Egypt clarifies tenant protections in landmark rent law changes - Urban & Transport
Addressing the House of Representatives, Fawzy stated that the revised bill "explicitly affirms tenants' clear entitlement to state-provided housing units," during a parliamentary session devoted to reviewing two key draft laws related to tenancy and property rights.
Focus on old rent contracts
The first bill redefines the legal relationship between landlords and tenants.
The second proposal amends the Civil Code regarding properties where lease terms have ended or are nearing expiration, thereby ending longstanding occupancy protections.
Fawzy commended parliament's willingness to confront the decades-old "old rent" issue. 'This crisis wasn't created by this Parliament or this government. It evolved under exceptional circumstances over many years,' he stated.
He referenced a November 2024 Supreme Constitutional Court ruling that declared the fixed rent system unconstitutional, prompting the government to draft a new legal framework after public consultations with tenants, landlords, and legal experts.
Longer transition for residential tenants
One outcome of those consultations, Fawzy noted, was the extension of the proposed transition period for residential tenants from five to seven years—distinguishing them from commercial/non-residential leaseholders.
'The law does not favour landlords or tenants—it's a response to a long-standing social imbalance that must be addressed fairly,' he said, adding that tailored guidelines will ensure support for those most affected.
Fawzy warned that failing to pass the law could further harm tenants, arguing that the gradual transition and phased rent increases are designed to protect their interests.
The bill specifies that when leases expire after the transition period, both the tenant and their spouse will have priority for replacement housing.
Legal context and geographical focus
Fawzy emphasized that Egypt's legal framework must evolve in line with current economic and social conditions. Old rent laws, he said, were temporary solutions for historical emergencies.
He added that 82 percent of old-rent cases are concentrated in Cairo, Alexandria, Giza, and Qalyubia.
Fawzy also addressed concerns about Downtown Cairo, clarifying that the proposed amendments do not apply to properties in that area. 'Property transactions in these areas are unrestricted, with no limitations on buying or selling for anyone,' he said.
Call for updated data
The session ended with House Speaker Hanafy Gebaly adjourning proceedings until Tuesday.
A heated debate ensued, with opposition MPs and independents voicing concerns and rejecting the draft law.
Gebaly called on the government to submit updated data as requested by MPs, including figures on first-generation tenants, number of original tenants, and land available for new housing, insisting that it be based on current estimates rather than 2017 census data.
CAPMAS head Khairat Barakat said the most recent data covers only Egyptian nationals. The 2017 census recorded 1.6 million original tenants and 3.019 million rented units.
Fawzy pledged to deliver complete data and responses ahead of the next session.
On 17 June, the Housing Committee gave preliminary approval to the draft bill, one of the most complex legal and social reforms in recent years.
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Al-Ahram Weekly
20 hours ago
- Al-Ahram Weekly
Laws await the green light - Egypt - Al-Ahram Weekly
Many Egyptians are awaiting a number of crucial presidential decisions that will impact vital sectors and key state institutions. The decisions relate to the ratification of three draft laws regulating rents, criminal procedures, and the high school (Thanawya Amma) education certificate. On 2 July, the House of Representatives gave its final approval to a government-drafted bill regulating the rents of residential and non-residential properties in Egypt. The bill sparked widespread controversy and triggered a backlash, with leftist opposition parties and the Tenants' Coalition calling upon President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi not to ratify it 'due to its disastrous impact on millions of Egyptians'. The government amended the first version of the bill following a national dialogue held by the House, which hosted legal experts and representatives of landlords and tenants. The final amendments extended the transitional period before terminating the rental contracts of existing residential units to seven years instead of five in an earlier draft, while the transitional period for non-residential lease contracts covering commercial and office units rented by individuals will be limited to five years. The government also introduced a provision affirming the right of tenants negatively impacted by the bill to obtain alternative housing units in government-built projects. Article 3 of the law states that a committee will be formed in each governorate to classify rented residential properties into three categories — premium, middle-class, and economic. The classification will be based on factors like geographical location, building condition, quality of local services available (water, electricity, and sewage), and transport. The Tenants' Coalition led by Sherif Al-Gaar has, however, objected to the bill and sent a letter asking President Al-Sisi not to ratify it. In his letter, Al-Gaar warned that if the bill is ratified and signed into law, it will displace millions of citizens, including poor and low-income families, the elderly, widows, orphans, and children who have lived with their families for decades in legally rented housing. Al-Gaar cites Article 123 of the constitution, which states that the president has the right to object to draft laws passed by the House of Representatives. The president can send a law back to the House within 30 days of receiving it. If he does not ratify it or send it back within this period, it is considered to be an effective law. Mohamed Atiya Al-Fayoumi, head of parliament's Housing Committee, said in a TV interview that though the bill was finally passed on 2 July, the House sent it to the president just 10 days ago. 