Here's the consensus on Durham from pundits that I trust - ending with my conclusion...
PAUL SPERRY: "General Michael Flynn, who was Trump’s national security adviser, told me in the wake of the Danchenko trial, which ended in the acquittal of the anti-Trump dossier fabricator, that Durham should be ashamed of himself for losing another case in the Russiagate scandal."
FLYNN: “The whole episode makes the DOJ and FBI look wholly corrupt or wholly incompetent or a combination of the above, neither of which is good for the country and neither instills any confidence in the rule of law for the average citizen."
“It’s disgraceful, and clear evidence exists that treason or certainly fraud occurred by the Clinton campaign and by the leadership inside both organizations. Durham should be ashamed. Whatever his reputation as a thorough prosecutor was is now gone.”
PAUL SPERRY: "Durham can't use biased DC jurors as an excuse this time. Nor can he blame this loss on one of his prosecutors. VA jurors handed Durham this acquittal, a personal defeat since he argued the slam-dunk case himself. His record is 1-3 and the only reason he "won" the Clinesmith conviction (which the IG referred to him) is b/c Clinesmith entered a guilty plea and Durham didnt have to go to trial. Durham still lost in the sentencing phase. He argued for jail time but Clinesmith got off with a slap on the wrist. Durham failed to put him behind bars. He could have charged Clinesmith with the more serious crime of altering a CIA document, but instead negotiated a deal letting him plead to the lesser offense of lying to a government agency. Clinesmith got his law license back.
John "Bull" Durham is an overhyped joke."
PAUL SPERRY: "The fact that Durham has had to treat his own FBI witnesses as hostile witnesses shows they have no fear of him. James Baker, Brian Auten and Kevin Nelson all exhibited extreme arrogance under questioning in both the Sussmann and Danchenko trials. Similar to how Comey, McCabe and Strzok have brazenly disrespected Durham on CNN and MSNBC. It's fairly plain that no FBI official or agent tied to Russiagate is afraid of Durham. It's almost as if they've known all along they really had nothing to worry about, that he'd never prosecute them.
It's official: Durham's investigation of the Russiagate investigation was just a lot of eyewash."
PRESIDENT TRUMP: "When Paul Sperry speaks, I listen."
JUNIOR KIMBROUGH: “If a false statement charge is dependent on materiality with an FBI that is complicit in the fraud, what else do you expect. Trump knew Durham was a coverup and said as much.”
PAUL SPERRY: “The fact that Durham gave flak to a couple of FBI schmucks on the witness stands means NOTHING. Zip. Zero. Nada. Unless & until FBI officials' homes are raided and they're arrested for the crimes of defrauding the FISA court, among other malfeasance, the FBI will be emboldened to commit such political espionage against future presidential nominees & sitting presidents until we are a full-blown police state/banana republic. No accountability and justice means no deterrence.
Remember: AG Barr testified under oath that Trump was spied on. Democrats tried to get him to walk back his statements, but Barr refused, doubling down & asserting that yes, in fact, "Spying did occur." That's a monumental scandal. So what has Barr's special appointee Durham done about it? Not much.
Color me skeptical, but i am not buying the speculation that Durham's hands were tied by AG Garland. If Garland had blocked Durham from pursuing a broader conspiracy case against the FBI, Durham would have found a way to leak that out into the media and to congressional Republicans, such as Grassley, who maintain key oversight positions on the Hill. And his former boss AG Barr has been all over Fox and other networks recently and has not even hinted that Durham hasn't been able to do his job due to Biden administration political pressures and machinations. The more likely scenario is, Durham simply pulled his punches because he's an institutionalist and just not as tough and courageous as everyone thought he was.
Let's face it, folks, Durham is either not a very good prosecutor--and his reputation has been w-a-a-a-y overhyped--or he is compromised in some way. Covid shutdowns and delays cannot explain all his missteps and failures to go after FBI brass for rank corruption.
It's ironic that Durham is ripping FBI agents and analysts he's called to the witness stand for their own investigative failures. It's clear Durham is just going to scold them & not prosecute them or their 7th Floor bosses for their malfeasance.
