Special counsel John Durham’s long-awaited report on Russiagate was released earlier this week, and there’s no denying how damning it is. The report unequivocally concludes that when the Obama administration initiated Crossfire Hurricane it had zero concrete evidence of collusion and that the FBI’s conduct during the investigation was undeniably influenced by bias, leading to multiple violations that should deeply concern every American.
The report found that the FBI deliberately excluded exculpatory evidence, that Obama officials knew there was no evidence yet promoted the collusion narrative anyway, and that the Clinton campaign was behind everything. This so-called investigation was not a genuine pursuit of truth but rather a full-fledged witch-hunt in every conceivable manner. And making the situation worse, the FBI had different standards for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. While the FBI was pursuing its bogus investigation of Trump, it refused to investigate illegal foreign donations to Hillary’s campaign.
Whether you want to call it a hoax or a witch-hunt, it doesn’t matter because both apply. Meanwhile, this wrongly initiated investigation gave the media cover to undermine Trump’s presidency and for countless Democrats to insist (wrongly) that Trump was illegitimately elected. Both the New York Times and Washington Post were shamefully awarded Pulitzer Prizes for their coverage of the story. It is a dark testament to the corrupted state of affairs when esteemed institutions reward and honor the dissemination of malicious falsehoods.
This disturbing revelation casts a shadow of suspicion over the very pillars of journalism — which, frankly, was already on shaky ground — exposing a sinister web of deceit and manipulation that taints the integrity of media. The same media that we expect to expose corruption was, in fact, a willing accomplice in promoting an easily disproven conspiracy theory that an objective and professional Justice Department would never have wasted time, energy, or resources investigating.
But will it make a difference? Will the New York Times and Washington Post lose their Pulitzers? Will anyone go to jail for pursuing this hoax? Unfortunately, if that’s what you were hoping for, it’s not going to happen. Heck, despite the Durham and Mueller reports proving conclusively that this was not the case, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) still insists that there was collusion! The left holds onto its false narratives no matter how much proof that they’re untrue.
It doesn’t matter that Durham’s report exposed the unsettling truth that the FBI disregarded surveillance standards by launching an investigation based on no evidence. Durham recommended no new charges, and Durham’s cases against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann and Steele Dossier contributor Igor Danchenko ended in acquittal despite all the evidence against them.
The report also made no new recommendations for DOJ and FBI guidelines. “This report does not recommend any wholesale changes in the guidelines and policies that the Department and the FBI now have in place to ensure proper conduct and accountability in how counterintelligence activities are carried out…the answer is not the creation of new rules but a renewed fidelity to the old,” it reads.
If FBI and DOJ partisans weren’t following the existing rules or guidelines, and no new charges are being brought for the failure to have followed them, what’s the incentive for officials to follow them in the future? Heck, the abuses of the FBI and DOJ were being brought to light during the Trump administration, and that didn’t stop them from protecting Joe Biden from the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. They recycled the same tactics from 2016 to help the Democrat presidential candidate, and more than fifty former intelligence officials were willing to put their names on a letter claiming the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.
I wish I could feel better about the situation, but I don’t. The fact is, if we’re going to see reform of the Department of Justice and the FBI, it’s on Congress to do so… This means we can’t expect anything to happen until the GOP has control of the House, Senate, and the White House, which means that the same abuses that happened in 2016 and 2020 could happen again in 2024.
