Last week, the staggeringly unqualified toady serving as Trump’s director of the FBI, Kash Patel, breathlessly announced that his team had “uncovered” long-ignored proof “buried in a back room at the FBI.” It is a smoking gun: “evidence that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.”
Hot damn! It’s like a real-life re-enactment of Patel’s children’s book, The Plot Against the King, in which Wizard Kash thwarts a plot by the evil Hillary Queenton to unseat good King Donald by accusing him of “working with the Russionians” to steal the throne. (I am not making that up.)
There is room for infinite numbers of ridiculous, assinine, and insane shit in our current alternate universe. It's an absurd place.
But wait: As Patel notes, this evidence had already been included as a classified “annex” to the 2023 report by special counsel John Durham, who had been hired as a special prosecutor in 2020 by Trump and his then-attorney general, Bill Barr. If this evidence is as potent as Patel says, then why would Durham—who was hired to blow the lid off the supposed “Russiagate hoax”—have relegated it to a mere annex?
Because, it turns out, Wizard Kash’s “smoking gun” is not only ridiculously fake (as Durham concluded), it actually blows a massive hole in the Trump/Patel “Russia hoax” theory.
In case anyone has forgotten with all the retooling his reputation is getting these days, Bill Barr is a sleeze.
House Judiciary Committee Democrats are asking the Justice Department (DOJ) to turn over information about a trip former Attorney General Bill Barr and special counsel John Durham took to Italy after reviewing a tip about possible financial crimes carried out by former President Trump.
Durham was appointed to investigate the FBI’s handling of the initial probe into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
But in the course of that investigation, the Justice Department received a tip from Italian officials alleging wrongdoing by Trump, spurring an unusual trip by both gentlemen.
“Because of the strength and seriousness of this evidence, Attorney General Barr acknowledged that the Department was compelled to investigate, but instead of allowing the investigation to proceed through normal channels, he asked Mr. Durham to handle the investigation secretly,” ranking member Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
[...]
In a June appearance before Congress, Durham said little about the trip, stressing that high level DOJ staff were needed to properly engage with the Italian officials.
Sure. Whatever. And Bill Barr himself had to go because he had the highest level?
He also said that “investigative steps were taken, and grand jury subpoenas were issued” but that he saw no reason to include information about the episode in his report.
[...]
“In this instance, it appears that Attorney General Barr turned the Special Counsel regulations on their head and used the Special Counsel not to promote independence and fairness, but to bury a potentially significant criminal investigation from the public,” Nadler wrote.
“Mr. Durham’s refusal to explain his decision not to charge former President Trump after secretly investigating him for alleged financial crimes is highly concerning, especially considering Mr. Durham’s extensive public discussion of evidence that was rejected by juries which acquitted the defendants that he charged.”
The letter asks DOJ to turn over specifics that were not included in Durham’s report, including more details about the tip provided by Italy, details about how it was investigated, and any rationale for not bringing charges, including in a so-called declination memo.
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.
[...]
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.
[...]
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.
[...]
“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.
[...]
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.
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.”
[...]
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.
[...]
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.
[...]
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.
[...]
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.”
[...]
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.
A jury in Washington, D.C., has acquitted lawyer Michael Sussmann on a single charge of lying to the FBI, dealing a blow to the three-year investigation by special counsel John Durham.
Jurors deliberated for six hours, spread over two days, before delivering the unanimous verdict.
[...]
The jury forewoman, who did not give her name, told reporters outside the courthouse that "I think we could have spent our time more wisely."
"It didn't pan out in the government's favor and that's on them," she also said.
[...]
The Trump administration appointed Durham to probe the origins of the FBI's investigation into possible links between former President Donald Trump and Russia. This case amounted to the first courtroom test for Durham, a prosecutor known for going after mobsters and corrupt public officials But his now three-year-long probe has not uncovered explosive evidence of wrongdoing by the FBI. Instead, in this case, the FBI was cast as a victim.
The two-week trial featured witnesses with prominent political ties including election lawyer Marc Elias, former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, and several former FBI and Justice Department officials who served in key roles in 2016.
[...]
Prosecutors produced a Staples receipt for thumb drives they said Sussmann had billed to the Clinton campaign, as well as calendar entries and other bills from Perkins Coie, the law firm where the defendant had worked until his indictment.
