Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Is The Durham Report In The Room With You Right Now?

Can you show me on the doll where it touched you? 

If you want a "quick" review of 300 pages of utter bullshit, and the misreadings thereof by people who couldn't read and comprehend a 300 page report if you gave them a month to do it, start with Barbara McQuade's twitter thread which, simply for its clarity, is worth reposting in full:
If you want a full-metal takedown of how the Durham report reads like Bill Barr's representation of the Mueller Report (i.e., mendacious and lying bullshit), I highly recommend emptywheel, whom one could fairly accuse of being tedious to a fault. It's a lengthy thread, chasing down ever rabbit hole Durham presents, but her conclusions are hard to argue with: It starts there and goes meticulously through the 300 pages. The best thing I know to do is to read some of that thread (at least) and compare it to the rantings of a man who's never read 300 pages in total in his entire life:
About an hour later he posted again: "The Durham Report spells out in great detail the Democrat Hoax that was perpetrated upon me and the American people. This is 2020 Presidential Election Fraud, just like 'stuffing' the ballot boxes, only more so. This totally illegal act had a huge impact on the Election. With an honest (sic) Media, we are looking at the Crime of the Century!" 
But it was after about an hour that Trump really started cooking. "THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY!" he posted. 
….
About 10 minutes later he said: "TREASON!!!" 
The findings from Durham don't suggest treason, nor has anyone been charged with treason in the case. About another ten minutes passed and he demanded that Congress do something, though he didn't say exactly what it is they should do. 
"CONGRESS MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS. MUST NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!" he posted. 
Ten minutes later he proclaimed again in all-caps: "SO PROUD TO HAVE FIRED JAMES COMEY. INSTINCT!" 
Another ten minutes later he posted another message: "JACK SMITH AND THE SPECIAL PERSECUTORS OFFICE ARE PLAYING THE SAME GAMES WITH ELECTION INTERFERENCE AND FAKE PROSECUTIONS AS JAMES COMEY, ONLY FAR MORE OBVIOUS. THE DOJ MUST END THIS CHARADE RIGHT NOW, AND THAT GOES TO THEIR USE OF D.A.’s & A.G’s IN ATLANTA & NEW YORK. MAGA!!!"

Yeah; as Dylan sang, "Nothing is revealed."  Except how corrupting a force Donald Trump was as POTUS, because all of this springs from his actions, and the attempts to protect him made by Bill Barr, who is still burnishing his own record to try and wash the stank off and disavow any knowledge about what he oh-so-knowleadgeably did

The shortest version is it's 300 pages that says nothing, and Merrick Garland let it run its course rather than cut it off.  Yes, he could have done that, but then the purpose of a "special counsel" is to be free from charges of corrupt oversight by a political appointee.  That sword, of course, has two edges, because the special counsel himself can be corrupt (see., e.g., Ken Starr), and can wander the landscape with a mission and a crime in search of a person to pin it on.  If Durham had the goods Trump & MAGA think he had, there would have been prosecutions.  Durham's report just recommends the FBI "do better."  Based on that, some in the House want to defund the FBI and the DOJ.

Hell, even Steve Bannon gets the point:  there is no there:

"The courts are not going to sit there just like gods and deem this to be true," he continued. "You have to bring cases before them. Is this the epic failure? Am I missing it? I'm not a lawyer. But isn't this the epic failure of Durham?"

Bannon's guest, Mike Davis of the Article III Project, agreed that Durham missed an opportunity to punish former President Donald Trump's enemies.

"And so if the Justice Department fully cooperated, how did they not find this sooner?" Davis wondered. "How did they not find this before the statute of limitations? How are there not crimes charged here?"

"That's my point!" Bannon agreed. "Where are the charges? Where are the charges? He had all access. He had an unlimited budget. He'd spent six million dollars. He had four years. Where's the beef?"

That tells you all you really need to know.

Just to round this out, I have to add these two: Not only does the Durham report NOT say what Trump & Co say it says, there are mountains of evidence out there refuting what they say the Durham report says (and doesn't).
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