Category: JohnDurham

Durham investigation ends after three years of searching, $40 million spent, and nothing found

Posted on (Updated by Mark Sumner

On May 13, 2019, then-Attorney General Bill Barr let it be known that at Donald Trump’s “request,” he was conducting an investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation. To conduct this investigation, Barr appointed his very own special prosecutor, U.S. Attorney John Durham. For the next three-and-a-half years, Republicans made confident predictions that “Bull” Durham was going to be the man to finally “lock ‘er up.” Surely Durham, unleashed with no deadline, budgetary limit, or constraint on where he looked, would prove conclusively that every conspiracy theory pushed by Trump was true.

But after more than three years and more than $40 million spent, Durham managed to produce just a single charge: accusing Democratic-linked attorney Michael Sussmann of lying to the FBI for not revealing secondhand connections to Hillary Clinton’s campaign when talking to them about Donald Trump’s Russia dealings. In May, a jury found Sussman not guilty of the ridiculous charge.

Now The New York Times reports that the grand jury seated in connection with Durham’s investigation has been allowed to expire. Several members of Durham’s team have already left, and those who remain are now working to complete “a final report.” A report that shows they found absolutely nothing.

Durham had a solid background as a man who would twist any law to assist the Republican cause, such as when he decided there was absolutely nothing wrong with the kidnapping and torture the Bush administration practiced before and during the invasion of Iraq. The U.S. attorney signed on to help to create a false narrative about the Russia investigation, rewriting the order of events and insisting that there was no cause to involve the Department of Justice or the FBI. He even accompanied Barr overseas as they tried to talk U.S. allies into lying about intelligence sources.

In the runup to the 2020 election, Republicans regularly played on the idea that Durham was going to provide them with an “October surprise” by reversing the Russia narrative, absolving Trump of the crimes he committed in his first impeachment, and just generally stomping on Democratic faces. That lust for a coming bombshell grew even greater when Durham let it be known that his investigation had “evolved into a criminal investigation” and that a grand jury had been seated. Surely all those “lock ‘er up” chants were about to be fulfilled.

But before that bombshell could arrive, Durham’s lead investigator left the team, there were indications that Durham’s investigation was coming up dry, and sad news that his report “was unlikely to be ready in time for the election.”

There would be no report. Not in time for the election. Not in the next two years.

In fact, by September 2020 Durham seemed to have already lost the thread of what he was supposed to be investigating and was instead taking a deep look at the Clinton Foundation, apparently checking into Q-anon conspiracy theories about “deep state” connections. He found absolutely nothing. By that point, his investigation had already been underway for 16 months, a time period in which Robert Mueller’s investigation issued 31 indictments, accepted five guilty pleas, filed 190 charges, and successfully prosecuted four cases resulting in prison sentences. 

Even though Durham had nothing to show for nearly two years of searching, Barr, supposedly oh-so-upset over Trump’s lies about the election, gave Trump a parting gift before he left the White House: He changed Durham’s status to that of special counsel, expanding his reach still further, and gave him forever to dig up anything he could. 

For MAGA Americans, the Durham investigation was an answer to prayer. They had a prosecutor who could go anywhere, subpoena anyone, and investigate anything in order to find all those pizza tunnels and lizard men hiding at the bottom of the deep state. It all made for a super tasty bit of revenge fantasy. Just as their Q-notes insisted that Trump was always about to return from Mar-a-Lago and reveal that he had really been in charge all along, John Durham was always about to come smashing through the doors at Democratic Party HQ with a fist full of arrest warrants.

After all, the memes were unstoppable!

Some Durham meme the QAnon and MAGAe loved, for your amusement. pic.twitter.com/uRSE9U52pf

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) September 14, 2022

Now it seems there finally is going to be a Durham report. And like everything else Durham is done, it’s going to be a pointless exercise in finger-pointing unsupported by evidence and good for nothing but boosting his chances of being a “legal commentator” on Fox News.

