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Durham Sends Message To AG Merrick Garland With Latest Move

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


An op-ed published by The Hill lays out what makes Special Counsel John Durham’s ongoing investigation into the origins of the “Trump-Russia collusion” investigation significant.

The piece, by Kevin R. Brock, a former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, an FBI special agent for 24 years, and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center who now serves as a security consultant, begins by noting that for a year and a half, the country did not hear much of out Durham after he was appointed late in former President Trump’s term.

Aside from indictments regarding “peripheral” figures, it looked to many of Trump’s supporters as though not much was going to come of Durham’s probe and “that elites higher up the stack are going to get away with their chicanery,” Brock wrote.

“The problem for Durham is that these perceptions were providing the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) with increasing political top cover to shut down the special prosecutor’s office as an unproductive, politics-driven exercise in futility that is wasting taxpayer dollars,” Brock continued.

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“If Durham were to be terminated, the American people might not even push back much since no one had a clue whether his investigation was bearing meaningful fruit,” he wrote.

Brock went on to note that Attorney General Merrick Garland has already moved to undercut Durham by undertaking measures to repair the reputation of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe who had been fired during the Trump administration.

But, he added, Durham could not simply hold a press conference and divulge his investigation’s inner workings and findings. So instead, he used a rather “innocuous” court filing on Feb. 11 that actually contained a number of bombshell revelations, tipping his hand to his findings.

Brock writes:

Tucked inside the court filing, John Durham laid out a good chunk of the case he’s building, and it was stunning. Durham revealed the outlines of a corrupt conspiracy by operatives linked to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The exposed conspiracy allegedly made a contrived, fraudulent, and shocking attempt to entice the FBI and CIA to use their powers against the rival Trump campaign and presidency.

This recent filing by Durham was designed to have two effects. First, and most important, he has now made any decision by the president or attorney general to dump him much more difficult to undertake. The last time a president fired a special prosecutor who was making significant progress, he lost his presidency. [Our emphasis]

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Second, Durham has signaled to the American people that his investigation has legs, despite perceptions of plodding inertia. He has provided hope that accountability in D.C. — rare as a MAGA sticker on a Prius — actually might happen.    

Durham’s filing triggered hyperbolic conjecture on the right and nervous silence on the left.  Don’t be distracted by reactions driven by politics. Look at the actual words Durham used; they’re troubling enough.

Brock then honed in on the “Factual Background” portion of the filing in which Durham expounded on information that led to the indictment of Michael Sussmann, an attorney who is linked to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and stands accused of lying to the FBI.

“Joffe, in this scenario, isn’t an independent whistleblower; he’s a partisan whistle-maker.  Durham could only know all this if either Joffe told him or the sources Joffe approached for help disclosed those conversations to Durham’s investigators. Neither reality can be comforting to those involved,” Brock writes.

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“It is particularly damaging because, if true, Joffe appears to have unethically and possibly illegally turned over proprietary government data to a civilian third party.”

Brock concludes that given what Durham has recently disclosed, there are more than sufficient grounds to allow him to continue his probe.

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