Prosecutor resigns from Durham investigation

Federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy, a top aide to U.S. Attorney John H. Durham in his Russia investigation, has quietly resigned - at least partly out of concern that the investigative team is being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done, colleagues said.

Dannehy, a highly regarded prosecutor who has worked with or for Durham for decades, informed colleagues in the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Haven of her resignation from the Department of Justice by email Thursday evening. The short email was a brief farewell message and said nothing about political pressure, her work for Durham or what the Durham team has produced, according to people who received it.

  Hartford Courant

She should have said.

Durham recruited Dannehy to join his team after he was appointed by Attorney General William Barr more than a year and a half ago to examine the the FBI’s legal justification for a disputed counterintelligence investigation that looked for ties between President Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian efforts to meddle in the election.

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Colleagues said Dannehy is not a supporter of President Donald J. Trump and has been concerned in recent weeks by what she believed was pressure from Barr - who appointed Durham - to produce results before the election. They said she has been considering resignation for weeks, conflicted by loyalty to Durham and concern about politics.

Durham is notoriously circumspect and neither he nor members of his team have revealed anything about the direction of their work. But Durham associates, none of whom have specific knowledge of the investigation, have said recently that it is their belief he is under pressure to produce something - perhaps some sort of report - before the presidential election in November.

Gee, you think?

The work has taken far longer than expected, in part because of complications caused by the corona virus pandemic. In the meantime, team members - some of whom are current or former federal investigators or prosecutors with homes in Connecticut - have been working long hours in Washington under pressure to produce results, associates said.

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The thinking of the associates, all Durham allies, is that the Russia investigation group will be disbanded and its work lost if Trump loses.

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The Durham investigation produced its first public result in August with the arrest or former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who is accused of doctoring email from the CIA about a former Trump campaign adviser who was a target of secret FBI surveillance, according to documents filed in Washington’s federal court.

The altered memo concerned former low level Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page, who years earlier had agreed to act as a source for the CIA and provide information to the agency about Russians he met in the course of business. The CIA wrote in the memo to the FBI that Page was a source. Clinesmith altered the memo to say that he was not, a change that arguably allowed the FBI to extend a wiretap order that it had for Page.

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Barr has dropped hints in public that Durham’s investigation will produce something more significant - before the election - than the arrest of Clinesmith, who was charged with making a false statement.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.