Durham’s investigation is coming to an end without ever laying a single charge against Hillary Clinton or anyone with more than a passing connection to her campaign. It’s coming to an end without finding anything like a conspiracy to use the FBI against Trump. It’s coming to an end … and that’s about the only good thing that can be said about it.

This is exactly the conclusion that everyone should have expected on day one. John Durham was hired as a professional witch hunter, and there simply are no witches to find. Everything about the FBI’s investigation into Trump was already well known. There were no secrets. No conspiracy.

That didn’t stop Durham from making that claim in court when prosecuting Sussman. The verdict shows exactly what the jury thought of his unsupported statements.

A month before Barr revealed that Durham’s report wasn’t yet baked, the Senate Intelligence Committee, then led by Republican Sen. Richard Burr, issued its own final report on the Trump campaign’s connection with Russia. That report found more than 100 contacts between Trump’s team and Russian agents. It found that Trump’s campaign directly collaborated with Russia on multiple occasions and in various ways to alter the outcome of a U.S. election. It found that multiple members of Trump’s campaign lied to investigators about these connections. It found that the coordination of Trump’s campaign and the Russian government “represented a grave counterintelligence threat.”

Those are the facts of what happened. Durham was never going to find anything that made this any less true. What Durham needs to report is all the conspiracy theories he investigated and found to be false.

But don’t worry. Just because Durham’s investigation is ending without a single conviction to stand on, that doesn’t mean right-wing media is going to stop claiming he found something huge. They’re certainly not stopping today. In fact, the Durham investigation is likely to go on endlessly in the MAGA mind. If Donald Trump can be secret president, running the country from Mar-a-Lago while Biden wonders why his red button does nothing, then surely John Durham can keep on investigating forever. No grand jury? Who needs one. Durham will be always about to come through Democratic doors, laser grenade and electro-whip of justice in hand.

He’ll always be just one rabbit hole away,

Fox News has endlessly touted the Durham investigation. It is ending with a whimper. https://t.co/OtIqNtXhqo pic.twitter.com/5vJFWeI2B5

— Media Matters (@mmfa) September 14, 2022

The last sad cry for help ...

Trump blasts Bill Barr and begs for Durham to do something pic.twitter.com/HsETNRM91T

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 4, 2022

John Durham resigning as US Attorney, but won’t let go of pointless ‘investigation’ of Russia probe

Posted on (Updated by Mark Sumner

John “Bull” Durham announced on Friday afternoon that he is stepping down from his position in the Department of Justice. Presumably this also means an end to his role as special counsel investigating the origins of the Russia investigation. (Note: latest reporting indicates he’s not dropping the probe.)  In the announcement of Durham’s resignation, there is no mention of any further indictments or report upcoming from that investigation.

Durham was appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr in May 2019. The prosecutor had been involved in the investigation of torture and prisoner abuse during the Bush administration, and was directly involved in dismissing every one of the 101 charges on that front. That certainly made him seem an appropriately partisan choice for Barr when seeking someone who would fulfill Donald Trump’s dreams of turning the tables on the Mueller investigation.

But now, after an investigation that lasted months longer than Mueller’s, Durham is leaving with only a single minor indictment against a CIA official who signed off on a single document. Far from proving Trump’s conspiracy theories, Durham seems to have proved that they were conspiracy theories. And now he’s leaving.

Friday, Feb 26, 2021 · 10:38:21 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

A clarification in the latest reporting: Durham is not resigning as special counsel, just as the US Attorney in Connecticut. He apparently will still continue doing . . . whatever it is he is doing as special counsel.

Though the spring of 2019 marked the official start of Durham’s investigation, it was clear Barr tapped him for the role months sooner. But almost from the start, Durham’s investigation ran up on the shoals of hard truth. Despite Barr escorting him around the world in an effort to find something that could be turned into evidence behind Trump’s claims, it turned out that allied intelligence services refused to play along. It Italy, Australia, and the U.K., attempts to “prove” that Trump was somehow ensnared into making over 100 contacts with Russian agents were slapped away by officials unwilling to play along.

