A Tale Told by an Idiot, Full of Sound and Fury, etc.

 

I'm not literally calling John Durham an "idiot", mind you, because I don't think he is. I also think Jake Tapper probably has the capacity to read and think critically, and you know--I can technically use stairs and take the elevator at every opportunity. What I think is that Durham was given an assignment that was distinctively difficult: try to make an investigation into a critical national security issue seem like it was unnecessary and unfair to a particular 2016 Presidential candidate.

And the very best Durham could do was suggest that, although DOJ and the FBI don't need to do anything different, and even though out of three cases he got exactly one conviction (sentence: probation) the bottom line is his opinion is that the FBI could have been a little slower before going into an investigation that was like, probably just great to be a preliminary investigation based on the little they knew from Downer and the Aussies. 

And after all the Mueller investigation convictions and the Senate intelligence report into Russia's interference in the 2016 election and the DOJ IG investigation report, I'm going to just laugh and say: "Well, you tried." 

Because that's me, a person who has been paying attention. And I know that for people who were inclined to believe the Russia, Russia, Russia thing was a hoax based on whatever Trump had to say about it are very inclined to take Durham's word that despite the lack of any connecting of dots to support his conclusion that the investigation still seems hinky to him and will fast-forward to that conclusion whether there is any strength to that argument. 

Just like certain respected journalists might be inclined to do out of an impulse to post "FIRST!" under someone's bulletin board comment. (An old-school internet reference.)

But there isn't really anything, after four years and whatever the dollar figure is. Durham traveled and labored to come up with this result, and even found some wrongdoing--but maybe not the kind he was looking for. And what he has at the very end is a much softer opinion than the "Crime of the century!" puffery he and Barr promised. 

"The FBI investigation happened, and I am unhappy with it," is not, in fact, scathing or devastating. It's simply an opinion by a man whose mission was to back up something like that opinion. And I ask you--did he do the thing? 

He did not. He even knows he did not. He knows the Steele Dossier didn't open the investigation and he knows that counterintelligence was bound to investigate Russian involvement--it wasn't personal against the Trump campaign, but it was certainly incidental and important that Russia favored Trump and reached out to people in the Trump campaign (like Don Jr. let's not forget). 

It is what it is--a sop to MAGA true believers who want to believe there is evidence of their Big Daddy's claims of Deep State malfeasance. I think the effort to provide just that is its own kind of malfeasance.  And that's my final word on that, unless someone makes me say more.