The deep state actors within the FBI didn't want Trump to be innocent, they didn't believe he could be innocent, which was a function of their own bias.
"Our investigators determined that the Crossfire Hurricane investigators did not and could not corroborate any of the substantive allegations contained in the Steele reporting. Not was Steele able to produce corroboration for any of the reported allegations, even after being offered $1 million or more by the FBI for such corroboration," the report reads later. It goes further to say that the information was known to be "rumor and speculation."
Democrats planted fake evidence and then used it against Trump in order to justify their assumptions about his guilt. The FBI used that for probable cause to further an investigation begun without any basis at all.
"Within days of their receipt," the report reads, "the unvetted and unverified Steele Reports were used to support probable cause in the FBI's FISA applications targeting Page, a U.S. citizen who, for a period o f time, had been an advisor to Trump. As discussed later in the report, this was done at a time when the FBI knew that the same information Steele had provided to the FBI had also been fed to the media and others in Washington, D.C."
The Steele dossier was also revealed to have been undertaken as a means of pleasing VIPs in the campaign and to help Clinton win. The very allegations that were used to discredit Trump were created by the Clinton campaign and were unverifiable.
"On October 31, 2016, less than two weeks before the election, the New York Times and others published articles on the Alfa Bank matter and the Clinton campaign issued tweets and public statements on the allegations of a secret channel of communications being used by the Trump Organization and a Russian bank - allegations that had been provided to the media and the FBI by Fusion GPS and Sussmann, both of whom were working for the Clinton campaign," the report states.
The report dropped on Monday, and what it showed was that the FBI began an investigation with absolutely no evidence or probable cause to believe even remotely that Trump had colluded with Russia regarding the 2016 election. They then used falsified evidence, created under the direction of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, to ascertain probable cause. The FBI lied to obtain search warrants, based findings on unsubstantiated and outright debunked hearsay. And they did it to uphold a false political narrative and to destroy Donald Trump.
The evidence of intentional malfeasance in the book-length, 316-page document is overwhelming. And it's unlikely that there will be any consequences at all for anyone in the FBI, the Clinton campaign, or in media. The New York Times, in fact, won a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on the Trump-Russia collusion allegations, which were later revealed to have been based on fabricated evidence, and have now been debunked entirely.
Attorney General William Barr authored the directive for the investigation to continue prior to Trump's leaving office. Durham, who began his work in 2016 with the instruction to "conduct a preliminary review into certain matters related to the 2016 presidential campaigns," was tasked with finishing the job as special counsel after the Trump administration handed off the reins of power to the Biden administration in 2021. The reason for the continuance, as Barr said at the time, was that Durham's "review subsequently developed into a criminal investigation."
The report's conclusion is a damning condemnation of the FBI and their methods for undertaking the investigation that led to Trump's impeachment in the US House of Representatives. Their methods were shoddy, not in keeping with their own standards, and intentionally targeted Trump for political reasons. The report also shows that a shocking double standard was in play, in which the Clinton campaign was not held accountable for their provably unethical actions, while Trump was vilified, despite obvious innocence.
In 2016, the report notes, the Clinton campaign created a plan to "vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming election interference by Russian security services." The "information" they concocted was given to the FBI, which ran with it despite being unable to corroborate its contents. The fake information generated by the Clinton campaign with the direct intention of vilifying Trump, in their own words, was used as an FBI "data point" in their baseless investigation against Trump, and was then used as probable cause to continue investigating him.
It is absolute madness that this is what went on in a government agency that is intended to uphold the interests of the American people. The bias against Trump, against his supporters, and against his populist message was so deep and ingrained that investigators willingly obfuscated, concocted, and glossed over their own procedures in order to discredit Trump.
They didn't actively remove him from office, but they allowed allegations to be perceived as indictments, allowed hearsay to take the place of fact, and allowed a political campaign intent on winning the presidency at all costs to provide a fake dossier to underpin their efforts. When the House determined that the dossier, and the existence of the investigation, were enough to impeach in 2019, they had the legitimizing force of the FBI behind them. But, the entire thing was a political stunt.
The conclusion, in part, reads: "...there is a continuing need for the FBI and the Department to recognize that lack of analytical rigor, apparent confirmation bias, and an over-willingness to rely on information from individuals connected to political opponents caused investigators to fail to adequately consider alternative hypotheses and to act without appropriate objectivity or restraint in pursuing allegations of collusion or conspiracy between a U.S. political campaign and a foreign power. Although recognizing that in hindsight much is clearer, much of this also seems to have been clear at the time."
Just as they did with Richard Jewell in Atlanta, Steven Hatfill with the anthrax envelopes, and the Iraqi government and uranium, the deep state actors and conspiring politicians planted fake evidence and then used it against Trump in order to justify their assumptions about his guilt, and weaponize the power of the government against their political opponents.
Durham Report by Libby Emmons on Scribd
