Durham deputy Nora Dannehy left the Trump DOJ over corruption
Admitting what we always knew, Barr was hired to strangled justice.
Nora R. Dannehy, a nominee for the Connecticut Supreme Court, broke her long silence Wednesday on why she quit the Trump-Russia investigation and resigned from the Department of Justice, calling it a matter of conscience.
Testifying at her confirmation hearing, Dannehy confirmed what media outlets have reported: She saw Attorney General William P. Barr as improperly pressuring the investigation for an interim public report ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Dannehy told the Judiciary Committee of the General Assembly that not only did Barr’s request violate Department of Justice policies against commenting on ongoing investigations or influencing elections, but she “strongly disagreed” with conclusions in a draft interim report.
“My conscience did not allow me to remain,” Dannehy said.
The committee voted 30-4 to recommend that the full General Assembly confirm her nomination next week when lawmakers are returning to Hartford for a one-day special session.
Dannehy was the deputy to John H. Durham, the U.S. attorney 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.
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.
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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.
Her resignation without public comment in September 2020 raised questions nationally about dissent inside the investigation and generated shock in Connecticut legal circles, where Durham was known as an apolitical prosecutor and a friend to Dannehy and her husband, Leonard C. Boyle.
Boyle, a retired federal prosecutor and key deputy to Durham during much of his career, sat in the second row of a hearing room at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford as Dannehy spoke publicly for the first time about the extraordinary end of her personal and professional relationship with Durham.
On Wednesday, Dannehy offered only indirect criticism of Durham, focusing instead on Barr. She gave no details about what elements of the interim draft report she found so objectionable but was clear that she saw Barr as pressing her and Durham to act in the service of Trump’s reelection.
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.”