That was a setback. However, Durham only expanded his scope to look beyond current officials and those directly involved in decisions that led to Trump’s investigation. In fact, he appeared to be digging into unrelated events as an excuse to go after former officials under President Obama.

Still, despite unlimited assistance, Barr’s personal attention, and Trump cheering on the sidelines, Durham’s report never seemed to appear. At first, it seemed as if he intended to have something ready to blow up media attention on Trump’s first impeachment trial. That didn’t happen.

Then all through the summer, Barr hinted that the report was right around the corner. Except it wasn’t.

At the start of September, it seemed that Barr and Durham were still planning a genuine “October surprise.” But then Durham’s longtime assistant left the investigation in mid-September, with language that made it seem as if there was nothing there. Durham soon had his remaining staff looking at the Clinton Foundation for absolutely unspecified reasons because … why not?  However, as actual October arrived, it seemed the real surprise was going to be on Trump. 

Because there was no Durham report. The single charge levied back in August began to look like the only bullet in Durham’s pop gun. 

Unless there is still some serious information, and more charges, not only is Durham leaving after a fruitless quest into unwarranted claims, this will also mean that Barr repeatedly and seriously overstated the significance of what Durham had uncovered. This is an investigation that was repeatedly put forward as if it had unearthed significant evidence in support of the idea that Trump was unfairly targeted, or that the Mueller investigation took partisan actions. None of that evidence has appeared.

Durham may be resigning, but this might not be the last time he visits the Department of Justice.

John Durham’s top assistant resigns as Barr squeezes for some kind of report before election

Posted on by Mark Sumner

There’s supposed to be a rule that the Department of Justice (DOJ) doesn’t make announcements concerning anyone involved in an election within 60 days of the election—a rule that James Comey absolutely disregarded with his last minute theatrics in the 2016 election. Considering the closeness of that election, there’s little doubt that Comey’s action, and the media coverage of it, was a deciding factor in handing Trump the White House. And William Barr has made it absolutely clear that he’s all in favor of smashing that rule again to keep Trump in place.

But Barr’s intention of releasing the report by his lieutenant, John Durham, got slightly harder on Friday. Because acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut Nora Dannehy, who has acted as Durham’s top aide during his attempt to follow up on Trump’s claims about the “deep state coup” behind the Russia investigation, has resigned not just her position helping Durham, but from the entire Justice Department. And the reason is directly related to Barr’s attempts to rush the report out as an “October surprise.”

As the Hartford Courant reports, Dannehy was recruited to help Durham in his round-the-world quest to convince allies to join in the conspiracy theory and claim that the entire Russia investigation was set up long before Trump was elected. That includes tracking down claims that the CIA planted a college professor in London years earlier so George Papadopoulos could eventually be lured into trying to arrange a hook up between Trump and Putin. It also includes chasing down the same claims about a nonexistent server in Ukraine that were involved in Trump’s impeachment.

The investigation of the investigation has been underway for over a year and a half, and has so far managed to snag one charge against one person, with former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith pleading guilty to having edited an email. Compare this to the Mueller investigation, which netted 199 criminal charges, 37 indictments or guilty pleas, and five prison sentences … so far. 

Oddly enough, despite an investigation that’s now just a few months short of the entire length of the Mueller investigation, there appear to be no tweets from Trump or other Republicans complaining about the length, scope, or cost of the Durham investigation. Somehow, when Mueller was involved in his much more productive investigation, both Trump and his leading minions in the House found time to constantly complain about the budget of the investigations and to scoff at the “minor nature” of convictions. Funny. That’s not happening this time.

Dannehy has worked with Durham for decades. She was recruited back from private practice specifically to work on this investigation. But on Thursday evening she sent an email to the office in New Haven to announce that she was leaving, and the reason appears to be because she is worried about pressure from Barr to hand over a report before the election. Insiders say that Dannehy has been pondering leaving for weeks, but stayed this long out of her personal loyalty to Durham. 