'This means that we still have 20 days during which the president can ratify the law or not,' Al-Fayoumi said. In a statement delivered on the 73rd anniversary of the 23 July Revolution, President Al-Sisi vowed that Egypt, which refuses to allow its citizens to live in slums and dangerous areas, will not allow individuals who deserve housing to fall into a cycle of anxiety about their future. Many took Al-Sisi's words as meaning that he is intending to sign the new rent bill into law. Al-Fayoumi said during the discussion of the bill that Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli had stated that the government will not allow anyone to be left homeless after the seven-year transitional period. 'Now President Al-Sisi's statement is sending a message to citizens, particularly tenants, that no one will be displaced due to the law and that the government will provide all with alternative housing as long as they deserve it,' he said. He explained that if the president does not object to the law, it will be considered effective after the end of the 30-day period (26 or 27 August). He also noted that if the president objects to the law, parliament will be invited to convene and discuss the matter. 'If parliament insists on its opinion, the law will be passed, even if the president objects,' Al-Fayoumi said. Mahmoud Al-Assal, the Tenants' Coalition's lawyer, believes that the law 'has become a fair accompli', saying that the law will enter into force 'regardless of whether the president ratifies it or not.' 'It is clear that there is close coordination between the government and parliament in this respect, and therefore it is difficult to backtrack on the new legislation,' Al-Assal said. However, he believes there is an opportunity to halt the law's implementation even after it enters into force. According to him, tenants could appeal to the Supreme Constitutional Court after the law is ratified and demand that its effects be halted due to obstacles to its implementation. Another piece of legislation awaiting presidential ratification is the Criminal Procedures Law which was finally approved by the House of Representatives on 29 April. The 544-article law includes six sections that cover criminal prosecution, evidence collection, investigation procedures, court trials, arrests, and pretrial detention controls. Like the old rents bill, the draft Criminal Procedures Law includes a number of articles that have sparked widespread controversy among lawyers and journalists. Most of the criticism has been directed at Article 123, which relates to pretrial detention. The Press Syndicate said that Article 123 in its final form will not put an end to the suffering of those who are put into pretrial detention. The final draft of the article reduces the maximum period of pretrial detention for misdemeanours from six to four months, for felonies from 18 to 12 months, and for crimes that carry the death penalty or life imprisonment from 24 to 18 months. Article 523 has been another sticking point. It states that individuals wrongly detained pending trial are entitled to financial compensation from the government but stipulates that those seeking compensation should not have been detained pending trial in other cases and have been acquitted of all charges. Though the law was passed by the House on 29 April, it has not been yet ratified by President Al-Sisi. MP Mustafa Bakri said that 'the law was approved by MPs on 29 April, but nobody knows whether it was sent to President Al-Sisi for ratification.' 'In any case, if it was sent to the president more than one month ago, it would go into effect automatically in line with Article 123 of the constitution.' On 8 July, the final day of the House's 2024-25 parliamentary session, MPs gave final approval to sweeping amendments to a new education law. The draft law seeks to introduce a new optional Baccalaureate certificate system without abolishing the existing Thanaweya Amma (high school) certificate. Unlike the Thanaweya Amma, the Baccalaureate system is expected to spread the academic workload over two stages: a preparatory year (10th grade) and a main stage encompassing the final two years (11th and 12th grades). Across these final two years, students will focus on a more streamlined selection of seven subjects. Like the two laws regulating rents and criminal procedures, the amendments to the education law have sparked considerable controversy both inside and outside parliament. A number of opposition MPs plus human rights organisations have said the bill and its sweeping amendments were introduced without a serious national dialogue and insufficient study of its potential ramifications on millions of Egyptian families. They have also voiced fears that the new bill will increase financial burdens on households, exacerbate inequality, and restrict fair competition among students. * A version of this article appears in print in the 6 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
