John Durham concludes FBI should NOT have investigated Trump

[KCfromNC]

Right...John Durham. The guy who successfully won judgements against dirty FBI agents

Agents? That's not true. He got one single conviction out of the entire 4-year investigation.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Agents? That's not true. He got one single conviction out of the entire 4-year investigation.

And he didn't even investigate the convicted individual. The Inspector General had already investigated that case before Durham started work on the project.

 

[hislegacy]

“Indeed, based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the instant investigation, neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Durham said in his report.

 

[DaisyDay]

(2) The Australians provided this documentation immediately after they saw WikiLeaks releasing Hillary emails online.

Important point: the DNC emails were hacked and released, not Clinton's. This is muddying the waters as the Clinton email server is a distinct from the DNC's.

 

[childeye 2]

Important point: the DNC emails were hacked and released, not Clinton's. This is muddying the waters as the Clinton email server is a distinct from the DNC's.

Thank you for this correction.

The Durham report:
The Australian diplomats would later inform the FBI, and subsequently the Office, that the impetus for passing the Paragraph Five information in late-July was the public release by WikiLeaks ( on July 22, 2016) of email communications that had been hacked from the DNC servers.

The Mueller report:
During that meeting, Mifsud told Papadopoulos that he had met with high-level Russian government officials during his recent trip to Moscow. Mifsud also said that, on the trip, he learned that the Russians had obtained “dirt” on candidate Hillary Clinton. As Papadopoulos later stated to the FBI, Mifsud said that the “dirt” was in the form of “emails of Clinton,” and that they “have thousands of emails.”

 

[DaisyDay]

I understand that Hillary screwed up big time, thought she was above the law and could set up private servers.

IIRC, she got the idea from former Sec. of State Colin Powell. (Linkie).

She got hacked, she got exposed for a lot of corrupt behavior and nomination rigging.

She did NOT get hacked. The DNC got "hacked" (if you call phishing hacking). The "nomination rigging" was legal if not entirely ethical or transparent.

That doesn't justify blaming it all on your political opponent and handing disinformation to the FBI to weaponize them.

That is routine campaigning coupled with genuine alarm at the actual Russian interference.

 

[DaisyDay]

The Steel Dosier was used (amongst other evidences) to support getting electronic surveillance of Carter Page. The electronic surveillance turned up nothing important and so ultimately the Steel Dosier was ultimately not relevant to the investigation.

Furthermore, the surveillance on Carter Page was placed AFTER he had left the Trump campaign, so.

 

[childeye 2]

hislegacy said:
“Indeed, based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the instant investigation, neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Durham said in his report.

The Durham report in bold above states the obvious, since crossfire Hurricane was opened "to determine whether individual(s) associated with the Trump campaign [were] witting of and/or coordinating activities with the Government of Russia".

 

[Fantine]

I believe the tiny bit of the Mueller report Trump's AG let us see over Durham.

Durham concealed and whitewashed torture in the Bush years, and refused to prosecute the torturers.

 

[Say it aint so]

The Durham report in bold above states the obvious, since crossfire Hurricane was opened "to determine whether individual(s) associated with the Trump campaign [were] witting of and/or coordinating activities with the Government of Russia".

Yes, found it odd that this damning statement by Durham was never a crime being investigated. Mueller painsakingly notes in his report that "collusion isn't a thing" and Durham runs out to note they never found what Mueller said wasn't relevant.

 

[childeye 2]

Yes, found it odd that this damning statement by Durham was never a crime being investigated. Mueller painsakingly notes in his report that "collusion isn't a thing" and Durham runs out to note they never found what Mueller said wasn't relevant.

neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Durham said in his report.

Yes exactly. It sounds like it's an accusation being made by Durham, but is that just my own cynical and hypocritical judgment of Durham, or Durham's cynical and hypocritical judgment of the law enforcement and intelligence communities? One has to read deeper to see that Durham is trying to get people to accept a negative inference of the actions taken by the FBI and by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Titus 1:15
Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.

 

[KCfromNC]

And he didn't even investigate the convicted individual. The Inspector General had already investigated that case before Durham started work on the project.

That's just lazy. Sounds like the guy was just collecting a paycheck while letting others do the work.
I thought conservatives were against that sort of freeloading off government money.