Durham has let Comey, McCabe & Strzok all off the hook for epic abuses of power. In effect, his investigation of their corrupt investigation is itself a whitewash. Durham's covering for the bad guys. Now, who will investigate the investigator of the investigation?
Durham hinted yesterday that he never got to the bottom of the #Spygate scandal. In his closing argument in the Danchenko trial, he indicated he was flummoxed by the failure of FBI agents working on the Russiagate probe to properly vet Danchenko and his dossier fabrications about Trump: “For whatever reason, there is a certain mindset that agents did not do what they should have done,” Durham told the jurors, without elaborating. "For whatever reason" signals the special prosecutor has failed to flesh out a motive and doesn't have evidence to pursue a conspiracy case against the FBI. It also indicates that, after a three-year investigation costing millions of dollars, even his final report may lack conclusive findings.
Why is Durham STILL redacting the FBI's FISA applications and the FBI summary of Danchenko's debriefing and other exhibits? It's a harbinger of future redactions in his final report:
"The jury sent only one note to the court Monday. Before the arguments, the jury asked about redactions made to some of the EXHIBITS introduced during the case. Trenga told the jury they didn’t need to consider why the redactions were made. Some were agreed to by the parties, but others are the result of deletions PROSECUTORS MADE and Trenga approved in order to protect classified information."
SUNDANCE: “Igor Danchenko was a well-known fabricator of (dis)information long before the FBI made the purposeful decision to enlist him in their Trump targeting efforts. Specifically because Danchenko had no moral compass to the truth he was particularly useful for the FBI effort. This was the big problem for John Durham in prosecuting Danchenko for material lies the FBI knew from the outset were false.
How does the same DOJ who used the lies for their political purposes, then prosecute the liar for the false information? That was always the structural flaw in any case brought by Durham. As a result, the trial was not so much about the lying Danchenko as it was about the lying FBI and their use of Danchenko.
A jury found Igor Danchenko not guilty on four counts of lying to the FBI, on four occasions. (1) Danchenko told FBI agents he received a phone call in late July 2016 Sergei Millian. However, Danchenko knew he had never received a call from Millian. (2) Danchenko gave a false statement to FBI agents that he “was under the impression” that the late July 2016 call was from Millian. (3) Danchenko falsely stated to FBI agents that he believed he spoke to Millian on the phone on more than one occasion. And (4) Danchenko lied that he “believed he has spoken to [Millian] on the telephone,” when Danchenko well knew he had never spoken to Millian.
The FBI didn’t care about the details of the lies that were told to them; the lies served a purpose. The FBI purpose was to use the Steele Dossier as the foundation for a fraudulent all-encompassing search warrant against the Trump campaign and presidency, using Carter Page. That construct was always the motive of the DOJ/FBI use of Danchenko, Chris Steele and the infamous dossier that gave the DOJ the patina they needed for the FISA application.
The trial itself showed how corrupt the FBI and DOJ were in this scheme by: A) offering Chris Steele $1 million for proof of the dossier content. B) By making Danchenko a confidential human source for two years to shield him, “sources and methods”, from investigative inquiry. C) By paying Danchenko $200,000 for his time as a useful tool and confidential human source.
As noted in the summary of the trial by Technofog:
[…] “What is more important is that which informs our understanding of the Trump/Russia investigation and the FBI/DOJ/Mueller misconduct that sparked Crossfire Hurricane and continued through the Mueller investigation. That information was revelatory. The institutions were on trial alongside Danchenko, with Durham recognizing in closing arguments that “the FBI mishandled the investigation at issue.” And the institutions rightly suffered. Danchenko might have been spared, but is there any reasonable doubt as to the FBI’s incompetence – and guilt? (read more)
The problem is institutional corruption. The personnel, administration, leadership and participants, within the DOJ, DOJ-NSD and FBI are corrupt.
Institutions do not become corrupt by themselves. People within the institutions are the cause of the corruption, and every person attached to the Trump-Russia investigation – including Robert Mueller, are corrupt. It was a scheme in 2016, which became a coverup operation in 2017, which became an explosive institutional problem in 2019 which Bill Barr was trying to manage.
