John Durham Investigation Ends

[Dill]

(05-16-2023, 08:11 AM)pally Wrote: What I found interesting is that he recommended no changes in how the FBI does business. That just seems odd considering his conclusion is the investigations should have never happened in the first place.  He spent an awful long time and spent a whole lot of money coming up with a conclusion that he apparently has had for some time.  The IG’s report seems on face value more substantive

No changes, because these had already been recommended and implemented, starting in 2019, thanks to the IG report you mention. 

The explicit GOAL of the Durham investigation, as stated on the pages 2-3 of the Durham Report, was to investigate CRIMINAL ACTIVITY. 
To meet the standards set by Trump and the RWM, that would mean something like evidence that Obama spied on Trump, or
that the FBI explicitly planned to take Trump down--something that would e.g., decisively refute charges that the FBI had swung the election
to Trump by publicly re-opening the case into Hillary's emails. 

Three people were eventually recommended for criminal prosecution. Two of these, Igor Danchenko and Michael Sussman,
were acquitted by federal juries. The other, Kevin Clinesmith, got a year probation for altering an email used to
extend a FISA warrant on Carter Page. Though to be fair, that info was already uncovered by the IG in 2019, so
maybe not an "accomplishment" of the Durham Report. 

One wonders why sanctioning the prosecution of such unwinnable cases doesn't count as evidence of special counsel "bias," especially when Durham's charge against the FBI of weak factual predication is being used to "prove" FBI bias and cites the obligation not waste taxpayer money and government time on weakly grounded cases. 

So this falls rather short of the Mueller Report, which got 6 convictions, and pointedly refused to exonerate Trump
of obstruction charges, but was declared a "dud" in the RWM--with considerable help from Trump's AG.

The Mueller Report by the way, is obliquely honored in the Durham Report by frequent citation as  precedent and model. 

Also, the Report does seem to agree that the FBI had evidence of potential collusion between Russian and the Trump CAMPAIGN, and was and was obligated to look into it, but concludes that evidence did not warrant launching an investigation into Trump specifically (though it certainly warranted investigation into others of his entourage).