There is the rather strong suspicion by many, if they even bother themselves to think about it, that the John Durham investigation has been a colossal waste of taxpayer money that was solely a partisan whitewashing project for Donald Trump and William Barr—the latter, who we recall, doesn’t care about his “legacy” because he won’t be around to care what people think of him after he dies. Barr elevated Durham’s investigation to “special prosecutor” status near the end of Trump’s reign to prevent the Biden administration from immediately ending this travesty of an “investigation,” although the Justice Department is well within its rights of ending this expensive farce which has gone on far too long for Durham to find any legitimate “crimes.”
To recap, Durham thus far has indicted two people for what he calls “crimes,” one (Igor Danchenko) for not “disclosing” to the FBI that some of the information he gave them was from the supposedly “discredited” Steele Dossier (whose author has publicly defended as largely “factual”), and the other person, Michael Sussmann, for not disclosing who he was working for to the FBI, even though the information he provided was accurate. “That’s it???” you rightfully submit. Many believe that if the Durham investigation was shut down right now, the only people who would care are Fox News expectorators and thoroughly discredited politicians like Ted Cruz.
But wait…didn’t Durham just release “damaging” new charges earlier this month about spying on Trump? According to the right-wing media world (and of course Trump), his latest court documents provided just that. Right-wing commentator Kevin Brock exclaimed in The Hill that
Durham’s description of (Rodney) Joffe’s alleged activities does not paint him in a good light. According to Durham, Joffe exploited Neustar data and other friendly sources to help him “establish ... an inference and narrative” tying Trump to Russia — and that he allegedly did so to please “VIPs” within the Clinton campaign and its law firm. Sussmann happened to be Joffe’s attorney as well.
Joffe, in this scenario, isn’t an independent whistleblower; he’s a partisan whistle maker. Durham could only know all this if either Joffe told him or the sources Joffe approached for help disclosed those conversations to Durham’s investigators. Neither reality can be comforting to those involved. Of all the points made in the Factual Background, Joffe’s alleged efforts and their disclosure are the most damaging to those who may have participated in a burgeoning conspiracy.
It is particularly damaging because, if true, Joffe appears to have unethically and possibly illegally turned over proprietary government data to a civilian third party. Plus, Durham makes a compelling argument that the data Joffe allegedly gave Sussmann for delivery to the FBI is incomplete and made to look more sinister than it really is. In addition, Sussmann and Joffe allegedly withheld from the FBI important context that would have placed the sinister overtones in a more innocuous light.
Thanks to a routine court filing, the nation now knows the Durham investigation is no joke. He has set a ladder against a formidable wall and is climbing it rung by rung, apparently gaining cooperators and locking in testimony before a federal grand jury. There will be more squirming to come in powerful circles, but John Durham must be allowed to continue his important work.
Whew, a lot to unpack there—meaning unpacking the garbage from anything meaningful, after which Durham’s investigation is still, well, a joke. Naturally the right-wing world was all over this, “proof” that the Clinton campaign was “spying” on the Trump campaign and digging up “dirt,” as if the Trump campaign wasn’t doing something even worse, with Roger Stone personally working with Wikileaks, and that infamous Trump Tower meeting—and of course later Trump trying to blackmail Ukraine’s president into providing “dirt” on Joe Biden. But you didn’t need to do much “digging” to find dirt on Trump, since it was coming out of his mouth every time he opened it.
But here, if you remove all the conspiratorial verbiage, all you are left with is some other guy (Joffe) who provided another guy (Sussmann) with information that possibly wasn’t “complete.” That’s it. We can only imagine if that information was “complete” it would probably be more damaging to Trump; but then again, the Durham investigation’s sole purpose was to throw shade on the investigations into Trump’s nefarious activities and crimes. Dan MacGuill in Snopes points out that to the embarrassment of various right-wing media outlets (Fox News), that “Durham did not write that the Clinton campaign had paid Joffe or Neustar (the company Joffe worked for), nor that anyone had ‘infiltrated’ Trump Tower or the Trump White House — despite attention-grabbing claims to that effect, by Fox News and the Daily Mail.”
It turns out that Durham also feels that the right-wing media is setting itself up for a massive dose of disappointment. While he insinuates that his investigation isn’t a complete waste of time and money, apparently in response to Fox News and Trump’s blowing his “factual background” side notes out of proportion, he filed another court document, adding the comment
If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government’s Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government’s inclusion of this information.
As has been pointed out, Durham is desperate to justify his investigation, and avoid being a laughingstock of history and merely seen as another tool of Trump’s fascist movement. Here we plainly see he is fearful that the right has blown the information in his recent filings so far out of proportion that when what he actually produces is far less than what was expected, he will look like an even bigger fool and fraudster. If Durham has any personal credibility left, he will shut this thing down now and admit his own investigation was simply a partisan politics exercise largely kept afloat by a belief in conspiracy theories.
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