Barr Pressed Durham to Find Flaws in the Russia Investigation. It Didn't Go Well.

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/26/us/politics/durham-trump-russia-barr.html

No paywall
https://archive.is/J7vFu

WASHINGTON — It became a regular litany of grievances from President Donald J. Trump and his supporters: The investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia was a witch hunt, they maintained, that had been opened without any solid basis, went on too long and found no proof of collusion.

Egged on by Mr. Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr set out in 2019 to dig into their shared theory that the Russia investigation likely stemmed from a conspiracy by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. To lead the inquiry, Mr. Barr turned to a hard-nosed prosecutor named John H. Durham, and later granted him special counsel status to carry on after Mr. Trump left office.

But after almost four years — far longer than the Russia investigation itself — Mr. Durham’s work is coming to an end without uncovering anything like the deep state plot alleged by Mr. Trump and suspected by Mr. Barr.

Moreover, a monthslong review by The New York Times found that the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court — that Trump allies claim characterized the Russia investigation.

*snip*

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Text book obstruction of justice occurred under and by Barr daily, and yet I can

guarantee you he will never see the inside of a jail cell.

I doubt ANY of the top criminals of the gop will.

Love to be wrong, though.

I was wrong about saying ALL gop losses in red states would not be certified, only some did they attempt this. I wonder how many gop House and Senate races lost in red states?

[ZonkerHarris]

2. more...

Interviews by The Times with more than a dozen current and former officials have revealed an array of previously unreported episodes that show how the Durham inquiry became roiled by internal dissent and ethical disputes as it went unsuccessfully down one path after another even as Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr promoted a misleading narrative of its progress.

Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.

Mr. Durham used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media. Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued.

There were deeper internal fractures on the Durham team than previously known. The publicly unexplained resignation in 2020 of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora R. Dannehy, was the culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics. A year later, two more prosecutors strongly objected to plans to indict a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign based on evidence they warned was too flimsy, and one left the team in protest of Mr. Durham’s decision to proceed anyway. (A jury swiftly acquitted the lawyer.)

[Caliman73]

3. None of Trump's allegations were/are true...

There was definitely sufficient cause to open an investigation. Warrants were secured under due process. The investigation ran its natural course. The DOJ was not looking for "collusion" because collusion is not a criminal charge. The Muller Report could not definitively confirm CONSPIRACY, which is what people all over the media and in government were calling "collusion". There was ample evidence that there was contact between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, Muller and his team just could not draw the straight line back to Trump with ALL the elements needed to charge CONSPIRACY. The report indicated that Trump could not be charged with anything because of the scope of the special counsel and the memo indicating "no charges against a sitting president".

Muller clearly stated, that while he could not charge anything, he could not say that there was no evidence of any crimes.

Of course the Durham investigation into the investigation was going to turn up NOTHING wrong with it.

The difference between the Muller and Durham investigations is that one was started in good faith, with a basis in evidence, while the other was started by Trump and his cronies to obfuscate and obstruct justice.

Same with the Georgia phone call. I never really sat down and listened to it in earnest. Yesterday I heard a large chunk of it. The whining, childish tone Trump uses and insistence on pleading his false case. It is clear that Trump and his entire administration were driven by Trump's malice or delusional process, or BOTH.

[hedda_foil]

4. Why am I not surprised?