William Barr Takes the Next Big Step

Who is John Durham and why should you care? – Good question, and certainly not one I’d ever thought about before last night. That was when the New York Times published an article that appears to be actually true – who’d ‘a thunk it? – containing the news that Attorney General William Barr has appointed Mr. Durham, the U.S. Attorney from Connecticut, to oversee the origins of the Obama Administration’s multi-faceted spying operation targeting the Trump Campaign

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr has assigned the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut to examine the origins of the Russia investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter, a move that President Trump has long called for but that could anger law enforcement officials who insist that scrutiny of the Trump campaign was lawful.

John H. Durham, the United States attorney in Connecticut, has a history of serving as a special prosecutor investigating potential wrongdoing among national security officials, including the F.B.I.’s ties to a crime boss in Boston and accusations of C.I.A. abuses of detainees.

His inquiry is the third known investigation focused on the opening of an F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation during the 2016 presidential campaign into possible ties between Russia’s election interference and Trump associates.

The department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, is separately examining investigators’ use of wiretap applications and informants and whether any political bias against Mr. Trump influenced investigative decisions. And John W. Huber, the United States attorney in Utah, has been reviewing aspects of the Russia investigation. His findings have not been announced.

Additionally on Capitol Hill, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said he, too, intends to review aspects of law enforcement’s work in the coming months. And Republicans conducted their own inquiries when they controlled the House, including publicizing details of the F.B.I.’s wiretap use.

First, if you’re worried that the assignment of the investigation to Durham is just another head-fake/delaying tactic by a corrupt Justice Department, that concern is well-founded given all the previous head-fakes and delaying tactics we’ve seen over the past couple of years. After all, a full year and a half has gone by since feckless former AG Jeff Sessions said he was assigning Salt Lake City U.S. Attorney John Huber to conduct an investigation into many aspects of the Russia Collusion fantasy, and we have yet to hear boo out of him or see any real indication he’s done a damn thing in that regard.

But of course, that was Jeff Sessions and now we have William Barr in the AG job. Hopefully, that makes a difference. Barr was always going to assign this investigation to someone under his supervision – it was either that or appoint another special counsel to do it, and assigning it to a U.S. Attorney gives Barr fuller control over the direction of the process. That’s either a good or a bad thing depending entirely on what Barr’s real intentions are.

Barr has certainly given us every indication he is a real AG focused on enforcing the rule of law and bringing the real bad actors in all of this to justice, which is why we have seen all the Democrats and their media toadies in such a panic in recent weeks. Justice is the last thing those people want to see.

At any rate, any major undertaking like this requires a focal point to lead it, and Durham is Barr’s pick to do it. It is encouraging that Durham was originally brought into the Justice Department during the Reagan Administration in 1982, and was appointed to his current position by Donald Trump in 2017. It is also encouraging that he has not been a creature of the Washington, DC Swamp, serving the majority of his career in Connecticut with a four year period as the Acting U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia from 2008-12.

If you’re concerned that this will be another Huber-like year-and-a-half-long head-fake that gets us to the November, 2020 election with nothing to show for it, there is also reason for optimism that that won’t be the case. Given the flurry of self-serving media appearances we have seen from likely suspects like James Comey, James Baker, John Brennan and Sally Yates over the past couple of weeks, it appears likely that the upcoming report on FISA abuse from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been making the rounds and might well contain criminal referrals.

Yeah, Horowitz took a powder on doing that in last year’s report on the FBI’s conduct of the Clinton email investigation, but that was when Sessions was AG. Hopefully, the presence of a real AG will embolden the IG’s office to do the right thing. It’s easier to confront powerful people when you know you have powerful people backing you up.

Let’s say that happens, and let’s also recognize that Durham will also be armed with multiple criminal referrals from various congressional committees that have been issued to the Justice Department over the last year. Armed with the results of the multiple Horowitz investigations and all the data accumulated by the congressional investigations over the past two years, Durham should be able to move to the indictment and prosecution phase fairly rapidly if that is his real goal here.

Let’s be painfully honest: We know who the bad actors in all of this really were. The public record already accumulated is crystal clear on this. All that has been lacking to this point is a real Attorney General and a set of diligent prosecutors who were willing to act on behalf of the public interest and uphold the rule of law.

With Rod Rosenstein’s exit from DOJ, the last of the known obstructionists to justice is now gone. Well, except for FBI Director Christopher Wray, anyway. All we the people can do now is wait and pray they haven’t been replaced by a new set of obstructionists.

The last paragraphs of the article say what I think:

It won’t take long to figure that out.

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Two thoughts on your second point...

First, the easy indictees in this whole mess are not the ultimate targets of the counter-coup investigations, and their accumulated testimony is needed to take down the whole and not just parts. This is how prosecutors take down major conspiracies.

Second, we only assume that indictments have not been brought against these lower-level players. Prosecutors use leverage to turn conspirators against each other, and the unprecedentedly high number of unsealed indictments and other court actions is still growing as evidenced on PACER.gov (Public Access to Court Electronic Records), which is the official index of the federal courts.

Time will tell, and in the meantime I’ll trust that our cool-as-a cucumber unworried president knows exactly what he is doing through those he has appointed to act on his behalf. One thing we know for certain is that his enemies are behaving like they are scared to death.
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Couple thoughts on your thoughts

We’re talking Fedzilla here: UNLIMITED $$, man-power and ACCESS.

We’ve already had Comey ADMITTING to leaking during Congressional testimony; there is ZERO reasons the FISA forms, 302s and NSA data, etc. hasn’t *already* been requested, received and viewed to skip the f* minnows and go directly after the ‘big-fish’. work D-O-W-N, but that would mean actually doing their J-O-Bs

Lastly, Mr. ‘cool-as-a-cucumber’ has hired, IMO, too many bad-apples in the past; some of which were *applauded* here on FR (EG: Sessions). He’s also keen on posturing w/ little follow-through (1yr hiatus on Mexico, DACA support, no declassification, etc.) Two yrs+ have already gone under the bridge, regardless of ‘mill of Justice’ was supposedly have in our once Republic...

You’re making an assumption that just because the public hasn’t seen something, it must not exist. In a proper criminal investigation, especially one targeting a major conspiracy, prosecutors (such as United States Attorneys like Huber, Durham, Hiland, etc.) don’t publicly discuss the evidence they are accumulating or the targets they are squeezing and turning. We should and will be the last to know when hammers begin to fall. In the meantime, observe your leader’s calmness while the targets are panicking, and take heart.

In a proper criminal investigation, especially one targeting a major conspiracy, prosecutors (such as United States Attorneys like Huber, Durham, Hiland, etc.) don’t publicly discuss the evidence they are accumulating or the targets they are squeezing and turning. We should and will be the last to know when hammers begin to fall. In the meantime, observe your leader’s calmness while the targets are panicking, and take heart.

This is true and bears repeating. We have become conditioned to investigations being leaked and aired on the nightly news in the crashing waves of the news cycle in support of the intended narrative. This is not how professionals conduct themselves within DOJ.

With that said, I think we all understand the reason for skepticism among many on the right given the previous decade. The next two years will be very interesting and I think Barr has realized just how bad this was and he too feels the sting of the deep state.

There comes a point in every conspiracy where the conspirators turn on one another and it is often like a dam that violently breaks. They left a paper-trail a mile wide never thinking or imagining that Trump would win. Many of the players have spoken on the record and under oath before congress. Mueller was their last hope like a wild haymaker from a boxer who is out on his feet. Despite the fog created by the media, you can smell the ozone over DC right now and I believe a new storm is coming.

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