US Department of Justice Special Counsel John Durham is reportedly presenting evidence to a grand jury on Friday as he seeks indictments against some low-level FBI employees and non-government persons as part of his 28-month probe into law enforcement misconduct during the Bureau’s Russia investigation, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Durham’s investigation started in May 2019 as a Republican response to the Mueller report, which identified ten separate incidents of obstruction of justice by Donald Trump and outlined efforts of the 2016 Trump campaign to gain assistance from the Russian government.
The move may have more to do with continuing funding for Durham’s investigation rather than any actual findings: Durham had to file a progress report by July 1st in order to secure funding in the next fiscal year from the Justice Department.
The DOJ has not commented on whether Attorney General Merrick Garland intends to fund the investigation in the upcoming fiscal year, which begins October 1st. The DOJ reported that the Durham investigation cost $1.5 million between October 2020 and March 2021. To date, one person has been prosecuted of a crime investigated by Durham: a staff lawyer pleaded guilty to changing the date of a memo used in a warrant application.