 

[KCfromNC]

“neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Durham said in his report.

That's a weird claim given that the candidate publicly asked for Russia to get the emails of his campaign opponent a few days before the investigation started, saying they'd be rewarded if they did.
I wonder what other factually questionable claims the report is trying to sell.

 

[Belk]

That's just lazy. Sounds like the guy was just collecting a paycheck while letting others do the work.
I thought conservatives were against that sort of freeloading off government money.

They are only against the wrong sort of people doing it. There is a long history of the old boys club being the recipient of government largess.

 

[Ana the Ist]

My point is that the IG was correct in his criticism;

You're certainly entitled to your opinion.

It was a counter-intelligence investigation "to determine whether individual(s) associated with the Trump campaign [were] witting of and/or coordinating activities with the Government of Russia", and also it was opened as a SIM (sensitive investigative matter). The Russians would therefore need to be kept unaware of it and so would the public.

Right....which is the reason why....

No. I'm claiming the public was not informed about crossfire hurricane which began on July 31, 2016.

Sure they were....by the Clinton campaign.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/05/20/politics/hillary-clinton-robby-mook-fbi/index.html

A campaign staffer later passed the information to a reporter from Slate magazine, which the campaign hoped the reporter would "vet it out, and write what they believe is true," Mook said.
Slate published a story on October 31, 2016, raising questions about the odd Trump-Alfa cyber links. After that story came out, Clinton tweeted about it, and posted a news release that said, "This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia.
Odd that Slate got the fake evidence that Clinton planted with the FBI. Let's continue....

"Going to the FBI does not seem like an effective way to get information out to the public," Mook said. "You do that through the media, which is why the information was shared with the media."

Which is a hilarious thing to say back in May of last year. We know the Clinton campaign both....

1. Solicited foreign interference into our election by purchasing fake evidence.
2. Took that evidence to the FBI.
3. Then passed it to the media before the election, specifically right before the vote, to attempt to elicit a response from the voting public.

HRC basically handed me FBI bad intel....bad evidence that Trump was somehow tied to Russia and working with them....and then went and shared the same bad intel with the media. Her team doubted the intel was valid the entire time.....which we now know from the Durham report.

The smoking gun on Trump and his campaign that you seem to think is more important and a more significant issue.....are some failed attempts to getting a meeting with Russia.

Oh, and let's not forget that she literally rigged her party's nomination process.

Are you genuinely unable to see which of those two things is worse?

The public announcement that it was Russia that hacked the DNC came on June 14, 2016, when Crowd strike published its forensic report.

Ok...

I'm just stating the facts according to the reports.

The public was aware the FBI had been investigating what they had reason to believe was Russian hacking of the White house, the state department, and the joint chiefs of staff beginning in 2014. The DNC was alerted to an intrusion by the FBI in mid 2015.

And?

I don't know if he ever worked in the OIG.

Aside from his various appointments as special prosecutor....no, he's never gotten any higher than state attorney for Connecticut.

Yes, I am aware, thanks for asking. That doesn't change the fact that crossfire hurricane was never announced to the public and Wiener's laptop was, which created the logical fallacy in Durham's report that revealed his bias.

What logical fallacy?

Again....pointing out the OIG's bias is not evidence of bias by Durham.

 

[Ana the Ist]

That's a weird claim given that the candidate publicly asked for Russia to get the emails of his campaign opponent a few days before the investigation started, saying they'd be rewarded if they did.

Not really. Both the RNC and DNC were hacked....and they knew this from the FBI. It was basically public knowledge by then. WikiLeaks isn't just some dumping ground for false accusations. Assange likes to think of himself as a reporter, and WikiLeaks as a news outlet that focuses solely on government corruption and lies.

So back when he received all those emails....he's contacting multiple people on both sides of the aisle to vet them.

I wonder what other factually questionable claims the report is trying to sell.

I would just find some cartoons to watch if I were you....you seem to be struggling with the whole thing. Politics is a boring topic....I suggest you find something fun as a hobby.

 

[childeye 2]

You're certainly entitled to your opinion.

Which is also the same criticism of the FBI as the IG. That only serves the point that Durham's is stating an opinion.

