Durham deputy who helped lead Trump-Russia probe says she left DOJ over concerns with Barr

Nora Dannehy, a former federal prosecutor who helped lead the Department of Justice investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, "broke her long silence” on her abrupt 2020 departure from the DOJ, testifying Wednesday that concerns about former Attorney General Bill Barr’s handling of the case prompted her to quit, The Connecticut Mirror and Associated Press report.

“My conscience did not allow me to remain,” Dannehy said during her confirmation hearing before the Connecticut Judiciary Committee of the General Assembly. State legislatures are currently mulling Dannehy’s nomination for the Connecticut Supreme Court.

Dannehy, who was deputy to former DOJ special counsel John Durham, was on the team “tasked with investigating whether intelligence agencies or the FBI were guilty of wrongdoing in examining whether Russia colluded with the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump in 2016,” the Connecticut Mirror reports.

Per the AP:

Trump expected the investigation to expose what he and his supporters alleged was a “deep state” conspiracy to undermine his campaign, but the slow pace of the probe – and the lack of blockbuster findings – contributed to a deep wedge between the president and Barr by the time the attorney general resigned in December 2020.

…

The investigation concluded last May with underwhelming results: A single guilty plea from a little-known FBI lawyer, resulting in probation, and two acquittals at trial by juries.

At the time, Dannehy’s departure from the team threatened to “complicate the final stretch of an investigation already slowed by the coronavirus pandemic,” the AP reported.

Speaking to the committee, Dannehy told lawmakers, “I simply couldn’t be part of it. So I resigned.”

“Before I get to the crux of what caused my resignation, I do want to address the issue of first initially joining what some had labeled the ‘Trump DOJ,’" Dannehy said. "I didn’t return to the Trump Department of Justice. Politics never played a role in how I was expected to do my job.”

“I had been taught and spent my entire career at Department of Justice conducting any investigation in an objective and apolitical manner,” Dannehy explained. “In the spring and summer of 2020, I had growing concerns that this Russia investigation was not being conducted in that way. Attorney General Barr began to speak more publicly and specifically about the ongoing criminal investigation. I thought these public comments violated DOJ guidelines.”

Dannehy said those public comments from Barr could “certainly taken in a political way by reports."

"Whether he intended that or not, I don’t know," she added.

Read the full report at the Connecticut Mirror.