The defense focused in on taxi receipts, apparently to and from the FBI meeting, which Sussmann had not billed to clients with Democratic ties.
The case has been closely watched as the first courtroom test for the Durham probe, launched by former Attorney General Bill Barr amid hostile tweets from then President Trump about the investigation into Russia's election interference in 2016.
[...]
"Despite being falsely accused, I am relieved that justice ultimately prevailed in this case," [Sussman] said, adding that it had been a "difficult year" for him and his family.
His lawyers, Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth from the law firm Latham & Watkins, LLP, went further in a statement, saying the verdict "sends an unmistakable message to anyone who cares to listen: politics is no substitute for evidence, and politics has no place in our system of justice."
[...]
The single criminal count stemmed from a meeting Sussmann brokered with then FBI general counsel James Baker in September 2016, only weeks before the election. Sussmann was accused of lying to Baker about whether he appeared on behalf of Democratic clients such as the Clinton campaign or a technology executive named Rodney Joffe.
[...]
In the months before the trial, prosecutors belatedly asked Baker to sift through his electronics for relevant evidence. Baker found a text from Sussmann, who typed that he was coming on his own – "not on behalf of any client or company."
And that's when the whole thing should have been dropped.
I would hope Sussman would at least be able to recover costs.
Durham secured a guilty plea from an FBI lawyer who ultimately avoided prison time. Another one of his cases is scheduled to go to trial in Virginia later this year against Igor Danchenko, a Russian citizen and former think tank employee who faces five charges for allegedly lying to the FBI.
Danchenko, who is fighting the charges, is accused of lying about the sources of the information he provided to former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, for what became the Steele dossier.
The key source of information used to compile a salacious 2016 dossier on former President Donald Trump has been arrested and charged with [five counts of making false statements] to the FBI as part of special counsel John Durham's long-running inquiry into the Russia investigation.
Igor Danchenko, 43, an associate of former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, was taken into custody in northern Virginia and is expected to make his first court appearance Thursday afternoon, a Durham spokesman said Thursday.
[...]
In September, Durham, who has been examining abuses during the Russia investigation, secured an indictment against a Washington attorney accused of lying to the FBI.
The charge against Michael Sussmann, a prominent cybersecurity attorney whose firm is closely tied with Democratic Party interests, is linked to a 2016 contact with the FBI when he raised concerns about a secret channel of communications between a Russian bank and the Trump Organization.
[...]
In one instance, according to federal prosecutors, Danchenko falsely claimed he obtained information from an anonymous caller who indicated that there were "communications ongoing between the Trump campaign and Russian officials and that the caller had indicated the Kremlin might be of help in getting Trump elected."
[...]
The dossier, first published by BuzzFeed just before Trump's 2017 inauguration, suggested in part that Russia had obtained compromising information as part of a Kremlin effort to co-opt Trump.
Its explosive contents became part of the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and were used to help support a surveillance request for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Attorney General William Barr has appointed the prosecutor investigating the origins of the 2016 Russia probe as a special counsel, a move that insulates U.S. Attorney John Durham from facing a swift removal in the incoming Biden administration.
Barr appointed Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut who has been investigating the origins of the Russia investigation since May 2019, as special counsel on Oct. 19.
[...]
“Following consultation with Mr. Durham, I have determined that, in light of the extraordinary circumstances relating to these matters, the public interest warrants Mr. Durham continuing this investigation pursuant to the powers and independence afforded by the Special Counsel regulations,” the order states.
Barr notified the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees of his decision in a letter sent Tuesday.
Barr said he waited to notify Congress of the move until more than a month later after “having previously determined that it was in the public interest to toll notification given the proximity to the presidential election.”
Congress isn't "the public" Bill.
Under this federal statute, only an attorney general can fire the special counsel, and they must provide a reason for the termination in writing that falls along the lines of misconduct, conflict of interest or dereliction of duty.
The misconduct in this case is Barr's.
Durham is currently conducting a criminal probe that has significantly narrowed, Barr says. Now Durham is focusing his probe on the conduct of FBI agents involved in Crossfire Hurricane, the name for the original FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians.
[...]
The Oct. 19 order authorizes Durham to investigate “whether any federal official, employee, or any other person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump, including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III.”
