When then-Attorney General Bill Barr turned to Special Counsel John Durham to investigate a “witch hunt” headed by Robert Mueller, there was little evidence of a deep state conspiracy.
Durham meandered down several unsuccessful paths to “get to the bottom of what happened,” as Bill Barr postured on behalf of Donald Trump.
Even unscrupulously barging into the e-mails of the George Soros circle was a dead end.
Durham and Barr were determined to prove that Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation was a bad faith effort by the deep state, or the Hillary Clinton campaign, to hurt Trump politically. They were willing to go down any rabbit hole, with theories that relied on thin evidence, to promote the now-familiar narrative of Bill Barr, that the Russia collusion investigation was wrongfully opened and was a “hoax.”
One of those rabbit holes — that Italian officials were somehow involved in launching the Trump-Russia investigation — presented the investigators investigating an investigation with an awkward tip.
Italian officials presented Durham and Barr with evidence that linked Donald Trump himself to potential financial crimes.
Durham and Barr both decided that the tip was credible enough to investigate, so Bill Barr gave Durham the power to investigate it himself, which allowed Durham the power of a prosecutor in charge of a criminal investigation.
And Bill Barr went on a public media tour, touting that Durham was now investigating a criminal matter. But Barr neglected to tell the public that the subject of the criminal investigation was Donald Trump.
New York Times did this deep dive, and there are more revelations about the Durham/Barr “investigation.”
Bless the Seattle Times for publishing the NYT report, without a paywall.
It’s an involved read, but worth the effort.
You also might find Glenn Kirschner’s explainer of the exposé interesting as well.