Posted on 05/19/2023 6:09:50 AM PDT by george76
Below is my column in the New York Post, which turned out to be the theme for the cover. The Durham Report highlighted two scandals. First, there was a comprehensive effort of the political and media establishments to perpetrate one of the great hoaxes in history — a political hit job that ultimately derailed an American presidency. Second, there was no real accountability for that effort for the main players from Clinton to Comey to Congress. It was much like The Murder on the Orient Express. The question is not “whodunit” but who didn’t. Spoiler alert: they all did it so no one was punished.
Here is the column:
In Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express,” detective Hercule Poirot observes, “The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.”
That may be the best summary of the findings of special prosecutor John Durham in his 305-page report issued yesterday.
Not only did the impossible happen, but they all did it: the Clinton campaign, the FBI, and the media.
In hindsight, it would appear impossible.
A political campaign hatches a plot to create a false claim of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Making this even more implausible is that the CIA and FBI knew about the plan.
As detailed in the report, President Barack Obama and his national security team were briefed on how “a trusted foreign source” revealed “a Clinton campaign plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin so as to divert attention from her own concerns relating to her use of a private email server.”
It then happened a few days later.
It was a plot that required everyone to take a hand in derailing a duly elected president and effectively shutting down his administration for three years of investigation and prosecutions.
In this conspiracy, there were dozens of key participants in the campaign, the government, and the media. Here are a few of the characters implicated in this report.
The campaign..
The report details how the Russian collusion conspiracy was invented by Clinton operatives and put into the now-infamous Steele dossier, funded by the Clinton campaign.
The funding was hidden as legal expenses by then-Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias. (The Clinton campaign was later sanctioned by the FEC over its hiding of the funding.)
When Vogel tried to report the story, he said Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”
It was not just reporters who asked the Clinton campaign about its role in the Steele dossier. John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress and denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.
Durham details how Elias played an active role in tracking the media campaign to push the false allegations. (Elias was recently severed by the Democratic National Committee from further representation and has been previously sanctioned in the federal courts in other litigation.)
The report details how false claims like the existence of a “pee tape” showing Trump engaging in disgusting acts with prostitutes in Moscow came from a Clinton operative, Chuck Dolan, with no known basis in fact.
Likewise, now-national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Clinton personally pushed an absurd campaign-created conspiracy theory about a secret communication line between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin through a Russian bank.
The Clinton campaign later admitted that it had indeed funded the dossier, but Clinton continued to claim that the election was stolen from her by the Russians.
The government..
Of course, this conspiracy could not occur without the assistance of the FBI, which Durham found played an eager role due to a “predisposition” of key players against Trump.
Special counsel John Durham completed a four-year review of the FBI’s investigation of allegations Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia
Durham found the FBI’s probe was “seriously flawed” and had no basis in evidence, according to a 306-page report released Monday.
The special prosecutor found that FBI officials “discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia.”
Durham also found investigators put too much faith in information provided by Trump’s political opponents and carried out surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page without genuinely believing there was probable cause to do so.
Despite the scathing findings, Durham did not recommend criminal prosecutions or widespread FBI reforms, writing that “the answer is not the creation of new rules but a renewed fidelity to the old.”
Durham’s investigation lasted more than four years, longer than the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe itself.
The dossier was discredited early by American intelligence, which learned that it might itself be Russian disinformation.
There never was support for the allegations, but the FBI launched and maintained a massive investigation anyway.
Durham noted that the FBI showed a completely different approach to allegations involving the Clinton campaign.
The Trump investigation was a “noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign.”
Nevertheless, former FBI Director James Comey would continue to reference the entirely unsupported “pee tape” in interviews.
Even though investigators found no support for the campaign-created story, in a 2018 interview, Comey delighted viewers by saying: “Honestly, I never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013.”The FBI was assisted in this effort by members of Congress on the House Intelligence Committee.
Even when the false narrative was played out and the lack of support was becoming obvious, former House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) assured the public, on March 13, 2018, that “I can certainly say with confidence that there is significant evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia.”
He never produced the promised evidence.
The media
The most essential player in this conspiracy was the media, which pumped up the dossier as gospel. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow assured her viewers that “no major thing from the dossier has been conclusively disproven.”
On CNN, one of the guests insisted, “I think we actually have to stop calling it the ‘infamous dossier’ and increasingly calling it ‘accurate dossier,’ the ‘damning dossier.’”
CNN host Alisyn Camerota attacked Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and said the dossier “hasn’t been discredited, in fact, it has been opposite, it has been corroborated.”
Durham has laid out how the most cited claims were not supported, let alone corroborated.
Indeed, he found there was no basis for this investigation to have been launched in the first place.