The order also authorizes him to prosecute any federal crimes that arise from the investigation.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV that airs Wednesday night on "Greg Kelly Reports," Trump said it's "too early" to determine whether he would ask Barr to come back or if he would tap someone else for the job.
[...]
The Washington Post reported that U.S. Attorney John Bash did not find evidence of wrongdoing with regard to the unmasking. Trump called that conclusion "a disgrace."
[...]
The Bash investigation was a branch of the larger probe being led by U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham, who is examining the origins of the Russia investigation that began in the Obama administration.
Durham's findings are not expected to be released before next month's election.
"I have no comment [about keeping Barr as AG]. Can't comment on that. It's too early," Trump said. "I'm not happy with all of the evidence I have, I can tell you that. I'm not happy."
I'd like to know who he thinks would be more obsequious than Barr.
The federal prosecutor appointed by Attorney General William P. Barr to review whether Obama-era officials improperly requested the identities of individuals whose names were redacted in intelligence documents has completed his work without finding any substantive wrongdoing, according to people familiar with the matter.
The revelation that U.S. Attorney John Bash, who left the department last week, had concluded his review without criminal charges or any public report will rankle President Trump at a moment when he is particularly upset at the Justice Department. The department has so far declined to release the results of Bash’s work.
No, of course not. But they sure made a big deal out of opening the investigation.
Legal analysts feared Bash’s review was yet another attempt by Trump’s Justice Department to target political opponents of the president. Even if it ultimately produced no results of consequence, legal analysts said, it allowed Trump and other conservatives to say Obama-era officials were under scrutiny, as long as the case stayed active.
[...]
Though “unmasking” is common and appropriate because it allows government officials to better understand a document they are reading, Trump and others suggested the list of requests that ultimately revealed [General Mike] Flynn’s name showed wrongdoing.
Bash’s team was focused not just on unmasking, but also whether Obama-era officials provided information to reporters, according to people familiar with the probe, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive investigation. But the findings ultimately turned over to Barr fell short of what Trump and others might have hoped, and the attorney general’s office elected not to release them publicly, the people familiar with the matter said.
[...]
Bash announced last week that he was leaving the department — surprising many in the Justice Department because it came so close to the election — though he made no mention of the unmasking review. He said in a statement that he had informed the attorney general of the decision a month earlier and had “accepted an offer for a position in the private sector.”
Before being nominated as the U.S. attorney, Bash worked in the Solicitor General’s Office and as an associate counsel to Trump. Bash thanked Trump and others in the statement, and Barr offered his “gratitude” for Bash’s service.
[...]
Before Bash’s appointment, Kupec had said that a different federal prosecutor, John Durham in Connecticut, also had been looking at unmasking as part of his broader investigation into the FBI’s 2016 probe of whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election. It was not clear how Durham’s and Bash’s work intersected.
Barr recently told some Republican lawmakers that no report of Durham’s investigation would be released before the November election, though unlike Bash’s review, Durham’s work seems to be ongoing, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has in recent days called the delay in the Durham case “a disgrace,” and asserted that his 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, should be jailed. He was previously critical of another prosecutor specially tapped by then-Attorney General Sessions to investigate matters related to Clinton, but whose case ended with no public report or allegations of wrongdoing.
Donald Trump mounted an overnight Twitter blitz demanding to jail his political enemies and call out allies he says are failing to arrest his rivals swiftly enough.
Trump twice amplified supporters’ criticisms of Attorney General William Barr, including one featuring a meme calling on him to “arrest somebody!”
[...]
“Where are all of the arrests?” Trump said, after several dozen tweets on the subject over the past 24 hours. “Can you imagine if the roles were reversed? Long term sentences would have started two years ago. Shameful!”
By early afternoon, Trump was letting loose his frustrations in an all-caps missive that seemed aimed at nobody in particular.
“DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN - GOT CAUGHT!!!” Trump tweeted.
“NOW THAT THE RADICAL LEFT DEMOCRATS GOT COUGHT [sic] COLD IN THE (NON) FRIENDLY TRANSFER OF GOVERNMENT, IN FACT, THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN AND WENT FOR A COUP, WE ARE ENTITLED TO ASK THE VOTERS FOR FOUR MORE YEARS,” Trump declared late Wednesday morning. “PLEASE REMEMBER THIS WHEN YOU VOTE!”
