Today's big New York Times piece about the Durham investigation is chock full of goodies about how Donald Trump and his lackeys desperately tried to prove that the FBI had illegally opened an investigation of Trump for no good reason. Attorney General Bill Barr and his special counsel, John Durham, were obsessed about this and became increasingly agitated as their investigation continued and they were unable to find anything that backed up their suspicions. They never did. We know now that, in fact, Trump's presidential campaign did have links to the Russian government. The FBI did have a perfectly sensible reason to open an investigation into this. Vladimir Putin did try to interfere with the election in Trump's favor. And several members of Durham's team did quit because of disagreements with him over prosecutorial ethics.
There's no single smoking gun in the story, just a long series of incidents that paint a damning picture of Barr's Justice Department. In one of them, Barr received a tip from Italian intelligence:
[In 2019] the Times reported that Mr. Durham’s administrative review of the Russia inquiry had evolved to include a criminal investigation, while saying it was not clear what the suspected crime was. Citing their own sources, many other news outlets confirmed the development.
The news reports, however, were all framed around the erroneous assumption that the criminal investigation must mean Mr. Durham had found evidence of potential crimes by officials involved in the Russia inquiry. Mr. Barr, who weighed in publicly about the Durham inquiry at regular intervals in ways that advanced a pro-Trump narrative, chose in this instance not to clarify what was really happening.
Barr was normally a chatterbox, constantly tossing out tidbits about the investigation that made it seem as if they had the goods on the FBI. This time, however, he kept his mouth shut.
Why? Because the tip from the Italians linked Trump to financial crimes. That was the criminal investigation, but Barr saw no need to correct reporters who thought he was looking into criminal conduct by the FBI.
Nothing came of this investigation, but it's telling nevertheless. And it's a warning to everyone to take Durham's final report with a salt mine's worth of skepticism when it comes out. Past experience tells us that Durham will do his best to make it look like the FBI was guilty of massive crimes even though he was unable to prove any of them and unable to successfully prosecute even the minor charges he took to court.
Poor John Durham. He made his own bed, but this was partly because he got sucked into the black hole that is Donald Trump. Everyone who associates with Trump comes out of it looking worse than when they went in, and that's what happened to Durham. In 2019 he was a respected veteran prosecutor. Four years later that reputation is in tatters. Nomen amicitiae sic, quatenus expedit, haeret.
And the great finale is that Biden's DoJ gets to ask Mueller and Durham "Hey, how come you guys missed the links between the New York office of the FBI and the Russian oligarch who was in cahoots with Trump campaign manager Manafort for years and years?"
I mean it does seem to have SOME passing connection with the RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA! non-hoax. Maybe Hannity can make on of his charts to show it for them.
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What a bunch of idiots. They believed their own BS. Guess that happens a lot when you are a bunch of sociopathic grifters .
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Barr was diabolical, Durham was a stooge. Both were puppets on Trump's string until Trump lost the election, when Barr suddenly found religion.
"Found religion" is shrewd wording in this context. Barr manages to jump from the plane he helped hijack, mere seconds before it smashes nose-first into the mountainside, and parachutes down to waiting reporters as a hero of democracy, a parachute jump that washed away all his sins, apparently.
But I'm thinking more about a very dark movement, what seems like an infiltration, by an identifiable group of Vermeule-ist anti-republican and anti-democratic dirigiste reactionary Catholics, a deep state within a deep state. Barr seems to have cultivated Durham, groomed him into that circle, and we know what effect Leonard Leo has had on our judiciary.
About 200 years ago John Quincy Adams quit the Masons and blasted them because a republic couldn't survive secret loyalties built around secret projects. And it's more than a little ironic here that this reactionary project rides on the back of the most vociferously politicized evangelical Protestants in the country, whose roots lie in intense and lethal anti-Catholicism.
I share your apprehension, but I am a little sqeamish about emphasizing the religion angle.
I am too, very much so. Practicing a religion and espousing beliefs are protected individual freedoms in this country. So is trying to persuade people, and the political system, to enact preferred policies. But with integralism we're really talking about an attempt to change the nature of the political and constitutional system on the sly. I don't see it as fundamentally different than what Bannon's up to-- he just lacks the religious framework and justification.
In a weird way, this kind of thing may represent a kind of maturation. Until recently we were the only major Western-based society that didn't have a political grouping based in some kind of organic view of society-- royalism, Jacobitism, like that. Now we have at least two, working hand-in-hand toward some kind of theocracy or another. Hand in hand for the moment, at least, because I suspect one of them doesn't understand what it's being used to achieve.
Some times I despair of the future. The wellbing of a democratic society comports with the information available to and the beliefs of voters. The leaders they elect determine the future of the country. The US is like a giant ship which takes a while to respond to its rudder. However, across the Atlantic, the UK has been responding more readily to over a decade of conservative government policies. The outcome has been Brexit and truly awful economic performance and a diminished standard of living.