Egypt Independent
4 days ago
- Egypt Independent
Trump lands another big win with EU trade deal, but he can't dodge the Epstein saga
President Donald Trump claimed another win for his campaign to transform the global economy and American life, but he still can't escape intensifying questions over his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein controversy. The United States clinched a framework deal with the European Union on Sunday that averted a damaging trade war. Trump believes such moves will revive US manufacturing. But the resulting 15 percent tariff on EU goods entering the US likely means American consumers will face higher prices in the long term. This is a significant step. So Trump's insistence that it was not simply a bid to distract from the Epstein saga is reasonable. 'Oh, you have got to be kidding with that,' the angry president told a reporter. But his irritation underscored his failure to shrug off weeks of revelations about the case and his own past friendship with the accused sex trafficker, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial. Mystery surrounds the administration's motives after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal lawyer, met last week with Epstein's imprisoned accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. Her lawyer implied that Maxwell was open to a presidential pardon. Trump's record of using such power for political purposes has critics warning he may be seeking a deal that would politicize justice. The storm back home isn't abating. Two lawmakers, one Democrat and the other Republican, vowed Sunday to force a vote on the House floor on the release of Epstein case files. Such a vote could embarrass the administration and create a major political showdown. This came on a typically frenetic weekend that Trump spent in Scotland and that served as a metaphor for his turbulent influence on America and the globe. He juggled the highest-level diplomacy — talks with the EU's top official, Ursula von der Leyen — with a trip promoting his business empire, in this case his portfolio of exclusive Scottish golf clubs. His visit was greeted with street protests by caustic Scots and featured outbursts of extreme rhetoric — including his social media call for the prosecution of former Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump will come face-to-face Monday with pressure to force Israel to do more to mitigate a growing famine in Gaza. He'll see British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at his Turnberry resort in southwest Scotland before traveling with Starmer to Aberdeenshire, where Trump will inaugurate a new course at another club. Starmer last week said of the crisis in Gaza that 'we are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe.' A significant trade deal that comes with many caveats Much is unknown about the scope of the trade deal with the EU, which will see a 15% tariff imposed on most of the bloc's exports and billions of dollars in purchases of US energy. But it extends a winning streak and a record of implementing campaign promises for a president who is imposing personal power and often idiosyncratic beliefs — for instance in the effectiveness of trade tariffs — on the US and the world. 'This was the big one. This is the biggest of them all,' Trump said Sunday after meeting von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. Von der Leyen followed the accepted wisdom that praising Trump personally can provide political payoffs. 'He is a tough negotiator, but he is also a dealmaker,' she said. Trump has recently announced framework deals on trade with Japan and the Philippines — which both include higher tariffs that represent a fracturing of the 21st-century global free-trade arrangements. Trump believes that this system, which helped make the US a dominant global power, is nevertheless unfair on American workers and industries. And he rejects economists' arguments that raising tariffs increases prices for already-stretched US consumers. Traversing cranes move shipping containers stacked in Hamburg Port in Hamburg, Germany, on April is flexing power everywhere. He is gutting the federal government, dominating Congress, and exerting unprecedented pressure on law firms and universities to impose his right-wing ideology, all while seeking to intimidate media outlets. These are wins for his populist 'Make America Great Again' movement and its program to buckle what supporters see as liberal power. But as with Trump's outlier belief in tariffs, the long-term impacts that his actions could have on American society, the economy and democracy are alarming critics. Trump has politicized the legal system; his government funding cuts have hampered vital scientific research on critical subjects such as cancer; and his expanding of presidential power often tests the Constitution. Still, markets may welcome the EU trade deal framework, assuming it is fully implemented — hardly a given considering Trump's volatile history of threats and reversals. An EU-US trade war would have been a far worse outcome. But the agreement confirms suspicions that Trump's goal is not fairer trade but higher tariffs. Although existing tariffs have so far not harmed the economy as much as some experts feared, Americans will pay more for cars, food, luxuries and consumer goods. The inflationary impact on the economy, and Trump's likely appointment next year of a new Federal Reserve chair who will lower interest rates, could mean greater economic threats to come. There's also an important geopolitical aspect to the EU trade deal. The Europeans committed to buying $880 billion of energy from the US. This could make America's NATO allies less vulnerable to pressure from Russia at a time when the Western alliance is opposing Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. 