AG Barr tells Republicans the Durham report won’t be ready by the election: report

Attorney General William Barr has reportedly informed top Republicans that results from U.S. Attorney John Durham's probe into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation will not be released before the Nov. 3 election.

What are the details?

Axios broke the news on Friday after a senior White House official and a congressional aide reportedly confirmed to the news outlet that they had been briefed on conversations.

If true, the news is a major blow to Republicans and members of the Trump administration, which had been hoping that bombshell revelations from the investigation would sway the upcoming election.

After all, Republicans believe, based on documents which have been made publicly available so far, that high-ranking members of the Obama administration — potentially including Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden — were involved in illegally spying on the Trump campaign.

"This is the nightmare scenario," a GOP congressional aide told Axios. "Essentially, the year and a half of arguably the number one issue for the Republican base is virtually meaningless if this doesn't happen before the election."

But, according to the report, Barr has been telling Republicans not to expect any further indictments or a comprehensive report before Nov. 3.

"The general sense of the talks," Axios reported, "is that Durham is not preoccupied with completing his probe by a certain deadline for political purposes."

What else?

In recent days, President Trump has become exasperated by the news that the review won't be completed by the time voters head to the polls.

In an interview with a Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo on Thursday, the president indicated that the Department of Justice already has all of the evidence it needs to go after Obama administration officials.

"These people should be indicted, this was the greatest political crime in the history of our country, and that includes [former President] Obama and it includes Biden," Trump said.

"These are people that spied on my campaign — and we have everything — and now they say 'we have much more,' and I say, 'Bill, we got plenty, you don't need anymore,'" he continued. "We've got so much, Maria."

During the interview, Trump also pressured Barr to speed up the process, saying, "To be honest, Bill Barr is going to go down as either the greatest attorney general in the history of the country or he's going to go down as, you know, a very sad situation."

A senior White House official shared the president's frustration while reportedly speaking with Axios on the matter. The official insisted that Barr should jump ahead of Durham by declassifying more documents.

"Bill Barr should follow the instructions of the president to declassify and release all the documents the FBI are sitting on. There's no good reason for him to withhold this information," the official said.