Institutional Preservation – Bill Barr applied the Bondo to the rusted framework of the DOJ and FBI, and John Durham applied the spray paint by not targeting anyone inside the justice department.
John Durham only focused, perhaps because he was only allowed to focus, on the external participants to the originating schemes. One thing is clear, John Durham never once mentioned the corrupt nature of the Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann coverup operation.
Danchenko was represented by the same lawyers representing Hillary Clinton because at the heart of Danchenko’s intent was an effort to support Hillary Clinton in the 2016 October surprise they were constructing using fabricated claims of Trump colluding with Russia to win the election.
Washington DC protects itself.”
GREGG JARRETT: “Igor Danchenko was acquitted in federal court Tuesday on all four counts of lying to the FBI about where he obtained the phony information that he secretly fed to ex-British spy Christopher Steele for his fictive dossier that smeared Donald Trump as a Russian asset. The loss is another setback for special counsel John Durham, but the verdict comes as no surprise.
The case was tried in Alexandria, Virginia where 80% of residents voted Democrat in the last presidential election. In a politically charged case involving names like Trump and Clinton, it was always an uphill battle for Durham, just as it was in the earlier trial of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann who was acquitted by a Washington, D.C. jury in a district where 92% of voters cast ballots for Biden in the last election and a scant 5% for Trump. But the not guilty verdicts are a minor footnote in the sordid story of the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
The Virginia trial was never really about Danchenko at all. Sure, he was the named defendant. But as testimony unfolded it was obvious that he was a conduit for a worthier ambition —a damning indictment of the FBI’s gross misconduct.
Durham candidly admitted it to the jury during his closing argument when he referred to the bureau as "the elephant in the room."
In reality, the crooked FBI was in the dock throughout the weeklong trial, exposed for its years of shameful lies, shocking corruption, and devious cover-ups.
It was former Director James Comey and his sleazy confederates who colluded with the Hillary Clinton campaign to falsely accuse Trump of colluding with Russia. They framed him for alleged crimes he never committed.
The genesis of the lies came from Hillary herself, according to declassified documents. In the run-up to 2016 presidential election, she personally approved a plan to defame her political opponent as a clandestine Russian mole. Her campaign manager, Robby Mook, confirmed it in an earlier trial five months ago.
But that’s not all. Clinton’s acolytes covertly funded the specious dossier authored by the now-disgraced Steele who was already pocketing cash while on the FBI payroll. Hillary’s cronies and political operatives not only furnished the fabricated garbage in the document, but they disseminated it to the Trump-loathing media. With the FBI as witting accessories, the Russia hoax took flight and a dilating witch hunt ensued.
Any intelligent person who has ever read Steele’s preposterous report knew immediately that it was bogus. It read like a dime novel penned by a halfwit.
Naturally, the geniuses in the liberal mainstream media thought it was real. Blinded by their own bias and contempt for Trump, they accepted it as gospel and reported it as such, never bothering to verify any of it. But the FBI knew better.
Early on, the agency easily debunked much of it as demonstrably false. Yet, in October of 2016 they offered Steele a reward of $1 million dollars —the equivalent of a bounty on Trump’s head— if only the former spook would corroborate its contents. Steele could not, of course, because it is impossible to prove the truth of a lie.
Although the bureau was unable to verify the dossier, that did not stop the FBI from exploiting it. That same month, Comey signed a warrant application to spy on the Trump campaign by vowing under oath to the FISA court that the faux document was "verified" even though it was not.
He further represented to the judge that the dossier was "credible" and that Steele was "reliable," intentionally omitting the vital fact that Steele had been fired by the FBI for lying.
Three more warrants followed over the course of a year, as the FBI doubled-down and triple-down on it’s deceptions that the dossier was verified. All the while, top agency officials knew that their pivotal piece of evidence was completely fake.
But the FBI’s illicit conduct was not limited to lying to the court. Undeterred by the constraints of law, the bureau used the dishonest dossier as a pretext for escalating its investigation of Trump.
Ever the Machiavellian actor, Comey tried to entrap the newly elected president in a private meeting about the dossier in January of 2017, never telling him that the FBI had discredited it.