Our system of dispersed power centers has that immense inertia, which is both a frustration and a protection. The UK has been moving for 30 years or more toward a pure and simple parliamentary despotism whose only check is that the PM has to sit down once a week with the monarch. The hidden hand in both the US and UK is the Murdoch family, and its influence has been almost wholly evil in both, as far as I know (weren't their media pro-Brexit?). I don't know whether that's because of malevolence or heedlessness or what, but the effect is the same in any case, and it sure seems to undermine the national interest of the US, and maybe both countries.
I want to hear about how this connects with Charles McGonigal,
https://www.newsweek.com/who-charles-mcgonigal-fbi-agent-charged-russia-links-1776008
and how he connects to those FBI agents who were all so insane about Hillary Clinton.
Now now, just because a bunch of rabid Trump supporters like Giuliani, Herridge, Napolitano and DiGenova were based in New York, and frequently write stories about the Clinton email investigation based on their sources inside the FBI, there's no call for making scurrilous accusations ...
from the Times,
Sometimes, no matter how long you've been out hunting, you return home without any witches to show for it.
If you spend too many nights on Bald Mountain sitting in a duck blind listening to Alex Jones it can really mess with your head.
That's the sense in which Trump uses "witch hunt." He's the hunter and the witches are the ones (especially females) who are holding him accountable.
Hey Durham, enjoy your new job at Chick Fil A! You chose the Trump way, so no complaining!
"Nothing came of this investigation, but it's telling nevertheless."
Nothing came of it, you say? Wait, the team that was violating prosecutorial ethics to find any dirt to smear their political opponents came across evidence against their own guy, and rather than hand it off to the proper authorities or do what every pundit would be clamoring for if it were a Democratic administration, which would be to appoint a special prosecutor, instead they decided to go outside their remit and investigate it themselves. They told no one about this investigation and instead misled reporters to think they were pursuing a criminal investigation against their political enemies. And after ALL THAT, they just happened to find nothing?
I think your "nevertheless" was way too generous. "Neverthemore" perhaps. We have no idea if nothing came of this investigation because there was nothing to it or if they just decided to sit on it.
DOJ should reinvestigate both the tip and how it was mishandled.
(And every Democratic should be on the Capitol steps raising holy hell about this. Republicans would never let something like this go.)
+1
The quote you are rejecting is specifically about the sub-investigation into the Italian tips; not the actual Durham "investigation". We do not know how thorough this sub-investigation was; chances are that it was done with little zeal or even that its unfavorable results were suppressed.
I’m always amused, when perhaps I should be frightened, by all these folks who pretend to be suddenly shocked— shocked, I say!! - to discover that Donald Trump is actually….. da da duuuuuummmm …. Donald Trump!!! (“And I would have gotten away with it too if not for you darn 81,283,501 kids!”)
Take Elaine Chao ..please …. Speaking out against Trump’s latest racist slams (what a leader for the Asian American community!) after she apparently was just fine with the earlier 835,925,317,057,436,916 racist comments he made.
No sympathy for these pathetic power-hungry morons.
Koran burning stunt in Sweden turns out to be Russian plot,
https://www.theage.com.au/world/europe/the-moscow-link-to-koran-burning-stunt-that-could-stop-sweden-joining-nato-20230127-p5cfvz.html
No one cares. It’s just politics. Trump has, so far, managed to avoid any accountability beyond losing the election. He’s getting away with “seditious conspiracy” and god knows what else. He has lots of political support so I look forward to republicans blowing up the country one way or another these next few years… we really do deserve our fate.
AI would hammer the final nail in the coffin so blowing up the economy before it takes over would starve it of resources!
I'm assuming "No one cares. It's just medicine." will be your response to medical malpractice?
Justin is a troll typing from his mother’s basement. Don’t feed him, he’s got his mom to do that and change his diaper too.
Like .
There are three relationship types. Mutual trust is wonderful. Unilateral trust is challenging, but it has a positive long-term ROI. Mutual distrust is dangerous.
Bottom line: trust that "trusting Justin" will have a positive long-term ROI. And, until he grows up, it's better than the alternative.
Oh God, what amazing trust in AI. AI is going to be constructed by the same flawed humans who constructed our actually available technology and will be just as morally flawed.
The good news is: AI will not materialize in the life time of any human being now alive. It is for now a non-problem--and not a hope for Justin
"Nomen amicitiae sic, quatenus expedit, haeret."
Friendship that last just as long as it is profitable is FRINO (friendship in name only).
Wasn't Durham in charge of the "investigation" that cleared US intelligence agencies of torture and other war crimes? This is just an opposites day event.
That what I think as well. So, I'm not sure Durham's reputation was all that good before this.
Well, a "fiasco" if you're goal is truth and justice, perhaps, but pretty successful, from what I saw, in propping up the spirits of your troops during the 2020 campaign.
Qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent.