Let’s not forget what the real purpose of the Durham probe was: to discredit the Mueller investigation. Did it succeed?

  

John Durham just released his final report and we don’t need to waste any more time discussing it than necessary. Predictably Trump and the Republicans are using his “findings”—more like opinions—to denounce the FBI and the Robert Mueller investigation that followed. However, we still cannot ignore the fact that outside his “opinions” about how the FBI had no “factual” basis for even starting the initial probe that eventually morphed in the Mueller investigation, Durham conveniently overlooks the fact that the probe was sanctioned by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and overseen by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after Session recused himself from the case.

First a reality check: Rosenstein should not be seen as an unbiased observer in the investigation; as the New York Times had reported, he was a “loyal soldier” of Trump’s and did what he could to shield him from where the Mueller probe could have led. While he allowed Mueller to investigate Paul Manafort’s foreign financial dealings with pro-Russia elements in Ukraine which eventually led to his conviction for concealing payments made to him by those elements, Rosenstein knee-capped any investigation into Trump’s own financial ties with Russian entities, which certainly would have suggested, if not collusion, the potential for policy decisions influenced by those ties and detrimental to the U.S. and its interests. Indeed, Trump’s eagerness to believe Putin’s lies concerning election interference and computer hacking, as well as his cold shoulder to our allies in favor of “friendship” with Putin, certainly suggests that. Trump was not as “patriotic” as he likes to portray himself.

Rosenstein kept Mueller tied to Russian connections to the Trump campaign, and Manafort was for a time Trump’s campaign manager. Manafort’s ties with Russians could have served as a secret conduit between Trump and his “friends” in Russia, but we’ll never know because as we discovered, Manafort was an uncooperative witness, providing the investigation with unhelpful or contradictory information, and like everyone else facing jail time—with the exception of Michael Cohen—was eventually pardoned by Trump.

Thus any claim by Durham that there was “nothing” there is due mostly to the fact that the Mueller investigation was prevented from taking the next step and investigating the probability that Trump was compromised by his financial connections in Russia. We also know that Roger Stone was in contact with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, who provided him updates when Russian hackers dumped emails meant to damage the Clinton campaign, and we know of at least one phone conversation in which Stone discussed this with Trump. Of course Trump did once publicly call on Russia to hack into Clinton’s emails; the absurdity of this is that it is “different” to say something publicly rather than privately: one avenue is supposed to be merely “bluster,” while the other is actually intended.

Instead, what we see that Durham’s final report is merely a compendium of information already in the public record. He “explains” his failure to prosecute—let alone convict—more than three people is that the agents involved committed no actual crimes, merely showing “poor judgment” and were perhaps a little too “eager” to investigate Trump and overlooked a paucity of “hard evidence.” That’s it. Durham doesn’t actually suggest any FBI “reforms” other than those already made, and he didn't find any “deep state” conspiracy against Trump. He did apparently spend a great many useless hours at taxpayer expense investigating Hillary Clinton, who was not part of his mandate, so that was obviously a partisan tit-for-tat that also came up empty.

But this ignores an essential truth, and that is that Durham’s investigation was intended by Trump and Session’s successor, William Barr, to attack the Mueller investigation and de-legitimatize it. Durham’s report repeatedly refers to the Mueller investigation's failure to find convincing evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian entities, while ignoring the fact that numerous people connected to the campaign lied under oath, and that there were in fact Russian entities and individuals who were charged with attempting to undermine the election process in Trump’s favor.

The Durham probe should be seen as what it was meant to be: a hit job orchestrated by Trump and Barr to prevent the truth from being investigated at all. The Mueller report did find crimes in which one man (Manafort) was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison before being pardoned, and others who made guilty pleas. The only “crime” that Durham was able to “convict” on was one guilty plea for leaving out one word in a FISA report. The Durham investigation was simply a 4-year, $6.5 million boondoggle desperate to justify itself, and Durham’s self-serving opinions should not be construed as “evidence,” but as a way to disguise the fact that it was more pointless than the Mueller investigation ever could have been.