Right....which is the reason why....

Right....which is the reason why the public was unaware.

Sure they were....by the Clinton campaign.

The Clinton campaign was unaware of crossfire hurricane also.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/05/20/politics/hillary-clinton-robby-mook-fbi/index.html

A campaign staffer later passed the information to a reporter from Slate magazine, which the campaign hoped the reporter would "vet it out, and write what they believe is true," Mook said.
Slate published a story on October 31, 2016, raising questions about the odd Trump-Alfa cyber links. After that story came out, Clinton tweeted about it, and posted a news release that said, "This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia.
Odd that Slate got the fake evidence that Clinton planted with the FBI. Let's continue....

"Going to the FBI does not seem like an effective way to get information out to the public," Mook said. "You do that through the media, which is why the information was shared with the media."

Which is a hilarious thing to say back in May of last year. We know the Clinton campaign both....

1. Solicited foreign interference into our election by purchasing fake evidence.
2. Took that evidence to the FBI.
3. Then passed it to the media before the election, specifically right before the vote, to attempt to elicit a response from the voting public.

HRC basically handed me FBI bad intel....bad evidence that Trump was somehow tied to Russia and working with them....and then went and shared the same bad intel with the media. Her team doubted the intel was valid the entire time.....which we now know from the Durham report.

The smoking gun on Trump and his campaign that you seem to think is more important and a more significant issue.....are some failed attempts to getting a meeting with Russia.

Oh, and let's not forget that she literally rigged her party's nomination process.

Are you genuinely unable to see which of those two things is worse?

Respectfully, nothing you've posted above indicates that the Clinton campaign nor the public were aware of operation hurricane, so it doesn't prove your claim.

Ok...

Okay, so since crossfire hurricane began on July 31, 2016, the public being made aware that Russia hacked the DNC and were leaking emails from the DNC doesn't prove that the public were aware of operation hurricane.

And?

And so, I'm not claiming that after March 16th, 2016 when thousands of Clinton emails were leaked....nobody was talking about the FBI investigating Russian hacking.

What logical fallacy?

The false equivalency of comparing the investigation into Wiener's laptop, which was publicly announced, with crossfire hurricane which the public was kept unaware of. Wiener's laptop investigation was not dealing with a national security threat, nor did it even open as a SIM. But crossfire hurricane was opened as a counterintelligence investigation into a national security threat that was opened as a SIM.

Again....pointing out the OIG's bias is not evidence of bias by Durham.

Durham did not point out any bias by the OIG that I am aware of. The OIG certainly didn't show bias towards the FBI or Strzok, being that the OIG were critical of the delay (lack of action) to investigate Wiener's laptop. Nor was the IG engaged in a logical fallacy like Durham was.

 

[KCfromNC]

Not really. Both the RNC and DNC were hacked....and they knew this from the FBI. It was basically public knowledge by then. WikiLeaks isn't just some dumping ground for false accusations. Assange likes to think of himself as a reporter, and WikiLeaks as a news outlet that focuses solely on government corruption and lies.

So back when he received all those emails....he's contacting multiple people on both sides of the aisle to vet them.

None of this addresses my point about Donald asking for Russian help before the investigation into his campaign working with Russia was started.

I would just find some cartoons to watch if I were you....you seem to be struggling with the whole thing. Politics is a boring topic....I suggest you find something fun as a hobby.

Guess missing the point is better than these lame attempts at personal attacks, though.

 

[Ana the Ist]

It wasn't until June 14, 2016, that crowd strike published its forensic examination of the DNC server and it was publicly known that their examination showed that it was Russia that hacked the DNC.

Again....WikiLeaks acts as a news reporring website. After March 16th, they would be contacting everyone possible to vet the info they were handed. As Assange himself once remarked...."we are the only outlet that has a record of 100% facts".....and yes, I'm paraphrasing there.

The documented report from the Australians in late July is that Papadopoulos had heard as early as the beginning of May that Russia had dirt on Hillary in the form of emails and they were going to release it anonymously to hurt Hillary.

Probably from Assange or the Hillary campaign....because WikiLeaks had the emails since March.