Yet, like in “Murder on the Orient Express,” all of the culprits were then let go.
Comey went on to make millions selling books and giving speeches on “ethical leadership.”
Former FBI special agent Peter Strzok was given a job by CNN.
Clinton general counsel Marc Elias is advising people on election ethics and running a group to “defend democracy.”
After all, this was a collective effort. In Washington, the more people involved in a conspiracy, the less culpable it becomes.
They all did it, so no one did.
When Truth dies People follow. It is ludicrous to think that these people will hesitate, when they deem it necessary. They will kill, and massively. They murder the unborn every day. They are turning the children of America into sexual mutants. Children! As of now, the People still have the right to confront this evil directly in the public square. There are no more sidelines. If you think there are, you are wrong. When the Czar came for my grandfather and his brothers they fled to America. Those who remained were later slaughtered by the Nazis. Now they’re coming for us, it’s happening here, and there is no new America to flee to. We need a bloodless Revolution and we need it now. It can be done.
After 6 months of durham screwing around, we here on FR and elsewhere knew nothing would come of this. The sheeple get their info from cnn and the other stalinist news sources.
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First, there was a comprehensive effort of the political and media establishments to perpetrate one of the great hoaxes in history — a political hit job that ultimately derailed an American presidency. Second, there was no real accountability for that effort for the main players from Clinton to Comey to Congress. It was much like The Murder on the Orient Express. The question is not “whodunit” but who didn’t. Spoiler alert: they all did it so no one was punished.”
Just curious. Does anyone believe this to be true, but also believes that the election wasn’t stolen?
Durham convened a grand jury and indicted and tried two people, and lost both cases.
He had the power to convene another grand jury and indict any DOJ official that either sandbagged investigations in to Hillary and the Clintoon Foundation, or perpetrated ongoing FRAUD against the FISA courts with multiple renewals of FISA warrants.
But he didn't. Maybe he was gun-shy after going 0-2 against the Deep State, and seeing that FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith got community service and a temporary suspension of his law license for his part in altering a CIA email and submitting it to the FISA court to justify one FISA warrant renewal.
DURHAM IS A COWARD, AND GARLAND IS TOTALLY CORRUPT!
right
I’ve been pondering some of the hearings that pop up in the news all the time now, on covid, on SVB, on Jan 6, etc.
Some of the members of congress are great, namely, Jordan, Cruz, Hawley, and of course, Kennedy.
But everyone - and I’m including myself - is saying, enough talking, nothing is ever done, etc.
And that is true and we are all frustrated.
But a member of Congress can’t do anything (except theoretically defund...and I doubt that would even work....POTUS would just do an “executive order”).
A completely corrupt executive branch is unprecedented, and really, quite a problem.
There is currently nowhere to turn to.
He's a bitter bitter man who is taking out his personal failure on the American people.
Only GOD CAN SAVE US!
Second, there was no real accountability for that effort for the main players from Clinton to Comey to Congress.
No different than his comment about the Maxwell case. They convicted the getaway driver but none of the bank robbers.
All of this should be leading to the folks at the Tree of Liberty. Or, at the very least, paying a bit more attention to who they vote for.
Impeachment?
The only way something this bad would get fixed is if we build a gallows in the middle of DC and have about 50 public hangings, starting with Hillary and Obama.
Most likely, and it's not the first the time the demonrats did such a thing.. Kennedy comes to mind.
At this point, Durham appears to be one cowardly bustard. I’m disappointed, but not surprised.
The US owes Trump an apology.
“NOT. ONE. CRIMINAL. REFERRAL”
There aren’t enough prison cells in the world to hold all of the guilty.
It’s obvious that Trump did this to himself just make the Dems look bad /s
These are all players within the deep state. You can’t pin anything on them because it’s ambiguous. They work without central direction, therefore there’s no central person controlling it. They instinctively know their parts and the bottom line is to protect the party at all costs.
“There is currently nowhere to turn to.”
Oh yes there is. And the wheels are already turning. Impeachment is too slow and formal. The Military and prolly the Federal Marshalls will quietly round up the perps, take them to Gitmo, to Guam or elsewhere. They will hear the charges read against them, and they will receive due punishment. Hanging, firing squad or guillotine; and in rare instances, imprisonment. And it’s closer than you think.
Ultimately, I think Durham did the best thing he could under the circumstances...
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Take a look at the article Sundance put together the other day for The Conservative Treehouse... it was posted on FR as well. There are a number of good articles there but I found this one to be particularly thought provoking as it pertained to the role that Durham served... https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/05/16/durham-found-zero-merit-to-trump-russia-claims-so-what-was-mueller-doing-for-two-years/
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