[...]
Since late Tuesday, Trump has vowed to declassify all documents he claims will show improper activity by Obama and his intelligence advisers — before quickly reversing himself and suggesting he had already done so “long ago” — and repeatedly cited Russian intelligence services’ claims that Clinton “stirred up” the Trump-Russia collusion scandal that has dogged his presidency.
[...]
A Justice Department spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment about whether Trump had ever directly asked Barr to order the arrest of his rivals or if his tweet suggesting as much had veered into territory that Barr once said made his job “impossible.”
[...]
The review Barr ordered has disappointed Trump in recent weeks as the U.S. attorney tapped to lead it, John Durham, has signaled he might not pursue the kinds of high-profile prosecutions the president and his allies are demanding. Durham’s deputy in the review, veteran Justice Department prosecutor Nora Dennehy, recently quit the faltering effort and returned to the private sector.
[...]
But Trump has made clear that he remains focused on punishing perceived enemies regardless of the political cost. While recovering at Walter Reed Monday morning, his chief of staff Mark Meadows told Fox News that Trump had kept busy that morning in part by directing the declassification of documents related to the Russia probe — a set of files he claimed were conclusive proof that Clinton had concocted the notion that his campaign team had ties to Russia even though the Senate Intelligence Committee and the special counsel’s team had rejected the allegations as unverified.
In releasing them, Trump’s own hand-picked intel chief, John Ratcliffe, acknowledged the documents, sourced to Russian intelligence, might have been “exaggerated” or even “fabricated” to deflect from their culpability in the election interference effort.
A group of over 1,600 former Justice Department (DOJ) attorneys are accusing Attorney General William Barr of seeking to help President Trump win reelection.
"We fear that Attorney General Barr intends to use the DOJ's vast law enforcement powers to undermine our most fundamental democratic value: free and fair elections," the group wrote in an open letter published Thursday on Medium.
[...]
“He has signaled this intention in myriad ways, from making false statements about the security of mail-in voting from foreign hackers to falsely suggesting that mail-in ballots are subject to widespread fraud and coercion.”
[...]
"[E]ven if there is a legitimate predicate for the Durham investigation, there is clearly no justification for taking public action on it in such close proximity to the November election,” the group wrote. “Such a blatant politicization and abuse of federal law enforcement power risks immense and lasting harm to our democracy and to the integrity and reputation of the DOJ.”
This does not inspire confidence in your president. Nor in your national security officials.
The CIA has made it harder for intelligence about Russia to reach the White
House, stoking fears among current and former officials that information is
being suppressed to please a president known to erupt in anger whenever he
is confronted with bad news about Moscow.
Nine current and former
officials said in interviews that CIA Director Gina Haspel has become
extremely cautious about which, if any, Russia-related intelligence products
make their way to President Donald Trump’s desk.
Perhaps that's actually because she has an agreement with Trump so he can say
things like "it never reached my desk".
Haspel also has been keeping a close eye on the agency’s fabled “Russia
House,” whose analysts she often disagrees with and sometimes accuses of
purposefully misleading her.
Last year, three of the people said,
Haspel tasked the CIA’s general counsel, Courtney Elwood, with reviewing
virtually every product that comes out of Russia House, which is home to
analysts and targeters who are experts in Russia and the post-Soviet space,
before it “goes downtown” to the White House. One former CIA lawyer called
it “unprecedented that a general counsel would be involved to this
extent.”
[...]
One administration official explained the reduced Russia-related
intelligence flow from CIA to the National Security Council as a matter of
“quality over quantity.” Another administration official said that while the
CIA is not the only agency that provides intelligence to the NSC, this
official’s perception was that the CIA was “certainly” exhibiting an
“abundance of caution” about the Russia intelligence it was sending to the
NSC, beginning around the time of Trump’s impeachment proceedings. A
whistleblower complaint about Trump from a CIA analyst, which Elwood relayed
to NSC lawyer John Eisenberg at the time, is what sparked Trump’s
impeachment — feeding the mistrust toward Russia-related intelligence inside
the White House and among the agency’s top ranks.
[...]
