Republicans, conservatives, libertarians – or anyone seeking the truth about how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has acted as a de facto arm of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for at least six years – were anxiously awaiting the release of the Special Counsel John Durham’s report.
The report, made public Monday, largely confirmed our worst fears that the FBI flouted the law, ignored basic human rights, and worked to overthrow President Donald Trump. It is only a misfortune that the report took four years to complete.
However, for Trump haters and Democratic shills in the mainstream media, the Durham Report might as well have been either a blanket justification of FBI dirty tricks and illegal operations, or a Papal annulment of all wrongdoing.
A report from NBC actually ran under the headline of “Durham report finds ‘troubling contacts’ between Trump campaign and Russia.”
There it is again. And you thought it was just mendacious miscreants such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) who continues to mouth that old and heavily discredited lie of Russia collusion. But no, it is still very much alive and kicking in the febrile minds of America’s liberal media that continues to trumpet this hoax like its very repetition will eventually make it true, or will at least provide with with some kind of latent credibility.
What did the report actually find? The report said disgraced FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith "committed a criminal offense by fabricating language in an email that was material to the FBI obtaining a FISA surveillance order."
"In other instances, FBI personnel working on that same FISA application displayed, at best, a cavalier attitude towards accuracy and completeness," it said.
It continued: "FBI personnel also repeatedly disregarded important requirements when they continued to seek renewals of that FISA surveillance while acknowledging – both then and in hindsight – that they did not genuinely believe there was probable cause to believe that the target was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of a foreign power, or knowingly helping another person in such activities."
"And certain personnel disregarded significant exculpatory information that should have prompted investigative restraint and re-examination."
And the herald US intelligence network – 13 different agencies who can’t seem to communicate except when they get the story wrong – knew all about the real collusion in the 2016 presidential contest, the one between Hillary Clinton and the mainstream media who eagerly reported her lies about Trump working directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin to steal the election.
But to return to that NBC report, it actually must be seen to be believed.
I have never seen so much hopelessly mangled, pathetically sorted, desperately delivered reporting in one balderdash piece. It is as if a reporter is standing in front of a massive dump of manure but chooses to ignore that pile and focus on the flower growing next to it.
Justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian – with both of these descriptors being misnomers in his case – goes the limit, actually attempting to suggest the Durham Report is nothing more than an investigation into “a lot of rabbit holes.”
Dilanian dismisses Durham’s rebuke of the FBI for coddling failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton while beginning an investigation into Trump on the basis of no evidence by suggesting Trump requested it by “asking the Russians to find 30,000 missing emails from Clinton’s server.”
He somehow suggests the Department of Justice (DOJ) report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz, released in 2019, somehow exonerated the FBI and ran contrary to the Durham Report. The IG report said FBI actions were “pretty bad” and found widespread abuse in how the bureau obtained Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to spy on Carter Page, who worked on President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
And that was how the DOJ’s own IG appraised his own bureau’s police work.
When he makes his comment about Durham apparently finding “troubling contacts” between Trump and Russia, it is hard to believe that this was all he could glean from the document.
The news was just as badly reported at MSNBC, where President Joe Biden acolyte and Democratic apologist Nicolle Wallace was also analyzing rabbit roles.
"Durham’s whole thing is predicated on it’s like a rabbit hole conspiracy that suggests that the Trump-Barr paranoia infected his ability to stand back and evaluate whether the probe yielded guilty convictions of people who would have had nothing to do with any of these questions he looked at," Wallace said. "It is a view from so far down the rabbit hole that what needs some oversight is what Mr. Durham did for four years that repelled his long-time prosecutorial partner, Nora Dennehy, and other high-level DOJ prosecutors."
It’s not even clear what Wallace is talking about here; it might be described as an assiduous distraction if this hapless news anchor had the ability to make sense or articulate an argument.
There was more to come on MSNBC as Peter Strzok, the disgraced former FBI agent who enjoys a special place of infamy in the framing of Donald Trump, appeared on Joy Reid’s exercise in futility, “The ReidOut.” He declared that the Durham Report "didn’t come up with anything," and that the investigation "never should have taken place."
"But look, this is a predictable sad ending to an investigation that never should have taken place. Shortly after [Durham] was announced in 2019, he went on the record as a prosecutor making a rare public statement that he disagreed with IG Horowitz’s conclusion that the investigation was appropriately launched and then he spent the next three to four years with a cognitive bias trying to build a case that somehow it was. We saw the results today, and the results are clearly that he didn’t come up with anything," Strzok told his favorite network.
Strzok, of course, was the clown who spelled out his desire to stop Trump from winning the 2016 in text messages to his equally oleaginous girlfriend, FBI lawyer Lisa Page. How this guy finds the gall to go on television and provide his opinion about anything is beyond reason or good taste.
But the mainstream media isn’t about reason or good taste. It’s about canceling the news that offends its political biases.
As Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume put it Monday night, much of the mainstream media “downplayed” the release of the Durham Report because it was damning to so much of what they have defended for almost seven years.
There was a moment of muted honesty at CNN where Jake Tapper, never a friend of Trump, admitted the Durham Report is "devastating to the FBI.” And here was a breaking news announcement conceding that the report came to the conclusion that “the FBI failed in many, many ways.”
But the media should be shouting in uniform outrage over the cesspool that Durham has revealed at FBI headquarters. This is not a few bad apples, a collection of motivated ideologues who believe America is better off being ruled by Democrats. The FBI and the DOJ are both seriously off the rails of sanity and democratic safety. They actively worked to overthrow one president – whom they continued to persecute by raiding his Florida home, searching for the secret files they never sought in Hillary Clinton’s hard drive.
Trump is owed more than an apology; he deserves justice.
The FBI and DOJ have remained criminally indifferent to the outrages committed by Hunter Biden and the rampant corruption that increasingly defines President Joe Biden and his entire sullied political career.
But just as Biden has failed America, so has much of the media.
The Durham Report was a wakeup call for would-be journalists who have become propagandists. It obviously hasn’t disturbed their sleep.