'We still have too much Russian LNG (liquid natural gas) that is coming through the back door again to our European Union, and some Russian gas and oil still in the European Union, which we do not want anymore,' von der Leyen said. Epstein drama haunts Trump's Scottish golf trip Trump's frustration that a key political achievement has been overshadowed by the Epstein saga is unlikely to dissipate in the coming days. The controversy started because of conspiracy theories among Trump's base that claimed the disgraced financier did not take his own life in prison but was murdered, and that he left behind a client list of rich and powerful Americans who'd taken advantage of his alleged sex trafficking. These claims were promoted by Trump and allies including Pam Bondi and Kash Patel. When all three assumed positions of great power (Bondi is attorney general, and Patel is FBI director), their failure to release the files as promised caused a rupture in Trump's MAGA base, which the administration has failed thus far to repair. The political uproar explains why Blanche's meeting with Maxwell last week caused such consternation. Maxwell's lawyer told reporters after her second day of meetings with Blanche in Tallahassee, Florida, that she had answered every question truthfully and honestly. He also noted that the president has the power to pardon those convicted of crimes. 'We hope he exercises that power in a right and just way,' the attorney, David Oscar Markus, said Friday. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend a benefit concert in New York in 2005. Joe Schildhorn/Blanche has so far not offered a detailed public account of the meetings. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump in his relationship with Epstein, and the president appears to have severed the friendship long before the accused sex trafficker was charged with federal crimes. But the Justice Department's unorthodox approach is raising concerns that it goes beyond a public relations effort to convince MAGA voters the administration is doing something. Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison term, has an incentive for providing information that could ease her situation — and Trump has the power to do so. Questions over the president's motives became even more important when CNN and other outlets reported last week that Trump's name was mentioned in the Epstein files, along with those of some other prominent Americans. This does not mean that he or anyone else is guilty of wrongdoing. In fact, Bondi might have made the correct decision legally in refusing to release information that could harm the reputation of people not accused of crimes. But beyond a joint Justice Department and FBI statement on the rationale for not releasing the files, the administration has rarely attempted to justify a policy that has put it at odds with its own supporters in the MAGA movement. 'I'm concerned that the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, is meeting with (Maxwell) supposedly one-on-one,' Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California said on NBC's 'Meet the Press' on Sunday. 'Look, I agree … that she should testify. But she's been indicted twice on perjury. This is why we need the files.' Republican leaders hoped the case might simply disappear over the summer recess. But Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, a co-sponsor with Khanna of a House bill demanding the release of the files, isn't giving up. 'This is going to hurt Republicans in the midterms. The voters will be apathetic if we don't hold the rich and powerful accountable,' Massie said on NBC. 'I think when we get back, we can get the signatures required to force this to the floor.' The Trump administration has asked the courts to release grand jury testimony pertinent to the Epstein case. But one federal judge refused last week, in a ruling that may have given the DOJ political cover. 'We want them to release the files. However, we can't make them release it because of separation of power,' Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin told Jake Tapper on CNN's 'State of the Union.' That may be the case. But grand jury testimony is believed to be only a fraction of the evidence against Epstein that the government holds — and hasn't made public. And the entire controversy has been worsened by the administration's clumsy approach and unwillingness to confront the anger of the MAGA base. 'I think that part of this problem is that there were some false expectations that are created, and that's a political mistake,' Missouri Republican Rep. Eric Burlison told CNN's Manu Raju.