Trump, who has publicly railed against the intelligence
community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in 2016 to bolster his
candidacy, has also been working to bring the intelligence community further
under his control since his impeachment acquittal in February. He has
installed loyalists in top positions like director of national intelligence
and the senior-most intelligence post on the NSC staff.
[...]
As recently as last Thursday, the president blasted his own FBI
director on Twitter for testifying that Moscow was seeking to “sow
divisiveness and discord” and “denigrate Vice President Biden” in a bid to
influence the 2020 campaign.
[...]
The head of Russia House, whom officials declined to identify by
name because they work undercover, was fired earlier this year, according to
four of the current and former officials familiar with the matter, but
remains at the agency in another mission center. It’s not clear why he was
ousted, but Haspel’s personal dislike of him was clear.
Another
Russia House analyst quit earlier this year after Haspel accused him of
lying about intelligence — an accusation that happens fairly often, several
former officials said. “She calls analysts liars all the time,” said one
former CIA official.
[...]
More recently, Haspel “completely dismissed” Russia House
analysts who brought her intelligence showing a correlation between Russia
and the curious phenomenon of diplomats experiencing brain trauma, according
to one current U.S. official with knowledge of the episode.
[...]
“She had a very defensive reaction, reacted very poorly and made
some comments about needing to clean out Russia House,” the official said.
“We thought her feeling that Russia House was cliquey or insular was grossly
unfair,” said a former senior CIA official. “She had preconceived notions
about it, from her own time at the agency.” Haspel joined the CIA in 1985
and spent nearly her entire career working undercover as a clandestine
officer, serving as chief of station in Europe and Central Eurasia and
focusing at times on Russian operations, according to a CIA-issued
timeline.
[...]
Ryan Tully is the fifth person to hold the senior director role,
which previously had been held by Fiona Hill and Tim Morrison, both of whom
testified in the impeachment inquiry. Joe Wang, who was deputy senior
director for Europe and Russia at the NSC under Tully, left for the State
Department over the summer. All that turnover “has been hard on [Russia
policy],” another administration official said, “because you need someone
driving it who has a consistent view — and it doesn’t seem like working on
[Russia] has been a top priority.”
Critics of national security
adviser Robert O’Brien say he has been prone to highlighting national
security information and intelligence “that he knows the president will
respond well to,” as one former White House official put it. “O’Brien
doesn’t want anyone to touch things Russia-related because of the reaction,”
a second former White House official said. “He just doesn’t want to rock the
boat with Trump.”
He knows he'll be shitcanned.
Some still fear [...] that Haspel’s negative perception of CIA’s Russia
analysts is the result of ongoing political pressure by the Trump
administration to frame them as biased and myopic because of a conclusion
they drew in 2016 that has enraged the president: that Putin ordered an
interference campaign specifically to bolster Trump’s candidacy. That
analysis was based at least in part on information from a highly sensitive
CIA asset in the Kremlin, and is now at the center of [John] Durham’s
probe.
[...]
Trump’s firing of former acting Director of National
Intelligence Joseph Maguire, who made the career-ending decision to allow a
deputy to brief lawmakers on Russia’s ongoing election interference, is
still top of mind for many in the intelligence community who fear they could
land in Trump’s crosshairs if they challenge him in any official setting.
Those
fears played out on Thursday night, when Trump went on a Twitter rampage
against FBI Director Christopher Wray. Wray had testified during a public
congressional hearing about Russia’s ongoing attempts to undermine Biden.
[...]
Wray and other national security leaders, including Haspel, had
specifically sought to avoid Trump’s wrath earlier this year by requesting
that the annual Worldwide Threats hearing before Congress be held behind
closed doors and out of his sight.
[...]
“No one is willing to challenge” Elwood or Haspel, said the former senior CIA official. He added that Haspel’s changes have “been framed by some as an effort to ‘protect the building’ — well, her job is not to protect the building, it’s to protect the country.”
Federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy, a top aide to U.S. Attorney John H. Durham in his Russia investigation, has quietly resigned - at least partly out of concern that the investigative team is being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done, colleagues said.
Dannehy, a highly regarded prosecutor who has worked with or for Durham for decades, informed colleagues in the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Haven of her resignation from the Department of Justice by email Thursday evening. The short email was a brief farewell message and said nothing about political pressure, her work for Durham or what the Durham team has produced, according to people who received it.
