Republicans have been looking for a white knight who will finally prove that the deep state conspired to support Hillary Clinton and block Trump as much as possible. Sadly for them, evidence for this has been spotty, and there were never enough connections with the evidence that existed to make a convincing story of it. The Inspector General Michael Horowitz was supposed to blow the whole mess wide open, but he didn't come through. So Durham was the next and probably last white knight.
Durham really tried to deliver. However it's rather hard if you can't fabricate evidence. When you're stuck with lackluster evidence, you just shine it up as much as possible, and this is what Durham did.
Mostly he hammers on the FBI for moving too aggressively to a full investigation instead of a smaller investigation. He also hammers on the FISA warrant application, but that's a repeat of the criticism from IG Horowitz, so not new info.
So it's page after page of Durham droning on about the FBI agents being too serious, not gentle enough, not having a light enough touch, being tougher on Trump campaign officials than Hillary campaign officials. Why were they so hot to investigate more deeply? Gee, Durham seems to think it was bias against Trump, and nothing to do with the unprecendented hacking and release of DNC documents.
New from the Durham report: The Clinton Plan
I did learn something new from the Durham report. I'm not sure how I missed it, but back in late July 2016, some intelligence floated in that Hillary Clinton approved a campaign plan (the Clinton plan) to fabricate information and spin that Trump was conspiring with the Russians. This plan (which was just an allegation that floated in from somewhere unspecified) wasn't taken seriously by the intelligence community, so they didn't seriously look into whether there was such a plan and it was being executed.
Now a lot of conservatives thought or still think that this is real. The deep state (which includes Hillary) did join together to fabricate the Russia hoax, and it was wildly successful.
I knew about the deep state version of the theory, but not the Clinton plan version. The deep state version has Brennan, Hillary, Susan Rice, Obama, Biden, Comey, Clapper, FusionGPS and some others, and it's been around since before the 2016 election. I didn't hear about the Clinton Plan version until the Durham report.
There are data points that support the deep state conspiracy theory, including the existence of Crossfire Hurricane, the Steele dossier, the texts between Page and Strzok, unmasking of names in intelligence, etc. However, a more likely explanation is that the US does have counterintelligence agencies, and they are activated in the case of Russians fucking acting like assholes and interfering in US elections. So having an investigation like Crossfire Hurricane is a reasonable and legitimate response to the fucking hacking. Unmasking--reasonable! Obama briefed--reasonable! And so on.
The Steele dossier was a typical kind of opposition research, but it sure backfired, so that was a mistake, and it's on Hillary. The moral of that episode is not to get your oppo research from disreputable folks like Russia intelligence sources. Just don't do it because it's likely to be shit and you don't want contact with it.
Extras. Horowitz report. Wittes of Lawfare is slowly digesting the Durham report. A 2018 version of the Russiagate conspiracy theory. This article may contain the best synopsis of the Clinton Plan. However there isn't a lot there. Clinton hardly had to invent fibs about Trump and Russia because Russia and Trump were creating so much ammunition on their own.
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