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Durham did not "Lock Her Up" and he didn't prove the "Russia Hoax" either [1]
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Date: 2023-05-19
When Bill Barr assigned Durham to investigate the Mueller investigation, which had already been investigated by Inspector General Michael Horowitz, he stated that the Russia investigation should have never happened. Instead of confirming Barr’s claim Durham’s report says that it should have never have been a “Full” Investigation, it should only have been a preliminary investigation.
As if, if only they had just done a preliminary investigation they certainly wouldn’t have found anything out of the ordinary. They wouldn’t have found that Russian Intelligence implemented several cyber hacks to uncover Hillary Clinton’s email in order to embarrass her and her campaign. They wouldn’t have found that the Trump campaign had been told about these hacks by the Russians themselves, and that they had tried to do everything they could to take advantage of the aid the Russians were providing. They wouldn’t have found that Russia implemented a massive influence campaign across several social media platforms intended to hype and promote negative press against the Clinton campaign which helped push frustrated Bernie voters into staying home and wasting their vote on Jill Stein in protest. [In 2016, Stein earned 10 times as many votes as she had in 2012, more votes in fact that the difference between Clinton and Trump in three key states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — just enough to hand the election to Trump.]
They wouldn’t have found that five different members of Trump entourage all lied under oath about being in contact with Russians during and after the campaign.
Let me just have somebody point out some of what else wouldn’t have happened if it had only been a “preliminary” investigation.
x Paul Manafort - guilty
Rick Gates - guilty
Mike Flynn - guilty
George Papadopouolos - guilty
Roger Stone - guilty
Michael Cohen - guilty
Konstantin Kilimnik - wanted, $250k reward
Michael Sussman - not guilty
Igor Danchenko - not guilty
Point me to the confirmation bias here? — Pete Strzok (@petestrzok) May 15, 2023
Durham tried to prosecute Sussman and Danchenko for being Clinton operatives who allegedly planted false rumors with the FBI — and yet he *lost* both of those cases because those rumors were actually true. He couldn't even prove that they had lied to the FBI.
Womp womp.
George Papadoplous Lied about being told that Russia had hacked Hillary’s emails with the DNC.
Michael Flynn Lied about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador.
Michael Cohen Lied lied about Trump working on a Trump Tower Moscow deal with Russia all during 2016.
Alex Van DerZwann Lied about Rick Gates and Paul Manafort being in contact with Russian GRU operative Konstantin Kilimnick.
Roger Stone Lied about being in contact with Russians who connected him with Wikileaks and also feeding their information to Trump and vice versa. Specifically, when the WaPo came to the Trump campaign and requested their comments on the Access Hollywood “Grab ‘em by the Pussy” tape — his people contacted Stone and asked them to reach out to Wikileaks and have them release the John Podesta emails Immediately so that they would distract from the pending negative press.
In October 2016, during the fraught final weeks of the showdown between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Roger Stone got word that a damning recording of his candidate was about to drop. That tape would become instantly infamous for Trump’s degrading remarks about women and his apparent boasts about committing sexual assault. “When you’re a star, they let you do it—you can do anything,” Trump told Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush in 2005, in audio published by the Washington Post. “Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.” Apparently sensing the cataclysmic damage the comments would wreak, Stone—self-styled dirty trickster and unofficial Trump adviser—spoke by phone to the conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, directing him to get in touch with Julian Assange, whose organization, WikiLeaks, had obtained Russian-hacked emails from Democratic Party staffers, including Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. “Drop the Podesta emails immediately,” Stone instructed, seeking to “balance the news cycle” after the release of the Access Hollywood tape. Thirty-two minutes later, WikiLeaks followed through.
That’s called “coordination” — that’s called “Collusion.” [This fact wasn’t included in the initial Mueller report because at that time Stone’s trial was still pending. Consequently, all this information was still redacted. It isn’t anymore.]
But yeah, there wasn’t anything fucking weird going on between Russia and Trump. Somehow his Durham’s report doesn’t think any of these convictions matter at all and shouldn't have happened. That’s the story Bill Barr and the rest have been telling us for years. It simply doesn’t wash.
Fortunately, there are some people who aren’t buying this bullshit.
Speaking on CNN's "The Situation Room" Monday, former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams outlined just how little Durham managed to vindicate the former president. "What do you make, Elliot, of Durham's conclusion that there was, in his words, 'a noticeable departure from how the FBI handled other similar cases?'" asked anchor Wolf Blitzer. "I think ... it's quite significant any time law enforcement is alleged to have sort of — sort of taken different standards in how they approached one investigation versus another, or pursue their investigations just to confirm biases that individuals might've had, and so on," said Williams. "But to pick up the broader point, which underlies all of this, there was not — Durham did not find sort of the kinds of systemic abuses that many people came into this investigation hoping to find. The former president came out of the gate making an argument that this was going to be the investigation of the century."
From former prosecutor Shan Wu.
Special counsel John Durham’s final report reveals that four years, a $6.5 million spend, and many dining dates with former Attorney General Barr yielded nothing," wrote Wu. "As a prosecutor who served as a supervisor on an independent counsel investigation, I find Durham’s investigation to be a complete waste of taxpayer dollars."
From former prosecutor Barbara McQuade
"Trump had other concerning ties to Russians: real estate deals, Miss Universe Pageant, loans from Russian lenders, Trump Tower Moscow project," she notes. "Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort had lobbied for pro-Russian oligarchs. Trump campaign members also had ties to Russia. Mike Flynn was paid $45,000 by Russia Today in 2015 for a speech he gave at a banquet where he sat next to Putin. He later lied to FBI about his calls with the Russian ambassador about sanctions during the transition." All of this leads McQuade to conclude that "failing to investigate these ties would have been a breach of duty by FBI," and she said that Durham deserved to be taken to task for painting such a misleading picture of the FBI's activities. "The Durham Report provides fuel for the false claim that the Russia probe was a hoax," she writes. "Don’t fall for it."
And from Politico’s Betsy Woodruff Swan.
"He says federal law doesn't make it illegal for campaigns to engage in unethical or uncomfortable campaign tactics, and he says that prosecutors have to make sure that if they're charging people with crimes, the charges are against criminal activity," Woodruff Swan explained. "What's implicit there is Durham signaling while he found lots of information he believes to be interesting and important, so much of his findings simply did not rise to the level of criminality, and that gets to one really important piece of putting this Durham report in context — which is that it is likely to leave President Trump, former President Trump and his supporters disappointed." "That's because Trump spent the last four years saying Durham was on the cusp of bringing bombshell criminal charges. Then, literally, in the first pages of this report, we see an explanation from Durham as to why that's not happening, as why even though lots of people on the right were upset about what happened with the Russia probe, Durham concedes I wasn't able to bring charges for a host of reasons because a lot of things that people don't like aren't illegal."
Nobody is getting locked up. Nothing he found proves anything was a “hoax.”
His investigation of the investigation was a bust.
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