a political candidate from another party?” Mulvaney said.
Mulvaney said he believes this is what will be the focus of the hearing next week in front of the House Judiciary Committee.