Durham recruited Dannehy to join his team after he was appointed by Attorney General William Barr more than a year and a half ago to examine the the FBI’s legal justification for a disputed counterintelligence investigation that looked for ties between President Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian efforts to meddle in the election.
[...]
Colleagues said Dannehy is not a supporter of President Donald J. Trump and has been concerned in recent weeks by what she believed was pressure from Barr - who appointed Durham - to produce results before the election. They said she has been considering resignation for weeks, conflicted by loyalty to Durham and concern about politics.
Durham is notoriously circumspect and neither he nor members of his team have revealed anything about the direction of their work. But Durham associates, none of whom have specific knowledge of the investigation, have said recently that it is their belief he is under pressure to produce something - perhaps some sort of report - before the presidential election in November.
Gee, you think?
The work has taken far longer than expected, in part because of complications caused by the corona virus pandemic. In the meantime, team members - some of whom are current or former federal investigators or prosecutors with homes in Connecticut - have been working long hours in Washington under pressure to produce results, associates said.
[...]
The thinking of the associates, all Durham allies, is that the Russia investigation group will be disbanded and its work lost if Trump loses.
[...]
The Durham investigation produced its first public result in August with the arrest or former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who is accused of doctoring email from the CIA about a former Trump campaign adviser who was a target of secret FBI surveillance, according to documents filed in Washington’s federal court.
The altered memo concerned former low level Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page, who years earlier had agreed to act as a source for the CIA and provide information to the agency about Russians he met in the course of business. The CIA wrote in the memo to the FBI that Page was a source. Clinesmith altered the memo to say that he was not, a change that arguably allowed the FBI to extend a wiretap order that it had for Page.
[...]
Barr has dropped hints in public that Durham’s investigation will produce something more significant - before the election - than the arrest of Clinesmith, who was charged with making a false statement.
Trump’s Senate allies on Monday stopped short of echoing Trump’s claim that Obama acted illegally when the Justice Department began probing incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn in late 2016. And they indicated that the Senate would pass on investigating the former president as they conduct their own investigations that could soon ensnare other senior Obama administration officials.
“I’m not anticipating calling President Obama,” said Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), whose panel is investigating the origins of the 2016 Russia investigation, even as he vowed to bring in former senior Obama administration officials as witnesses.
[...]
Senate Republicans [...] sidestepped questions of whether the Justice Department should pursue criminal investigations against the former Obama officials, instead deferring to the ongoing investigation of U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was tapped by Attorney General Williams Barr to probe the origins of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia.
[...]
Trump allies have honed in, in particular, on a Jan. 5, 2017 meeting of the outgoing Obama national security team during which the Russia investigation was a topic. Obama attended the meeting, along with then-Vice President Joe Biden and other senior intelligence and Justice Department officials. Flynn’s calls with Russia’s former ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak were a subject of the meeting, according to multiple accounts by participants shared with investigators.
[...]
Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), said new questions raised about the prosecution of Flynn should be put directly to Obama and Biden.
“Given all we know now about the fake foundation of the inquiry, it's time we ask: What did Obama and Biden know and when did they know it?” Grassley said Monday on the Senate floor.
But Grassley, too, stopped short of saying the Senate should use its powerful committees to investigate the former president, or that the Justice Department should go after Obama. Rather, he and other Senate Republicans simply agreed that Trump’s fury was justified.
[...]
Though many of them supported special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference while it was active, those same GOP senators have soured on the probe, citing recently released FBI documents that the president’s allies have said is evidence that holdover officials from the Obama administration sought to unfairly target high-level Trump associates like Flynn.
They soured on it long before now. They soured on it when it laid out all of the Trump cabal's crimes, which is why Barr came out with a misleading statement about the Mueller report.
Those lawmakers have in particular directed their ire at FBI Director Christopher Wray, accusing him of not doing enough to “clean up” the agency after Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were removed from their posts.
Trumpland is never at a loss for scapegoats.
Senate Republicans have also largely avoided the posture adopted by Trump’s closest House allies, who have echoed his demands that Obama himself, or his top aides, be targeted by investigators.
“Nobody more than me wants to see these people prosecuted,” Rep. Devin Nunes of California, top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a radio appearance on KMJ when asked about senior Obama administration officials being held legally accountable for their role in the Flynn saga.
