Trump Sees ‘SCUM’ ‘COCKROACHES’ World Rates Durham Report As Flop

“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” — Simon and Garfunkle

History will reflect that Crossfire Hurricane, in the final analysis, bore as much relationship to a real investigative report of government institutions as Donald Trump’s sharpied revisions to weather maps bore to legitimate meteorological research. For years special counsel John Durham alluded to a blockbuster and what he delivered, in the end, was something akin to the products in the remainder bin at a Blockbuster-named video store. Like so many things Trumpian, the set up was one thing, the payoff something else altogether. As a matter of fact, with the exception of the stolen election fable having its last stand in the parking lot of the Four Seasons Landscaping Company, the 306-page Crossfire Hurricane report is the Trump era’s biggest flop.

Nevertheless, Trump is livid and up in arms, cursing and declaiming in all-caps on Truth Social. Have at it, Donald. By the end of summer you’ll be back on Twitter, hat in hand, a man without a social media platform to call his own.

I don’t know where Trump is reading about this “quality, importance, and professionalism” but I can tell you it’s not in the pages of New York Times. Their version of the facts is nowhere near as glowing. Their description brings to mind an uber-expensive Broadway play, much ballyhooed and invested in, which closes after a week, to the chagrin of all, most especially its financiers — while the critics howl, “I told ya so!”

The report amounted, in part, to a defense and justification of a lengthy investigation that developed only two criminal cases, both of which ended in acquittal.

Mr. Durham repeated his own insinuations, presented in court filings, that information developed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign had helped fuel the Russia investigation, which shadowed nearly two years of Mr. Trump’s presidency and was eventually overseen by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

He also repeated criticisms made in 2019 by an inspector general who uncovered how the F.B.I. botched wiretap applications used in the inquiry.

If there’s such a thing as a rehash of a rehash, this is pretty much it and the Times goes on to say as much.

Mr. Durham went beyond criticizing the wiretap applications, writing: “Our investigation also revealed that senior F.B.I. personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor toward the information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities. This information in part triggered and sustained Crossfire Hurricane and contributed to the subsequent need for Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation.”

But in using the word “triggered,” Mr. Durham’s report echoed a conspiracy theory pushed by supporters of Mr. Trump that the F.B.I. opened the investigation in July 2016 based on the so-called Steele dossier, opposition research indirectly funded by the Clinton campaign that was later discredited.

In fact, as Mr. Durham acknowledged elsewhere in the report, the dossier did not reach those investigators until mid-September. The F.B.I. instead opened the investigation based on a tip from an Australian diplomat, after WikiLeaks published hacked Democratic emails, that a Trump campaign aide seemed to have advance knowledge that Russia would release information damaging to the Clinton campaign.

Simply, Durham’s report took over four years and cost over $6 million. Its purpose was to prove that the FBI had unlawfully targeted Trump, who was as innocent of any dealings with Russia during the 2016 election as the pure driven snow. Trump depended upon the Durham report to provide shock and awe headlines and complete vindication. Lacking that, he provides his own shock and awe headlines and makes up the vindication as he goes along. Look for that to continue and amplify.

Bill Barr tried. He appointed Durham as special counsel and then kept him on in that role even after Trump lost the election. Barr spared no effort. It still wasn’t enough.

So much for exposure of the Deep State. Forget about all those high-ranking Democratic officials who Trump was going to see off to Guantanamo, personally. All of that will remain where it began, in the swamp fevered dreams of QAnon compounds, flying the Confederate flag and stockpiling apocalypse food, between boxes of barbed wire, beans, and Bibles.

Send bullets and money, Ma. We’re running out of both. John Durham didn’t come through. Again. Four years, six million bucks, and we are told, “The only two cases Mr. Durham himself developed, both cases of false statements against people involved in outside efforts that raised suspicions over Mr. Trump’s possible ties to Russia, ended in acquittal.” Wow. If you put this in a novel, nobody would believe it, but in Trump era Washington, anything goes.

Trump is busy fundraising off the Durham report, as we speak, and Jim Jordan and the other cronies will soon find a way to spin all manner of fabulist tales. They never let the facts get in the way of a good story.