Egypt Independent
7 days ago
- Egypt Independent
Gabbard releases more Russia documents to accuse Obama of ‘manufacturing' intelligence
One day after President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of treason over the intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and sought to help Trump, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a highly sensitive congressional report she claimed was more evidence of a 'treasonous conspiracy.' The release of the redacted report, written during the first Trump term by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, was the latest step in a multi-faceted effort from Gabbard and other Trump allies to attack the FBI's Russia investigation and the intelligence community's assessment on Russian election interference. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Wednesday evening that the Justice Department was creating a strike force to assess the evidence released by Gabbard and 'investigate potential next legal steps which might stem from DNI Gabbard's disclosures.' Speaking from the White House podium on Wednesday, Gabbard stopped short of accusing Obama of treason, deferring to Justice Department lawyers. But she alleged that 'the evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment.' 'They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true,' she said. Gabbard insisted the Russian goal in 2016 was to sow distrust in American democracy — not to help Trump, a key judgment of the 2017 assessment that Republicans have long challenged. But her claims that the Obama administration 'manufactured' the assessment are not supported by the newly redacted House report — or CIA Director John Ratcliffe's own review of the intelligence assessment, which he released earlier this month. Ratcliffe's review argued the assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin 'aspired' to help Trump win the 2016 election should not have been a so-called high confidence judgment, which indicates the intelligence community's level of certainty, and it took issue with some of the analytic procedures underpinning the assessment. But Ratcliffe's review found that 'the overall assessment was deemed defensible.' The House report — which involved intelligence so sensitive it was kept in a so-called 'turducken,' or a safe within a safe, at CIA headquarters — took a similar stance on the key judgment that Russia sought to help Trump, arguing that the assessment made analytical leaps based on relatively thin sourcing and failed to weigh contradictory intelligence highly enough, but neither argued that it was 'manufactured.' Still, the release of the House Intelligence Committee review, led by former Rep. Devin Nunes when now-FBI Director Kash Patel was a top aide, was a long-sought victory for Trump — in large part because it pushes back against a similar review conducted by the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020, which found the intelligence supported the conclusions that Putin interfered to help Trump and there were no 'significant tradecraft issues' in the preparation of the assessment. Gabbard's decision to publicize the report when multiple predecessors had declined to do so, including Ratcliffe during Trump's first term, comes at a moment when her standing within the Trump administration had been in question. In June, Trump publicly undermined Gabbard's assessment on Iran's nuclear capabilities and she was absent from at least one major national security meeting to discuss Israel and Iran. CNN reported at the time that the president viewed her as 'off-message.' Former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper dismissed Gabbard's allegations on Wednesday, calling them 'patently false and unfounded' on CNN's 'The Source.' Referring to the House Republican report, he said, 'I can attest to the inaccuracies in that report on things they said about me, which were wrong or false.' 'I'd be going dark' Democrats accused Gabbard of jeopardizing intelligence community sources and methods by releasing the report. 'The desperate and irresponsible release of the partisan House intelligence report puts at risk some of the most sensitive sources and methods our Intelligence Community uses to spy on Russia and keep Americans safe,' Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. 'And in doing so, Director Gabbard is sending a chilling message to our allies and assets around the world: the United States can no longer be trusted to protect the intelligence you share with us.' One Democratic congressional source said intelligence agencies were still in the process of proposing redactions to the document ahead of its release, but that Gabbard declassified the report Wednesday before the process had been completed. An ODNI official said the decision to declassify the document was made by Trump and 'he has constitutional authority to declassify and is not under the same consultation obligations' normally required between intelligence agencies. A former senior US intelligence official said they were alarmed by some of the material in the report that remained unredacted, warning it could alert Moscow to how intelligence was collected and potentially endanger sources. The report includes an explanation from the classified assessment that some judgements are based on a human intelligence source with secondhand access for several specifics, including Putin's order to pass collected material to WikiLeaks, Putin's views on Hillary Clinton, and details about 'specific, planned Russian Foreign Intelligence Service efforts.' 'It should also scare the crap out of any source we have who reports on politically inconvenient subjects,' the intelligence official said. 