Special Counsel John Durham has released a highly anticipated 316-page report outlining corrupt U.S. activity during the targeting of presidential candidate, president elect, and subsequent President, Donald J Trump.
[FULL REPORT pdf HERE]
I have completed my first review of the report, and suffice to say the details within it are not new. The majority of the reaction so far has been centered around how Special Counsel Durham is not prosecuting anyone for their corrupt conduct outlined within the report. However, for the sake of this first review, I will draw attention to a few aspects you will likely not see discussed anywhere else.
Please note this detail found at the bottom of page 3 and top two lines of page #4:
[…] “The Office exercised its judgment regarding what to investigate but did not investigate every public report of an alleged violation of law in connection with the intelligence and law enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns.”
As perhaps the only person who tracked down and subsequently interviewed the investigators on the Durham team, and as a person who subsequently came away with a full understanding of how the silo operation inside this investigation was going to play out, I can reasonably assure you that notation and reference by team Durham is entirely directed to us.
That statement above tells us why none of the DC politicians who engaged in specific violations of law were criminally charged. This is part of the silo effect within government, which I will explain later. As a good friend said, “Yeah great, but we don’t have badges.” So, we went to the badges with the evidence, but the badges did not want to act upon the evidence, because it would have been, in their estimation, too damaging to the framework of our government.
First a positive note about the report. Unlike all other reports of similar internal investigation, I will give the Durham team credit for not using the ‘executive summary’ of the report to cloud, positively shape or disguise the corruption outlined within the body of the report. This is the first such report where the executive summary actually summarizes the scale of the corruption within the details.
Perhaps the parting message was considered, “If you are going to whitewash this s**t [ie entire govt operation], at least be intellectually honest with the American people, and not whitewash the investigation in the ‘executive summary’ of it.” I’m pretty sure that was the exact parting phrase. It was after that conversation [Aug 2020] when CTH then said, do not anticipate anything from Durham. Bill Barr was the bondo, John Durham is the spray paint.
The “Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns” is a full uncovering of just how politically corrupt the DOJ, FBI and larger Intelligence Community were/are as it relates to the 2016 election.
Team Durham, while not indicting anyone for ancillary crimes – of which there are many – does lay naked the motives and intentions of the people at the top of the FBI, DOJ, CIA and ODNI. The full weight of government was weaponized against Donald Trump and the Durham report lays out all the details.
It is the background of this report that stands as the current motive for those same institutions to remove Donald Trump in 2023. Quite simply, they fear retaliation.
[…] “If this report and the outcome of the Special Counsel’s investigation leave some with the impression that injustices or misconduct have gone unaddressed, it is not because the Office concluded that no such injustices or misconduct occurred. It is, rather, because not every injustice or transgression amounts to a criminal offense, and criminal prosecutors are tasked exclusively with investigating and prosecuting violations of U.S. criminal laws. And even where prosecutors believe a crime occurred based on all of the facts and information they have gathered, it is their duty only to bring criminal charges when the evidence that the government reasonably believes is admissible in court proves the offense beyond a reasonable doubt.” [Page #6]
Durham walks through the missing predicate that initiated the Trump-Russia investigation. Essentially, as the Durham team noted, there was nothing ever to trigger the authority of the FBI to investigate Donald Trump or his campaign in the first place.
The Obama FBI and DOJ justified full physical and electronic surveillance of their political opposition, through false justifications manufactured by the FBI. As Durham notes, “Our findings and conclusions regarding these and related questions are sobering.” Really, “sobering”? Nice choice of understatement.
Everything was predicated on The Big Lie:
[…] As set forth in greater detail in Section IV.A.3 .b, before the initial receipt by FBI Headquarters of information from Australia on July 28, 2016 concerning comments reportedly made in a tavern on May 6, 2016 by George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, the government possessed no verified intelligence reflecting that Trump or the Trump campaign was involved in a conspiracy or collaborative relationship with officials of the Russian government.
Indeed, based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the instant investigation, neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
[…] As set forth in greater detail in Section IV, the record in this matter reflects that upon receipt of unevaluated intelligence information from Australia, the FBI swiftly opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. In particular, at the direction of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Peter Strzok opened Crossfire Hurricane immediately. Strzok, at a minimum, had pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump. The matter was opened as a full investigation without ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information.
Further, the FBI did so without (i) any significant review of its own intelligence databases, (ii) collection and examination of any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities, (iii) interviews of witnesses essential to understand the raw information it had received or (iv) using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence.
Had it done so, again as set out in Sections IV.A.3.b and c, the FBI would have learned that their own experienced Russia analysts had no information about Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials, nor were others in sensitive positions at the CIA, the NSA, and the Department of State aware of such evidence concerning the subject.
In addition, FBI records prepared by Strzok in February and March 2017 show that at the time of the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI had no information in its holdings indicating that at any time during the campaign anyone in the Trump campaign had been in contact with any Russian intelligence officials.
The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign. [Page 10]
I’ll have more on the substance of the report, as well as share the details of others following their review. However, in the interim, it is important to understand how the investigative silos, created by DC administrators, impact the investigative outcomes as displayed in this report.
Former FBI Director James Comey is a criminal. Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe is a criminal. Former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok is a criminal. Current Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, Senator Mark Warner, is a criminal.
Any criminal conduct that is discovered by a person who is not the direct victim of the criminal conduct does not penetrate the DC system. Meaning, just because you can show criminal activity in Washington DC, that doesn’t mean anyone has a responsibility to investigate it.
If the criminal conduct is not identified by the investigators inside the DC system, the criminal conduct essentially does not exist – unless the evidence of criminal conduct in DC, is provided by a specific victim of the crime being reported.
There is a silo effect in place within the DC system that permits the investigative authorities to dismiss claims of institutional or administrative criminal conduct from outside entities, including ‘whistleblowers.’ The DOJ/FBI arbiters of what constitutes crime are the same DOJ/FBI arbiters in charge of protecting the institutional system.
If the DC system is threatened by the conduct of an outside entity, a crime may have been committed. However, if an agent, operator, official or politician representing the DC system is the one threatening, there is no crime. The justice system in DC is designed to protect itself.
Holding DC officials accountable for criminal conduct first requires the deconstruction of the silos that protect them. Deconstructing those silos requires strategy and legislative willpower….