The significance is that Papadopoulos is a Trump campaign official, who is aware in May that a foreign adversary, Russia, is interfering in the election with the objective to hurt Hillary and help the Trump campaign win. The FBI had no choice but to open a counterintelligence investigation "to determine whether individual(s) associated with the Trump campaign [were] witting of and/or coordinating activities with the Government of Russia" .

Actually the FBI could have given him what is known as a "defensive briefing" warning him that he might be approached by Russian agents working to disrupt the election. This is something they regularly do in these situations in the past....for both Democrats and Republicans....and they continued to do for Hillary's campaign in the 2016 election.

Of course, for some odd reason, they didn't do that for Trump's campaign. The enthusiasm for finding dirt on Trump as quoted by FBI agents was likely do to their own political bias. This is never a good thing in an agency that is supposed to uphold the ideals of justice at the federal level....and that kind of blatant bias is probably why they ended up dropping important cases to go sit outside of school board meetings when this administration decided to push a very grossly ideological curriculum in public schools.

Exactly, there was a crime in progress and anyone who knew of this criminal activity and was a Trump campaign member and said nothing, could be considered complicit

What in the world are you talking about?

Anyone who knew of this? You mean like Hillary Clinton? She certainly knew that she'd been hacked and that her campaign had rigged her nomination. You saying that instead of trying to erase emails and act like it wasn't a big deal l....she should have come forward and told everyone that multiple top secret and higher documents were accessed in her private servers?

Or are you trying to say that trying to tie Trump's campaign to it despite having garbage evidence was a mistake?

The circumstance of criminal interference by the Russians made it so that If any campaign member or candidate Trump were to admit that Russia hacked the DNC to hurt Hillary,

They could say they knew about Russia hacking the DNC.....they could have been told by the FBI when the FBI informed them that Russia also hacked the RNC. They could have come forward and said that Assange told them it was the Russians who dumped info on WikiLeaks. None of these things would have made them "complicit". Presidential campaigns aren't detective agencies.

they would have to also admit that Putin illegally interfered to help make Trump President; just like the Don jr. email from June 3 revealed when it was made public.

Nothing in the email refers to Putin or any Russian government officials. It refers to a Russian pop star. You're only kidding yourself there. Don Jr made them public himself in the hope of transparency.

Well, like I said, the circumstances made it so that Trump could not admit he was being helped by Putin.

Wrong.

So, Trump started the Russia hoax by flat-out denying that Russia ever hacked the DNC.

Trump started the Russia hoax? Is that a serious statement?

And in doing so he resorted to slandering others, blaming the FBI, and the Democrats, and the media, in pursuit of his own self-interests.

What slander? I can certainly understand why the man didn't trust these various entities for essentially trying to frame him for crimes he didn't commit.

That's how he became compromised by Putin.

Lol compromised?

Here's Trump in continuous denial for over 3 years feeding the Russia hoax conspiracy that Russia never hacked the DNC server:

June 17 2016 Fox news reports:

Trump, for his part, isn’t buying the DNC explanation that this is the work of some nefarious outside hacker. “Much of it is false and/or entirely inaccurate,” he says in a statement. “We believe it was the DNC that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader. Too bad the DNC doesn’t hack Crooked Hillary’s 33,000 missing emails.”

----------------------------------------

That's typical of a presidential candidate who is falsely being blamed for the same crimes by his opponent.

Hillary would go on to make similar accusations of Tulsi Gabbard in the 2020 nomination process. That's rather odd considering that she wasn't even in that race. She's definitely an expert in spreading disinformation though... and it's a shame she wasn't prosecuted once it was found out she was behind the Steele dossier.

Feb. 16, 2017 Trump tweet:
The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly (306), so they made up a story - RUSSIA. Fake news!

One of those moments where Trump was telling the truth. Sure, it was a guess....but as the Mueller Investigation and now the Durham report revealed....100% true.

---------------------------------------
July 16, 2018, Trump at Helsinki:

Trump:
So let me just say that we have two thoughts. You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server. Why haven’t they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the democratic national committee? I’ve been wondering that. I’ve been asking that for months and months and I’ve been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know, where is the server and what is the server saying? With that being said, all I can do is ask the question. My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others and said they think it’s Russia.

I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server.