'If I were them, I'd be going dark about now.' In 2017, the US extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government. Trump and his allies in Congress have sought to release the House Intelligence Committee report for years now. The material that was being scrutinized was so sensitive that the CIA would only let congressional staffers view it at CIA headquarters, requiring their work stay locked up at Langley. The committee brought in its own safe for its files — which became known as the 'turducken' — that remained locked away at the CIA during the Biden administration. It's not clear whether the full extent of the classified House Intelligence Committee report was redacted, declassified and released on Wednesday. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Trump allies pushed Ratcliffe, who was then the director of national intelligence, to release a redacted version of the report. But Ratcliffe ultimately did not so do amid strenuous objections from CIA and NSA officials, who warned it would damage sources and methods and US relationships with allies. Instead, the report was part of a large collection of documents brought to the White House in the final days of the first Trump administration, which were redacted so they could be declassified and released. The redacted documents were not ultimately released before Trump left office in 2021, though he did so in March. But an unredacted copy of the documents — including the highly sensitive intelligence that was redacted from what was released Wednesday — went missing and was apparently never found. US intelligence officials scrambled to assess the potential damage of the binder's contents becoming public after it went missing at the end of the first Trump administration, according to a source with direct knowledge of the events. There are hints at why the intelligence agencies were so concerned with the report in the declassified version released Wednesday. The report includes redacted lines that detail what signals intelligence the assessment had relied upon, as well as what Putin was being told and how it was obtained. 'One scant, unclear and unverifiable fragment' The House document provides one of the most detailed glimpses to date into the raw intelligence relied upon by analysts to produce the 2017 assessment — but one that is impossible to compare to the Senate review that reached the opposite conclusion on the judgment that Putin was aspiring to help Trump. Much of the documentation for that panel's reasoning remains classified. The House report accuses Obama administration intelligence leaders of relying on thinly sourced and uncorroborated intelligence to conclude that Putin preferred Trump, while alleging that the assessment suppressed intelligence that Putin did not care who won and that Russia's intelligence services allegedly possessed damaging information about Clinton that was not released before the election. The January 2017 assessment does note there was a disagreement on the level of confidence in that assessment: the CIA and FBI had high confidence, and the NSA had medium confidence. But the GOP report argues that the conclusion was flawed, based upon previously unpublished intelligence reports, including three that were 'substandard.' One report, based on a single human source the House panel said was biased against both Trump and Putin, contained a claim that Putin was 'counting' on Trump's victory, according to the committee. That claim was interpreted in different ways by different analysts but was ultimately used to reach the 'aspire' judgment, the report said. 'One scant, unclear and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard reports constitutes the only classified information cited to suggest Putin 'aspired' to help Trump win,' the report states. The Ratcliffe-led CIA in its review found that the 'aspire' judgment was 'plausible and sensible, but was an inference rather than fact sourced to multiple reporting streams,' noting that it also rested on an assessment of 'the public behavior of senior Russian officials and state- controlled media, and on logic.' It said that the assessment authors had properly interpreted the sentence fragment. The report also details what US intelligence knew about Russian intelligence material collected on Clinton that was not released before the election, including allegations about her health, which Republicans wrote 'would have created greater scandals' than the hacked materials from John Podesta released by WikiLeaks. Republicans questioned why this information wasn't released if Russia was trying to help Trump (CNN was unable to confirm the origin or veracity of any of the allegations). CNN reached out to Clinton aides for comment. The GOP report criticizes the assessment's inclusion of the infamous and discredited dossier written by British intelligence official Christopher Steele, which was paid for by the Clinton campaign and alleged coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. A summary of the dossier was included as an annex in the January 2017 assessment, after CIA officials objected to including it in the report itself. The intelligence analysts who prepared the report told the Senate Intelligence Committee the dossier played no role in the analysis of Russia's interference. Special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr during Trump's first term, spent four years investigating a wide range of topics, including potential wrongdoing by the FBI and intelligence community during the 2016 post-election period. He never accused any US officials of any crimes related to the 2017 intelligence assessment. This story has been updated with additional details. CNN's Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this report.