Their discussion was immediately leaked to journalists so that reporters would have an excuse to publish the dossier, which they did.
Almost overnight, the Trump-Russia phantasm ignited a public firestorm. Trump deserved the truth about the document, not to be sullied in the media by erroneous accusations underwritten by the Clinton campaign and circulated by the FBI.
Days after the inauguration, Danchenko —Steele’s primary source— confessed to Comey’s agents that the document was all a sham.
As Democrats and the media proceeded to convict Trump in the court of public opinion, the sanctimonious Comey and others at the bureau remained mute and happily watched as their nemesis struggled to defend himself.
They continued peddling lies to the FISA court while withholding from both congress and the public their exculpatory evidence that Trump was innocent.
Collusion was a hallucination they helped propagate. They concealed Danchenko’s admission that the dossier was a collection of idle rumors, innuendos, multiple hearsay, and —literally— gossip in a bar. Instead, behind the scenes the FBI manipulated the narrative to depict the president as guilty of conspiring with Russia. Comey, Clinton and others colluded to frame him and evict him from office.
There were countless other acts of misfeasance and malfeasance by the FBI, all of which were driven by the agency’s unabashed hatred of Trump.
They weaponized the law for partisan purposes and politicized our nation’s justice systems. To some extent, they succeeded.
Through their abuse of power they managed to convince tens of millions of citizens that the president was a traitor without a shred of evidence.
There was never any credible evidence that Trump was a Russian agent. There were no seditious acts that he cooked up with the Kremlin or some nefarious cabal to steal the 2016 election.
It was all a damning fiction that constitutes what is surely the dirtiest political trick ever perpetrated in politics.
Special counsel Durham should be commended for his dogged pursuit of the truth. He may have lost the trial, but he succeeded in unraveling a multitude of pernicious lies.
He exposed how a malignant force of unelected officials committed uncommon corruption through insipid deceptions and malevolent acts. They subverted our rules of law and undermined the democratic process. By their venal acts, they damaged the institutions of American government. And they squandered the nation’s trust.
Comey and his miserable minions may be gone from the FBI, but the wretched rot lingers.
JH: “Here are some of the most significant notables we got out of the Danchenko case and trial.
- The Steele Dossier and its allegations are dead. The claims were made up and that is a matter of record now. Dolan admitted to fabricating his part and Danchenko never met with the manager do the Ritz-Carlton. Danchenko, over the course of 3.5 yrs as a CHS, could not provide ANY corroboration. Furthermore Christopher Steele, who composed the dossier, could not corroborate any piece of info in. Not even for $1,000,000.
That’s FULL exoneration for Trump.
- A year after offering that $1million to Steele, the FBI turned Danchenko against Steele and sent him back in, to meet with Steele. The objective being to gather intel on what Steele was up to and any other useful info.
- Chuck Dolan, Clinton Crony and longtime Democrat operative, was referred for an investigation thanks to information Danchenko gave the FBI. That investigation was opened and as part of it, Dolan’s email, phone, and social media records were obtained via search warrant.
That investigation was later turned over as is now with the Durham Special Counsel.
- Durham put the FBI on trial via the agents he put on the stand. SIA Brian Auten was subjected to two full days of testimony, none of it friendly. We learned of the Crossfire Hurricane and Mueller SCO failures. We also learned that Auten has been under investigation by the OIG for sometime.
He has been recommended for suspension for his role in the Carter Page FISA.
- Likewise with Special Agent Helson, Danchenko’s handler. He was also forced to admit to failures in regards to handling Danchenko, though there were also successes as far as the information he sold the FBI as a CHS.
Helson is also a subject of an OIG investigation.
- Durham, via the investigation and prosecution of Danchenko, obtained a large number of interviews and testimony with Spygate players major and minor. He also got phone, email, social media, and travel records.
Being that Danchenko was in direct contact with so many consequential people as relates to Spygate, I wonder what else Durham learned from such records?”
TIERNEY: “IMHO, the good news out of the lack of a conviction for Danchenko is it tends to totally exonerate President Trump - since everybody thought Trump should have just been able to issue an executive order and wave his magic wand and the military and the FBI and the DOJ would have followed his orders to clean house because he's the President. NOT likely! The Deep State is way deeper than that!
