Durham report is finally out

The investigation is finally over.  (Had you forgotten it even existed?)  And this is the headline:

It was rigged, right, Donald?  Oh, wait.  It was instigated by you and Bill Barr.

Like so many of Trump's complaints about his appointees, I'll be expecting him to claim Durham was an idiot.

As the Mueller investigation ground on through 2017, allies of President Trump set upon a strategy to counter it: They would investigate those investigating the probe, allowing them to sling unfounded allegations of corruption at prosecutors examining the then-President’s dealings.

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President Trump spent years suggesting that Durham would vindicate him, finally turning up the evidence –and the prison sentences – to prove that the Trump-Russia investigation was a witch hunt from the start.

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Attorney General Bill Barr appointed Durham in 2019 after the Mueller investigation concluded. He brought three prosecutions while special counsel; the first one ended in a guilty plea, while the other two ended in not guilty verdicts at trial.

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“We conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” the report reads.

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Durham tried hard to disprove the Steele dossier. And in so doing, he seems to have spent a significant amount of investigative resources nailing down the dossier’s most notorious allegation: that Trump hired prostitutes to come to the Moscow Ritz-Carlton and urinate on the bed where Barack Obama supposedly stayed.

  TPM

There was taxpayer money well spent, eh?

He interviewed two purported subsources to the Steele dossier who recalled a June 2016 tour of the Moscow Ritz’s presidential suite, though they didn’t recall any mention of “sexual or salacious activity.”

Durham’s team also spoke with the general manager of the Moscow Ritz, a German citizen who “denied having knowledge” of the allegations or of having discussed them. Durham also appears to have obtained records directly from the Moscow Ritz; which, he wrote, confirm that Trump stayed at the hotel in 2013 but not in the “Presidential suite.”

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An entire section of this report is devoted to what Durham described as “disparate treatment” of the Trump and Clinton campaigns by the FBI.

It echoes in concept if not in tone one of Trump’s favorite complaints about the Trump-Russia investigation, or really any attempt to examine or hold him accountable in any way: that it’s unfair.

In this context, Durham raises the issue of which campaign received a defensive briefing from the FBI in 2016 and which did not, and also publicizes potential 2016 investigations into the Clinton Foundation which, he says, immediately went nowhere.

This, of course, is in contrast to the Trump-Russia investigation, which went on for years and resulted in the convictions of his campaign manager, national security adviser, and others.

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With more than 300 pages of narrative and criticism of the FBI’s decision to open its investigation into Trump-Russia, Durham says that he does not think there should be any “wholesale changes” in federal law enforcement.

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He instead says that it’s all about “integrity,” and that he simply did his work to help the attorney general decide “how the Department and the FBI can do a better, more credible job in fulfilling its responsibilities, and in analyzing and responding to politically charged allegations in the future.”

Right. Not at all to find something to back up Trump's whining about unfairness and deep state harassment. 

And let's have a peek at some of what Durham imagines is having integrity.

Durham rehashes his allegations against Michael Sussmann, the then-Perkins Coie attorney who was accused of lying to an FBI official to get the bureau to open an investigation. Sussmann was acquitted and doubt was cast at trial what role his meeting played in sparking the FBI probe, but Durham claims undeterred that Sussmann prompted the case’s opening.

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Much of the report appears to re-up or outright repeat allegations that have floated around since 2018 and 2019, mostly going to suggestions that the FBI had nothing on which to base its Trump-Russia investigation when it began in July 2016.

Durham bemoans at one point how “costly” federal investigations of Trump and Russia have been, “including the instant investigation.”

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House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) said that he wants to bring Special Counsel John Durham to testify before Congress next week.

Oh, FFS. Leave it, ya jamoke.

Jordan’s current portfolio, including the “weaponization subcommittee,” is at the core of what Durham was doing in helping to parry the various investigations into Trump: claiming abuse among the investigators.

So he's just going to drag this out with some clips for Fox News - oh, no, wait, Fox is no longer in favor. Clips for Newsmax.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 05/17/2023: