Special Counsel John Durham’s Shocking Hypocrisy About Trump and Russia Investigations

In 2019, weeks after the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, The Trump administration flipped the script and launched an investigative investigation.

Attorney General Bill Barr has appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate a senior government official presumed to be investigating Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

of the FBI The Trump-Russia investigation was born out of pursuing flimsy conspiracy theories, relied on false evidence, and investigators either blinded by political bias or acting with outright political motives. Burr publicly claimed.

Durham and Burr then continued to do the same.

A new in-depth reveal by Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman, and Katie Benner of the New York Times delves into exactly what happened in the nearly four-year Durham investigation. Durham and Burr believe in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, but anecdote after story depicts him as having a clear political motive to reinforce one of Trump’s favorite claims.

Essentially, Durham and Burr argued that the Trump-Russia investigation was maliciously fabricated by “Deep State” officials and/or the Clinton campaign with the intent to undermine Trump politically. I wanted to prove Time and time again, Durham pursued different versions of this theory, but time and time again he was unable to prove his point.

If Burr and Durham started out with suspicions, but investigation found them to be unfounded, it wouldn’t necessarily be that bad. / The Clinton campaign did its job” publicly said or continued to insinuate that the theory was true — Barr outspoken this in a public statement, Durham Documents to submit to the court and a trial interrogation that seemed designed to advance a story he could never really prove.

Curiously, when checking one of these theories that Italian officials were somehow involved in opening an investigation into Trump and Russia, Durham and Burr instead referred to Trump himself as a potential financier. “Mr. Barr and Durham found this information too serious and credible to ignore,” the Times reporter wrote. Burr put this new investigation into Trump’s hands in Durham’s hands, and it’s unclear what happened to it.

The Trump and Russia investigations certainly should not be immune to criticism, and it would be reasonable to give a fair consideration to whether investigators misjudged. Instead, even if the evidence fails to substantiate those conspiracies, it repeatedly postulates dastardly conspiracies against Trump, with Burr telling conservative media and President Trump himself that Durham is close to being an enemy of Trump’s “conspiracies.” I planted the story that The politicized, unobtrusive investigation they were looking for was in them all along.

Bill Burr and John Durham’s Many Conspiracy Theories

The grand theory of the Russia investigation from Trump supporters was that it was a “Deep State” Democratic witch hunt. I explored the possibility of

Perhaps there was something wrong with the FBI’s July 2016 decision to open an investigation. post-election period When the FBI acted strange. Perhaps the CIA fabricated the analysis that Russia interfered in the election. Alternatively, Western intelligence agencies may have spread misinformation. Durham’s investigation, however, did not lead to indictments against authorities on any of these issues.

Instead, Durham’s sole indictment against a senior government official in 2020 found that an FBI attorney tampered with an email while trying to obtain approval in the fourth round of FISA oversight, according to Justice Department Michael Horowitz. It stemmed from an inquiry made by the Inspector General. Carter Page, Trump campaign aide. Attorney Kevin Kleinsmith pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 months probation, but the judge in his case said he had no political motive and instead engaged in a bureaucratic corner-cut. It was concluded that

By 2021, Durham seemed to have given up on the “deep state.” His team’s new theory is that Trump/Russian investigators were tricked by a malicious outsider with ties to Hillary Clinton into making willfully false or misleading claims. , appeared to have launched a bogus investigation into Trump.

So he told the FBI an episode in which Michael Sussman, an attorney for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, told the FBI about a study by a group of computer scientists into secret online communications between Trump’s servers and Russian banks. focused on. The charges against Sussmann are narrow, with Durham alleging that he lied to his FBI contacts about whether he arranged the meeting on behalf of his client.

But the indictment seemed written to imply something bigger — that the Clinton campaign deliberately fabricated false Trump-Russia ties and circulated them to the FBI and the media. . The problem with that theory is that there is other evidence that the researchers involved really believed their theory. (Sussmann was acquitted at trial.)

Durham is also home to Christopher Steele’s infamous (and notorious flaw) “documents” claiming Trump-Russian ties. I think it was Durham. try to imply Democrats deliberately planted false claims in the papers, like the claim about “pee tape.”

But what he was able to prove wasn’t all that impressive: Democratic public relations executives who had previously been involved in several Clinton campaigns, but never at a high level, said he actually read in the newspaper He claimed to know about some Trump campaign gossip. (Danchenko was charged with lying to the FBI but was acquitted at trial.)

Now, a new report in The Times reveals another episode in which Durham used dubious means to try to prove Democrats wrongdoing. In the background, the CIA obtained several Russian intelligence memos claiming that Clinton had a deliberate conspiracy to conduct a false investigation into Trump, but the memos are questionable by internal analysts. It was believed that

However, Durham attempted to prove their authenticity by attempting to secretly obtain emails from an executive of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation (a memo made several accusations against this executive). (because it was However, the judge dismissed Durham’s request to obtain this civilian’s e-mail without notifying him.

The Times reporter noted that this was very similar to what the FBI did in response to the allegations in the dubious Steele dossier.

It remains possible that Durham has uncovered some unsavory things, which we will reveal in our final report. dangling from one to the next weak case.

Everything Burr thought was true about the Trump-Russia investigation turned out to be true about the investigation he ordered.