According to the Courant, Dannehy said the investigation was going to last “six months to a year” when she agreed to return to the DOJ. But it’s taken much longer, and without producing any obvious signs of progress.

Still, even the departure of Durham’s top assistant is unlikely to prevent Barr from putting out something in the days immediately before the election. After all, as he did with the Mueller report, Barr can always give a completely false “summary” of the investigation and leave the truth to come out long after the spotlight has turned away.

Barr makes it clear—again—that he intends to drop the Durham report before the election

Posted on (Updated by Mark Sumner

On July 28, Attorney General William Barr appeared before the House Judiciary Committee. During a half-day of questioning in which Barr was repeatedly evasive or purposely intended to misunderstand questions, there was one answer he provided which was absolutely clear. When Florida Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell asked Barr to commit that the conspiracy theory-based report being prepared by John Durham would not be released before the November election, Barr’s answer could not have been briefer. “No,” he said.

Barr has made it absolutely clear that he does intend to deliver an October surprise. Ever since he stepped back onto the national stage by purposely distorting the results of the Mueller investigation, Trump’s new Roy Cohn has been engaged in politicizing the DOJ and turning the department into an wing of Trump’s reelection campaign. One of his first acts was drafting U.S. Attorney John "Bull" Durham to begin a round-the-world quest into claims Trump had made against Joe Biden, the pursuit of a DNC server that never existed, and undermining the actions of his own department in the Trump-Russia investigation. 

And now, as the campaign enters its final two months, Barr is being equally clear that he’s ready to ignore the Justice Department's “60-day rule” against taking overtly political steps in the final weeks before an election.

As Trump continues to show that he will say anything, Barr continues to make it equally clear that he will do anything to back up Trump’s statements and actions. As CNN notes, Barr was aggressively belligerent in a Wednesday night interview, making it clear that he is more than willing to break the 60-day rule, or any other rule, if that’s what it takes to keep Trump planted in the White House.

Barr wasn’t just unwilling to agree that Durham’s international quest for lies wouldn’t be packaged up for release before November 3, he was all in on Trump’s statements about how mail-in ballots lead to fraud. These were especially egregious statements coming from an official charged with keeping the elections safe and who knows that there is no evidence backing such claims.

CNN: "You've said you're worried a foreign country could send thousands of fake ballots ... what are you basing that on?"

Barr: "Logic."

CNN: "But have you seen any evidence?" 

Barr: “No.”

But Barr doesn’t seem to need any evidence. Or rules.

Because in the CNN interview, he repeated that he doesn’t believe the 60-day rule applies to the Durham investigation. "I will handle these cases as appropriate,” said Barr, “and I do not think anything we do in the Durham investigation is going to be affecting the election."

Of course not. Just because Barr accompanied Durham to Rome where he tried to convince Italian authorities to join him in claims that professor Joseph Mifsud was secretly a CIA plant put in place months in advance to snare Trump adviser George Papadopoulos into trying to make contact with Russian officials, doesn’t mean there’s anything political about the investigation. Just because Barr was already secretly working with Durham at the time he redacted the Mueller report. Just because Barr and Durham dropped in on Australian intelligence and unsuccessfully tried to get them to agree that that Australian official Alexander Downer planted false evidence against Carter Page. Just because Barr has made it absolutely clear that the Durham investigation is “broad in scope and multifaceted” including trying find some basis behind the Ukraine fantasy behind Trump’s impeachment—a conspiracy aimed directly at generating false evidence against Joe Biden … none of that makes it political.

What’s clear from everything that’s been learned about Durham’s investigation is that it’s been spectacularly unsuccessful. Barr and Durham didn’t get Italy to lie for them about Mifsud. They couldn’t get Australia to lie for them about Downer. And the heads of both MI5 and MI6 in the U.K. refused to play along with their claims about Joe Biden’s actions in Ukraine. The only actual charge to come out of the investigation so far is a single count of altering an email against decidedly third-tier figure and former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith. And the truth is that Clinesmith’s actions weren’t discovered by Durham at all—they were included in the report prepared by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz last December.