Durham tried the case himself and lost - although he exposed lots of corruption at the FBI.
Kash Patel said that the corruption at the FBI, DOJ and intelligence agencies is so deep that the only way to solve it is to create another "Church Commission" like the one in the 1970's. Mike Davis said the same thing.
SO, is that the plan? Wait for Durham's final REPORT and use it as a basis to launch another "Church Commission" in 2023? Remember, nobody cared about Mueller's trials - what we really wanted was the report. I'm guessing the Durham report about the Government's malfeasance will be much better than the trials and serve as a springboard for Congress.
The "Church Commission" of 1975 investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). People don’t remember it now - but it uncovered lots of corruption - much of which the fake news has been spending 50 years trying to cover up!
The most shocking revelations of the "Church Commission" committee included Operation MKULTRA involving the drugging and torture of unwitting US citizens as part of human experimentation on mind control; COINTELPRO involving the surveillance and infiltration of American political and civil-rights organizations; Family Jewels, a CIA program to covertly assassinate foreign leaders; Operation Mockingbird as a systematic propaganda campaign with domestic and foreign journalists operating as CIA assets and dozens of US news organizations providing cover for CIA activity.
So, our Government does coerce innocent people into committing unspeakable acts through mind control (school shootings) - our Government does spy on us and their political opponents (Russiagate) our Government does assassinate leaders (JFK, MLK) - our Government does embed the CIA into the media to control us (CNN, the NYTs, WaPo.) It’s NOT a conspiracy. I haven’t read the report but I’m sure there is much much more!
YET, it sounds to me like all the things the “Church Commission” investigated and found back then kept on going and everybody forgot about it! We've been told that all these things were "conspiracy theories" - when obviously they are very very real!
Maybe the real goal is to bring back and re-do the "Church Commission" in 2023 - with a NEW Republican-led Congress - and actually make it stick this time.
It made sense to me NOT to give Durham a win before mid-terms because then people will vote in a GOP-led Congress to fix the mess. That's a PR move - and blatantly obvious. The question is - how will they fix it? I think the “Church Commission” thing is a good idea.
In fact, several Congressional leaders are already talking about what they plan to do as a result of what Durham has revealed so far:
JORDAN: "The fact that they took American tax dollars to pay someone that they knew was a liar, to, I would assume, lie to them some more makes absolutely no sense."
BLACKBURN: "There is a political cabal inside the FBI that has to be dealt with. It's inside the Department of Justice also. And the Danchenko revelation that he was on the FBI payroll for three years. They're paying him for cooking up information for investigating Donald Trump."
NUNES: "That Danchenko was a paid FBI informant was kept from the House Intelligence Committee in 2017-18 during its Russia collusion probe. This is now the strongest evidence we have seen that they obstructed — the FBI, DOJ, et al —obstructed Congress' investigation."
PATEL: "John Durham was like the domino that sort of knocked it back here, when he told the world that Igor Danchenko was a confidential human source. I think this John Durham prosecution is going to come full circle and explode the confidential human source corruption cover up network."
The good news? Elon is buying Twitter. Kanye is buying Parler. Truth Social is finally on Google Play Store. It looks like we’ll have five FREE SPEECH social media outlets to spread our TRUTH in 2023 - after we win the mid-terms. Truth Social, GETTR, Twitter, Parler & Rumble. What can you do? Ask God for courage and protection and VOTE STRAIGHT TICKET MAGA REPUBLICAN to take back our country.
PAUL SPERRY: “Asked about his appointee Special Counsel Durham losing another case, former Attorney General Barr blamed Sergei Millian for not agreeing to testify against dossier fabricator Danchenko.
Barr rationalized, "Sometimes it takes time to [achieve] justice," adding that Durham's final report will lay a "foundation to pursue [the investigation] further on the Hill," if Republicans take back Congress. In other words, Durham is finished with his probe and will now hand the baton to congressional investigators, who have no power to arrest or charge and can only make criminal referrals to the Justice Department.”
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