Is there anybody Nunes doesn't want to see prosecuted?
Trump administration officials investigating the government’s response to Russia’s election interference in 2016 appear to be hunting for a basis to accuse Obama-era intelligence officials of hiding evidence or manipulating analysis about Moscow’s covert operation, according to people familiar with aspects of the inquiry.
[...]
[Trump] has long promoted the investigation by John H. Durham, the prosecutor examining their actions, as a potential pathway to proving that a deep-state cabal conspired against him.
Questions asked by Mr. Durham, who was assigned by Attorney General William P. Barr to scrutinize the early actions of law enforcement and intelligence officials struggling to understand the scope of Russia’s scheme, suggest that Mr. Durham may have come to view with suspicion several clashes between analysts at different intelligence agencies over who could see each other’s highly sensitive secrets.
[...]
Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former director John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular result — and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest they interfere with that goal.
[...]
But officials from the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency have told Mr. Durham and his investigators that such an interpretation is wrong and based on a misunderstanding of how the intelligence community functions, the people said. National security officials are typically cautious about sharing their most delicate information, like source identities, even with other agencies inside the executive branch.
Which was supposedly claimed as a cause of the 9/11 attacks getting past them. I thought that was addressed by Congress in the form of reforms to the agencies' methods.
Appearing on MSNBC’s “Hardball” on Thursday evening, Mr. Brennan was asked to respond to this article. He both dismissed Mr. Durham’s apparent line of inquiry and portrayed it as dangerous.
[...]
“It clearly, I think, is another indication that Donald Trump is using the Department of Justice to go after his enemies any way he can.”
[...]
Prosecutors are ill equipped to assess how analysts work, he added. “The bar for making a legal judgment is really high. The bar for an analytic decision is much lower,” [Michael Morrell, a former acting C.I.A. director] said. “So he is going to get the wrong answer if he tries to figure out if they had enough information to make this judgment.”
But other intelligence officials, according to an American official, are reserving judgment about Mr. Durham, who previously spent years investigating the C.I.A. over its torture program and its destruction of interrogation videotapes without charging anyone with a crime.
Which is going to make him all the more suspecte if he charges a crime in this investigation.
Mr. Durham is a longtime federal prosecutor who has repeatedly been asked, under administrations of both parties, to investigate accusations of wrongdoing by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Mr. Trump appointed him as the United States attorney for Connecticut in 2018.
[...]
In recent months, Mr. Durham and his team have examined emails among a small group of intelligence analysts from multiple agencies, including the C.I.A., F.B.I. and National Security Agency, who worked together to assess the Russian operation.
[...]
The Justice Department inspector general, who released the results late last year of an inquiry into aspects of the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation, found no documentary or testimonial evidence senior law enforcement and intelligence officials had engaged in a high-level conspiracy to sabotage Mr. Trump, the narrative the president and his supporters continue to embrace.
[...]
Mr. Durham has interviewed F.B.I. officials and agents who worked on the bureau’s Russia investigation, called Crossfire Hurricane, and for the special counsel who took over the inquiry, Robert S. Mueller III. They have also interviewed C.I.A. analysts.
[...]
Mr. Durham and his team also interviewed around a half-dozen current and former officials and analysts at the National Security Agency, including its former director, the retired Adm. Michael S. Rogers, last summer and again last fall.
[...]
The analysts could have been engaged in standard bureaucratic behavior like obeying the filtering process or hoarding sensitive information. Or perhaps they were trying to cover something up. The questions asked by Mr. Durham and his team suggest they are looking for any potential basis to support making the latter reading, officials said.
[...]
But Mr. Durham has not interviewed the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, his onetime deputy Andrew G. McCabe or Mr. Brennan. Mr. Durham has requested Mr. Brennan’s emails, call logs and other documents from the C.I.A. to learn what he told other officials, including Mr. Comey, about his and the C.I.A.’s views of a notorious dossier of assertions about Russia and Trump associates.
Mr. Trump has targeted all three former top officials as he has sought to foster a narrative that it was illegitimate for government investigators to scrutinize links between his campaign, Russia and WikiLeaks and that he was the victim of a “deep state” conspiracy to sabotage him for political reasons — a push that led to the Durham inquiry.