To date, it appears the Durham investigation has turned up exactly nothing that wasn’t previously known, and has completely struck out when it comes to trying to fulfill Trump’s conspiracy fantasies. However, none of that will stop William Barr from issuing a deliberately confusing last-minute memo designed to present things in a completely upside-down manner. After all, that’s his speciality.

Barr makes it clear that he intends to deliver an October surprise … that will surprise no one

Posted on (Updated by Mark Sumner

In his Tuesday hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General William Barr made plenty of statements that justifiably raised eyebrows—among them his refusal to acknowledge a direct threat against a federal judge, his lack of concern for Donald Trump’s pardoning people directly involved in his campaign, and his smug willingness to overlook any evidence, no matter how obvious, against Trump or anyone close to Trump. Barr’s entire appearance was simply dripping with disdain for the entire legal process, Congress, and plain old decency.

So it’s not surprising that among the statements made by Barr, one threat got little attention. Not only did Barr make it clear that he intends to lob an “October surprise” into the election works, he added in a signal that he’s going full QAnon by adding not-at-all-disguised reference to Pizzagate in the mix. Sometime in the final weeks of the campaign, Barr fully intends to fulfill every Republican fantasy with a “report” on how Democrats tried to … do something. 

From literally the week he arrived back in Washington, D.C., Barr has been following through on Donald Trump’s wishes to pursue conspiracy theories related to the Russia investigation. Not only did Barr begin his second session as attorney general (AG) by purposely distorting the results of the Mueller investigation and hiding evidence collected by the Department of Justice, he drafted U.S. Attorney John "Bull" Durham to begin an international quest to find anything that could back up Pizzagate-level claims of persecution.

The Where in the World is Hillary’s “Missing Server” world tour has seen Barr and Durham in Australia, trying to get that government to admit that Australian official Andrew Downer was actually an instrument of U.S. intelligence planting false justification to open an investigation. They’ve visited Rome and London in an attempt to get officials there to agree that Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud was another CIA plant put in place to lure George Papadopoulos into spilling the beans on Trump. And they’ve met with an array of Rudy Giuliani approved pro-Russian Ukrainians, looking for that elusive proof that Joe Biden something something Hunter. Also, they’ve seriously spent time pursuing a Democratic National Convention (DNC) email server and Ukrainian hackers, neither of which ever existed. The list of actions that Barr has taken to support Trump’s ludicrous conspiracy theories is lengthy, and still growing. 

From all of this, Barr is preparing a report that will undoubtedly confirm that Trump was “right.” Barr is almost certain to paint already identified infractions by FBI agents and decisions made by Justice Department officials as parts of a deep state conspiracy meant to set up Trump before he was elected—an attempted “coup” only thwarted by Trump’s vigilant eye and firm hand on the rudder.

This isn’t the first time the Barr-Durham report has been expected. During the impeachment hearings there was a widespread belief that Barr was going to bomb the proceedings with a report that included claims against James Comey, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and even President Barack Obama. The report didn’t come when expected … but then, thanks to the Republicans in the Senate who refused to hear a single witness, it wasn’t really needed.

How far down into QAnon white rabbit land is Barr willing to go? As The Washington Post reports, when Republican Rep. Tom McClintock took the opportunity during the hearing to join Barr in moaning about the failings of the Russia investigation, he asked Barr if Durham’s report was going to beat the election deadline. “Are you going to be able to right this wrong before it becomes a precedent for future election interference by corrupt officials in our justice and intelligence agencies?” asked McClintock.

After complaining that the investigation had been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Barr went on to say: “Justice is not something you order up on a schedule like you’re ordering a pizza.” That was far from an accidental statement. QAnon conspirators frequently sift through public statements to find some obscure reference that can be construed as having something to do with their impossibly arcane beliefs. Barr didn’t make it that hard. Considering that the entire QAnon conspiracy theory began with claims about Democratic officials hiding an “international pedophile ring” behind pizza orders, Barr was blowing a QAnon bullhorn, underlining his intention of delivering the goods.

Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell took the oppositite approach, asking Barr if he would “commit to not releasing any report by Mr. Durham before the November election.” Barr’s answer in this case was much more succinct: “No.”

Barr is making it clear that sometime in the remaining 98 days before the election, he intends to drop a sheaf of documents that builds every molehill of wild speculation into a mountain of even wilder accusations. At this point, more pretense around Ukraine or servers or commas in the warrant for Carter Page may seem picayune, especially as the tide of coronavirus deaths rolls on toward 200,000. On the other hand, Barr could even include manufactured indictments against Clinton, or Obama, or even Biden. That would get attention. After all, Barr has made it absolutely clear that there are no lines. 

And both Barr and Trump are counting on the media to be every bit as cooperative in trumpeting whatever is in this report as they were in making Clinton’s emails the number one story in 2016.

Barr’s ‘investigation’ into the Russia investigation began months earlier than previously known

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Attorney General William Barr has been conducting a series of investigations into the origins of the Russia investigation since he arrived to bail Trump out. Republicans and their media pals have been pushing the idea that some always-unspecified crime was committed by following up on information that Putin was determined to interfere in the U.S. election, and that Trump officials were eager to welcome his assistance. After all, Obamagate was just awful—even if no one can explain why.

But maybe what’s needed is an investigation into the origins of Barr’s investigation. Because new information shows that Barr was already talking to his own hand-picked investigator, U.S. Attorney John "Bull" Durham, before he released the redacted Mueller report to the public. A whole series of meetings between Durham and Barr took place soon after the attorney general returned to Washington, D.C., all for the purposes of ripping into the Russia investigation and supporting Trump’s endless string of conspiracy theories.

As CNN reports, records show that Barr brought Durham in for a series of meetings well before announcing the official start of an investigation into how the Russia investigation got underway. Soon after being confirmed as attorney general, Barr began pulling in Durham, meeting with him much more frequently than other U.S. attorneys. 

That Barr hit the ground ready to attack the Mueller investigation isn’t surprising; after all, it was a letter complaining about that investigation that was largely responsible for netting Barr his job. But it seems that Barr went in the door already planning how he would try to attack the Russia probe, and who he would select to do it. That degree of early action opens questions into whether Barr was already moving the pieces into place to attack Mueller before he sat down in the Justice Department.

Barr’s meeting with Durham eventually became a series of round-the-world trips in which both Barr and Durham undermined U.S. intelligence agencies and attempted to get allies to confirm parts of ludicrous conspiracy theories. That includes attempting to get officials in both Rome and London to agree that Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud was a CIA plant put in place to lure George Papadopoulos into connection Trump and Putin, that Australian official Andrew Downer was an instrument of U.S. intelligence who provided false reasons for opening an investigation, and that Ukrainian hackers conspired with Hillary Clinton to make it seem as though Russia stole data from the DNC. 

Barr and Durham apparently failed to find any takers on their Q-flavored tour, but that didn’t stop Barr from announcing that Durham’s investigation had become a “criminal probe” in October and announcing an expanded scope in December that included having Durham going after former FBI Director James Comey and other former intelligence officials, including former CIA Director John Brennan. 

This week, Barr refused to answer a question about the status or focus of Durham’s investigation. He did say that he doesn’t expect that the probe will result in a criminal investigation of Joe Biden or Barack Obama. That may seem like a disappointment for Trump fans, but it doesn’t mean that Durham isn’t going to announce charges against Comey, or Brennan, or anyone else that Trump wants charged. It doesn’t even mean that there won’t be charges against Obama or Biden as Barr is perfectly capable of feigning surprise at just what Durham has “uncovered.”

What’s clear is that the Durham probe was planned in advance. And while Barr has complained repeatedly about there being insufficient evidence to charge Michael Flynn, or insufficient evidence to initiate the Russia investigation, the Durham probe was created as a total fishing expedition, with no evidence whatsoever.