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In 2017, after the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Muller to oversee the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, Congressional Republicans asked the Department of Justice to appoint a second Special Counsel to investigate other matters they wanted investigated, like the Clinton Foundation, Uranium One, and FISA abuse. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions refused, but he tasked John Huber, U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah, with conducting an administrative review looking into whether any new investigations needed to be opened or any new Special Counsels needed to be appointed in regard to the matters that Congressional Republicans had raised. Now back in May, current Attorney General Bill Barr told CBS that he had reassigned the FISA abuse stuff to John Durham, but that Huber was still handling the Hillary Clinton stuff and that his review was winding down:

Right, so Huber had originally been asked to take a look at the FISA applications and the electronic surveillance but then he stood back and put that on hold while the Office of Inspector General was conducting its review, which would've been normal for the department. And he was essentially on standby in case Mr. Horowitz referred a matter to him to be handled criminally. So he has not been active on this front in recent months and so Durham is taking over that role. The other issues he's been working on relate to Hillary Clinton. Those are winding down and hopefully we'll be in a position to bring those to fruition.

My question is, have there been any updates on the status of Huber’s review since May? Has the DOJ made any statements after that saying that it’s still ongoing, or saying that it has concluded?

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  • By "updates" since May, are you looking for statements by official sources, or other reporting about the Huber investigation? Commented Dec 27, 2019 at 19:28

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The Washington Post reported yesterday that the Huber review is winding up but not yet closed officially.

Current and former officials said that Huber has largely finished and found nothing worth pursuing — though the assignment has not formally ended and no official notice has been sent to the Justice Department or to lawmakers, these people said.

However, there is no official statement as officials from the Department of Justice declined to comment, in line with DoJ’s practice of not commenting on ongoing investigations.

A spokeswoman for Huber referred questions to Justice Department headquarters, where a spokeswoman declined to comment.

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As LA Times put it (on Oct 25)

The other two Justice Department investigations into 2016-related matters are being led by Horowitz and John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, who had been selected by former Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions to conduct a broad review of the Russia inquiry and investigations related to Trump campaign opponent Hillary Clinton. Durham took over Huber’s Russia portfolio, Barr has said. Justice Department officials have declined to say whether Huber is still investigating how the agency handled Clinton-related inquiries.

So we have Durham's inquiry as the only known continuation of that review of Huber. I don't know if the DOJ has made any other statements since October on this [leftover] Huber issue.

The only thing that I know came out is hardly official, and from July

According to former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, the Comey memos were under review by U.S. Attorney John Huber.

During an appearance on Fox News Monday, Whitaker let slip, “we still have Huber out there looking at some of these things regarding Comey’s memos and the like.”

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    I mentioned Durham taking over part of Huber’s mandate in my question. But I’m wondering whether the DOJ has discussed Huber’s review since May. That LA Times article doesn’t specify when the last time the the DOJ declined to say whether the Huber review is ongoing. Commented Dec 18, 2019 at 6:47

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