Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Barr wants Durham probe to create a lot of "white noise" to block out recollections of the crimes committed by the Trump campaign



In July of 2016, Donald Trump boasted “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you will be able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” Trump was probably most likely referring to Fox News and other right-wing conspiracy outlets, but otherwise it is clear that the only person who benefitted from such a release was Trump and his election chances. Roger Stone also actively sought information on impending WikiLeaks releases damaging to Hillary Clinton, reportedly with the help of far-right conspiracy commentator Jerome Corsi, who served as a “back channel” contact with Julian Assange. Steve Bannon testified that he had tried to work with Stone on the release of damaging information against Clinton, and Rick Gates testified that he overheard a conversation between Trump and Stone in regard to an imminent release of material. Stone was also accused of contacts with Guccifer 2.0, which was revealed to be a Russian military intelligence hacking operation. We also have evidence that Paul Manafort had contacts with a suspected Russian intelligence operative working in his Kiev office, and supplied “secret” polling data to Russian intelligence in order to tailor their activities to specific audiences in the U.S.

I bring this all up again because there was evidence that the Trump campaign was illegally seeking foreign interference in the 2016 election to aid Trump. It is interesting to note that even Trump himself did not actually believe he would win the election, but wanted to make it “close” so that he wouldn’t be “embarrassed” by a landslide loss. If he had lost the election, there might have been some major publication investigations, but it would just be a side note to a failed campaign of one of the worst and most unqualified major party presidential candidates in the history of this country. But Trump actually won the election, and that elevated the misdeeds of his campaign to the level of national relevancy. 

And now yet again Attorney General William Barr is threatening to sic his attack dog, John Durham, on the world—and just in time for the election; we all know by now that Barr’s all-consuming interest in this in not the seeking of “justice,” but advancing Republican partisan politics and the survival of Trump, just as he worked nearly 30 years ago to prevent damaging information about George H.W. Bush’s role in the Iran-Contra scandal from being heard (Bush still lost the 1992 election). Barr keeps referring to the so-called “slender reed” of evidence used to initiate first the FBI and then the Mueller investigations, and how alleged “crimes” were committed to obtain FISA warrants, but this is for the sole purpose of creating a lot of white noise that blocks out recollections of the real crimes that the investigations uncovered. 

Barr has told us that he doesn’t yet expect any criminal indictments from the Durham investigation; why would he want to further alienate the FBI and the intelligence community against the Trump administration? Obviously Trump only supports law enforcement so long as it supports his interests.  But with Trump’s poll numbers getting worse, Barr is conspiratorially repeating his claims that there are sinister, “troubling” aspects to the initiation of the investigations of the Trump campaign perpetrated by “familiar” names; but we already know those names and what they allegedly did. There is nothing “new” here, and if “crimes” had actually been committed, we would already know if they were actual prosecutable “crimes” and not simply vengeance-seeking blather. The Durham probe is just a partisan political grab bag that questions the veracity of the evidence used for FISA warrants to begin the probes; Barr’s claim that there was nothing to investigate is, however, demonstrably false and misleading, and that is what we should remember here.

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