As you may recall from the dim recesses of your memory, a couple of years ago Donald Trump's attorney general appointed a US attorney to investigate ties between Trump and Russia. That is to say, he appointed someone to investigate Democratic lies about ties between Trump and Russia and the FBI's collusion in said lies, something that Trump has always been sort of maniacal about.
Anyway, the chosen investigator was John Durham, US Attorney for Connecticut, who has been diligently beavering away on this task. But what was Durham up to? Was he a serious investigator? Or a right-wing nutball determined to dig up dirt on Democrats?
This has come into sharper focus recently with Durham's indictment of Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who passed on leads to an FBI official in 2016. Bizarrely, the indictment accuses Sussmann of lying about his ties to Hillary Clinton's campaign even though (a) the FBI official in question repeatedly testified that he had no recollection of whether Sussmann mentioned his ties to Clinton, (b) it doesn't really matter if Sussmann was doing work for the Clinton campaign, and (c) this obviously has no bearing on whether the FBI itself did anything wrong.
So why did Durham even bother with this? The answer appears to be that he had some things he wanted to get off his chest, and he needed an indictment to do it. Here is Jon Chait:
The perjury charge is merely the window dressing in the indictment. The meat of it — the part that has Trump defenders excited — is a narrative laid out by Durham attempting to paint Sussmann and the experts he worked with as liars who smeared Trump. That narrative part does not describe actual crimes, of course. Prosecutors can write whatever they want in their indictment. This one is like a Sean Hannity monologue wrapped around a parking ticket.
But wait. There's more. Here is Ankush Khardori in Politico:
All of this has had the distinct appearance of an effort on the part of Durham’s team to scapegoat Sussmann for potentially unseemly conduct on the part of the Clinton campaign that they are not prepared to criminally charge....It remains to be seen whether the latest subpoena to Sussmann’s firm will actually turn anything up, but at least from the outside, the effort looks suspiciously like a proverbial fishing expedition. These concerns were further compounded on Thursday, when both CNN and the New York Times published stories that suggested that allegations in the Sussmann indictment were based on a highly selective — and arguably disingenuous — characterization of relevant emails.
....In the two-and-a-half years and millions of dollars spent since his investigation began, Durham has yet to identify any misconduct of real consequence within the FBI. We find ourselves in the surreal position of having an ongoing criminal investigation concerning the 2016 election, while, at the same time, the DOJ under Garland appears to be sitting idly by as information continues to accumulate that provides further reason to investigate the conduct of Trump himself in the wake of the 2020 election.
It's pretty obvious what we have here: Ken Starr 2.0. There's obviously nothing of significance going on, but Durham, like Starr, figures that if he just keeps digging and digging maybe something will come up.
President Biden is obviously in a difficult situation. If he tells Durham to wrap things up then it looks like he's protecting his fellow Democrats. But if he does nothing, Durham will just go on and on and on—probably leaking juicy tidbits to Republican hacks along the way. What to do?
I dunno. But it's pretty obvious that Durham is bound and determined to find something—anything—that will make Fox News happy. The endless investigation has become a Republican specialty, and now we have their latest version. Welcome to hell.
Why not just fire him? Trump fired James Comey with literally no consequences to himself. I would think this would have shown democrats that there is no reason to sit by when some nonsense like this is going on.
IOKIYAR.
Firing him would be highly partisan. Also, it would shock the villagers and the sabbath gasbags. So, totally out of the totally out of the question for the timid party.
What to do? Tell him he's got one week to wrap things up. Or as realrobmac says, above, just fire him. Nobody who isn't already a 24/7 shrieking anti-Biden maniac is going to care.
If they want to spend all their air-time and money denouncing the Clintons, I'm not sure that's such a bad thing. It's a waste of their time and basically allows all the people they try to slander to get all the Trump-Russia evidence back in front of people.
I just want to tell you how much I love this observation.
Yes! By all means let’s remind everybody how the Russians helped the Trump campaign, which Trump repaid with obsequiousness to Putin at every opportunity.
This is a great point.
"What to do?"
Ignore it? Nobody persuadable is paying attention. If Fox News and the rest didn't have this bone to chew on they'd find something else. At least this one has the benefit of being too arcane for their viewers to comprehend. None of it matters.
Durham is getting paid, is he not? And by whom? The public?
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Ignore him publicly. Fish on him privately. Not that hard.
Tell him to wrap it up or get fired. Who cares what anybody says.
I'm with everybody else. He's wasting the taxpayer money - YOUR MONEY!! per the GOP. If he hasn't found anything of consequence by now, he won't. Fire him. He can deadhead on the Wingnut Welfare Gravy Train, not on Our Dime.
I imagine there's a Yung GQPer on the Durham team who, like Kavanaugh with Starr, is setting himself up to be the next GQP SCROTUS pick.
Let's do whatever we can to make sure he's disappointed.
I am sure Ralph Nader Jr. Jr. or Jillette Stein or Corina O'Driscoll or Tulsi Gabbard r whomever will ensure that that yung qun has a chance to don the black robes of a Supreme.
Cut his budget for this to zero. Because the debt limit expansion. Or something.
tiger.........
"STARVE THE BEAST" cut the funding to Durhams entitlement program
What a very republican idea !!!!
What to do? Personally I think violence is justified. It's a war.
Just kidding. It's not like republicans are going around threatening the rest of us with violence.
"The law is only as powerful as people’s willingness to abide by it."
Ask yourself "What would Donnie do?"
The answer is, of course, appoint a special investigator to investigate the special investigator.
He has a reputation for taking forever--and some Republicans hated that. Now they see him as a standing special prosecutor who could decide he needs to look into anything he likes. Campaigns heating up--issue a subpoena for all documents related to x and/or y to all Democrats. A great way to gum up the works.
Give him 6 weeks to prepare a wrap up report. Then thank him for his efforts and send him back to his US Attorney's desk in Connecticut.
And how is Durham STILL a US Attorney? If he won't tender his resignation immediately upon request, fire his arse.
As I understand it he's resigned as a US attorney, but retains his appointment by Barr as special counsel. Barr bragged that he had made it harder for Biden to dismiss him.
Ignore him. The only people paying attention are Trump Republicans, and they are either disenchanted with his failure to nail Comet et al. or faithfully clinging to the belief he'll do it sooner or later. Either way it does nothing to help their cause. And his existence allows Democrats to cite irrefutable evidence that Trump went to extraordinary lengths to prove they did something wrong in 2016, and came up with nothing.
*Comey
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Are we serious here? Biden should be worried about something that "looks like he's protecting his fellow Democrats"? Trump the living, breathing obscenity is telling his base that Biden is not really president and that they aren't going to have a country anymore, McConnell is telling his caucus that they need to vote no on everything that comes to the floor no matter how good it is for his constituents, etc., etc., . . . and the Democrats should be worried about how something would "look" that 99% of voters haven't a clue about? This is why Democrats keep losing! They look like a bunch of weenies who are afraid not only of shadows, but of potential shadows.
Just do it, for chrissakes!
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"the DOJ under Garland appears to be sitting idly by"
Isn't this the money quote?
Fire him. It'll be news for five minutes and nobody will care.
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Tell him to pound sand. It will be forgotten by next month by anyone who would ever consider voting for a Democrat.
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Twitler only has one response - by his own admission- to criticism of his many, many faults, crimes, and violations of this oath of office: ATTACK.
Use everything, including government institutions, to crush your political detractors, which avoiding all accountability for yourself.. That is how Fascism operates. It is custom designed for a juvenile sociopath like Donald.
Or BLM, which is fascism