-------------------------------------

Again, this is a man still being investigated by his own federal government basically the entire time in office....for the crime of running for President. He's still facing prosecution for it. They don't want him running again. I think the Georgia case is the most likely chance if they have a chance at all....and I doubt they do. We're talking about something 3 years old soon....if they had something it would be apparent by now.

September 4, 2019, Trump asks Zelensky to find the server examined by Crowdstrike.

I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.

And he was correct. I understand that a lot of people believe that Hunter Biden has legitimate jobs as a lawyer in the Ukraine....despite not having any relevant experience and being a crack addict at the time....and the job isn't one that existed solely for the political influence of Biden, but I'm not one of those people. There's easily thousands of more qualified lawyers and no evidence Hunter did any real work outside of using his father to squash a corruption investigation into Burisma.

To drive home the point....there's people on here literally saying that withholding aid to Ukraine because Trump wanted an investigation started is illegal....

Yet when Biden withheld aid to get an investigation ended....no problem? It's literally an investigation into the company his son works for and he's almost certainly getting a cut from. Forget about the billions in aid and military support he's handed them since. He appears to have admitted on camera what everyone wanted Trump impeached over.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Which is also the same criticism of the FBI as the IG. That only serves the point that Durham's is stating an opinion.

No....they either violated their own procedures or they didn't.

Right....which is the reason why the public was unaware.

You seem to be making a big deal of this....the idea that the FBI only formally announced an investigation they shouldn't have ever done in the first place.

The Clinton campaign was unaware of crossfire hurricane also.

Sure....their attempt to frame Trump to deflect from HRC's intel screw up is purely coincidence.

Respectfully, nothing you've posted above indicates that the Clinton campaign nor the public were aware of operation hurricane, so it doesn't prove your claim.

Okay, so since crossfire hurricane began on July 31, 2016, the public being made aware that Russia hacked the DNC and were leaking emails from the DNC doesn't prove that the public were aware of operation hurricane.

Ok....why does that matter?

You have the Clinton campaign and the media all suggesting that Trump was involved with the Russians.

Is this supposed to be praise for the FBI? Is it supposed to be praise for the public? What is your point?

And so, I'm not claiming that after March 16th, 2016 when thousands of Clinton emails were leaked....nobody was talking about the FBI investigating Russian hacking.

Then why do you keep bringing it up? You're acting like the public was aware of the hacking....but assumed the FBI wasn't investigating it.

The false equivalency of comparing the investigation into Wiener's laptop, which was publicly announced, with crossfire hurricane which the public was kept unaware of.

What false equivalency? I think he's pointing out these two incidents weren't handled equivalently.

Wiener's laptop investigation was not dealing with a national security threat, nor did it even open as a SIM.

You're aware that new HRC emails were found on the laptop right?

You're aware that multiple classified documents/intel was found in her emails, right?

But crossfire hurricane was opened as a counterintelligence investigation into a national security threat that was opened as a SIM.

Durham did not point out any bias by the OIG that I am aware of. The OIG certainly didn't show bias towards the FBI or Strzok, being that the OIG were critical of the delay (lack of action) to investigate Wiener's laptop. Nor was the IG engaged in a logical fallacy like Durham was.

Ok....you seem to think Durham was biased or used bad logic or something.

Regarding bias....you haven't quoted Durham. You quoted OIG. Regarding logical fallacy....you seem to think he's drawing a false equivalence about the weiner laptop and allegations into Trump's campaign. Let's be clear....

The laptop is hard evidence. It's not mere rumor, allegations, or speculation. Hard evidence was found. They had to investigate and they did so....quietly and discreetly.
The investigation into Trump however, included no hard evidence....just rumors and allegations from his political opponents. Durham highlights how differently these were handled as an example of just how off the rails the FBI went regarding Trump. That's a valid point. If you're unaware that leaking top secret info because you want to set up your own private server as secretary of the state is a matter of national security then I don't know what to tell you.

None of this addresses my point about Donald asking for Russian help before the investigation into his campaign working with Russia was started.

Not sure what you're referring to here...be specific.

Guess missing the point is better than these lame attempts at personal attacks, though.

Make a point. If I miss it... then you can accuse me of missing a point. You have to actually make a point first though.