William Barr

A federal prosecutor handpicked by the attorney general, William Barr, to investigate whether Obama administration officials had mishandled classified intelligence relating to the Russia investigation has wrapped up his work without finding wrongdoing or considering charges, according to the Washington Post.The conclusion of an investigation by US attorney John Bash into the so-called “unmasking” of names in intelligence reports by Obama officials was seen as a defeat for Donald Trump and Barr, who appeared to be fishing for damaging information that could be used against former vice=president Joe Biden.“Unsurprising. What a politically-driven waste of [justice department] resources,” tweeted Sam Vinograd, an adviser to the national security council under Barack Obama.A second federal investigation launched by Barr into Obama-era investigations of Russian election tampering, in this case led by US attorney John Durham of Connecticut, likewise has failed to bear political fruit before the presidential election.Durham continues to investigate the origins of investigations into Russian election meddling and Trump campaign contacts with Russian operatives. Trump asserts the Trump-Russia investigation was a political hit job.But the Russia investigation, led by special counsel Robert Mueller resulted in the indictment of 34 individuals and criminal charges against half a dozen Trump associates, including multiple guilty pleas.Barr told a group of Republican lawmakers earlier this year that Durham would not file a report – much less any charges – before the presidential election, dashing what appeared to be increasingly desperate hopes inside the Trump administration for a Biden-related scandal.Officials in the executive branch routinely move to “unmask” names in classified intelligence documents in order to better understand the documents, the Post reported.The “unmasking” conducted during the Obama administration revealed that former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a key figure in the 2016 Trump campaign, was in the crosshairs of the Russia investigation, which had picked up contacts between Flynn and Russian operatives that Flynn later lied about.That revelation proved to be politically damaging to Trump. The emergence of Flynn’s deep ties to Russian operatives, which he later admitted falsely denying, led to his resignation as national security adviser and was an early blow for the Trump administration.Trump at the time asked the then FBI director, James Comey, to “go easy” on Flynn, in a scene that would become a central piece of evidence against Trump in Mueller’s investigation of possible obstruction of justice by the president.That investigation would in turn fuel demands for Trump’s impeachment, after it was revealed that the US president had pressured the Ukrainian president to generate negative headlines about Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.Trump was impeached in December 2019, and acquitted by the Senate in early 2020, but the key players in the scheme that led to his impeachment remained active in trying to fabricate a scandal attached to Biden’s son in advance of the election. More