Durham's report found DOJ, FBI 'failed to uphold' mission of 'strict fidelity to the law' in Trump-Russia probe

[Geronimo]

I am off the opinion no company should have special privileges and every company should have to follow the same rules. It is a good thing that Disney lost its special privileges especially since such special zones have been illegal to create since the 1070'w. Disney got to keep ots special zone because it was grandfathered in but 60 years of special status is enough and it is great DeSantis is making companies equal before the law.

I can respect that opinion if you advocated for it just as strongly before Disney spoke out against Desantis as afterwards. Only you know that.

Desantis would have my respect as well, if he'd declared any interest in doing this, let alone promising that he intended to, before Disney publicly verbally opposed his initiatives.

If he thought the zone needed to go on general principle and wanted to revoke it, he had an obligation to make that plain ages ago.

Timing such initiatives based on changing declarations of political stances of the target of the initiative is pure corruption.

[Berzerker]

"While Trump predicted Durham would reveal the “crime of the century,” Democrats largely dismissed the probe as politically motivated."

Democrats cant help but project their machinations onto others.

[Berzerker]

"in contrast to the way they had briefed Hillary Clinton’s aides during her 2016 presidential campaign in advance when they gathered evidence a foreign actor was trying to garner influence with her."

Steele's dossier was evidence of a foreign actor influencing her campaign.

[Jon Miller]

I'd maintain that possible partisan weaponization of federal law enforcement is at least as dangerous a threat to democracy as the capital riot.

Thomas Jefferson famously said "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing".

Has anyone ever suggested "a little political corruption of law enforcement now and then is a good thing"?

The investigation doesn't seem to have found any partisan weaponization of federal law enforcement.

There were accusations of partisan weaponization, which I agree is serious and provides a reasonable motivation of his investigation. But then he didn't find any such partisan weaponization nor did he find obstruction (which would hide partisan weaponization). What he did find was some minor mistakes, almost entirely just the same mistakes found by the earlier Inspector General investigation. His conclusions are a little different, but while he should make conclusions and present them to the Department of Justice and Congress (and the Public), hie s not the judge and jury and some other party would (and did, since it is basically the same material as the Inspector General, who had a little different conclusions) come to different conclusions.

An accusation that leads to an investigation that doesn't find evidence of the accusation or for obstruction (Which could make evidence for the accusation impossible to find) has been (with some probability) invalidated.

This is what I don't understand. Even Durham's conclusions, which are different from Horowitz and others with the same information, does not suggest that there was partisan weaponization of federal law enforcement.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Pretty much everyone, left and write, agree that at times the FBI behaved improperly. The people who have been led investigations into this (Durham, Horowitz, I think there was no investigation into Comey decided to hold a press conference about the investigation into Hillary's emails shortly before an election, when it was the practice not to do things like that (including for investigations into Trump))) came to some different conclusions about the cause and what the fix should be.

But neither of them say that there was evidence for partisan weaponization of the FBI, like the accusations found in this thread and in right wing media.

It is pretty clear that Durham exonerated the FBI.

JM

[PLATO]

Hey Jon. While there may not be hard evidence of Partisan interference by those outside the FBI, wouldn't you agree that there was a Partisan bias in how the FBI conducted this investigation? If you do agree with that, do you see that as more or less dangerous?

[Dinner]

Have you downloaded the report and started reading it? Because the reality seems to be exactly the opposite of what you are claiming.

[PLATO]

To be honest, I haven't read it yet. I will try and do that before I comment more

[PLATO]

Okay...I have read the executive summary of the report now. Holy Smoke! If anybody doesn't think that there was an internal Partisan bias in the FBI after reading that then they are just plain crazy. I hate to say it, but Trump was right...A total "witch hunt"! Serious change and increased oversight is necessary in the FBI. That was ridiculous!

[Berzerker]

Judge Andrew Napolitano said the Durham report is a whitewash and critics are asking why it took so long when it doesn't tell us a whole lot more. Napolitano said the reason is the 5 year statute of limitations ended and people cant be prosecuted now.

https://youtu.be/U4hw52qRS9Q

He deals with the report in the first 10 minutes before changing the subject

[Berzerker]

not sure I buy that, Durham did prosecute one guy for lying to the FBI. He was acquitted because his FBI friend wasn't sure if he identified his employer as Clinton. What a scam.

[Jon Miller]

I looked at the beginning of it, but don't have enough time to read it in detail (and the IG report) to process it. It is over 300 pages after all.

I think that there were some anti-Hillary people in the FBI which is what resulted in Comey's meeting with the press about Hillary's emails right before the election, possibly costing her the election. This was misbehavior of some FBI officers, but was not the partisan weaponization of the FBI. There were anti-Trump people in the FBI which resulted in Page getting hassled more than he should have been... and what else? The Mueller Investigation had many motivations not just those relating to Page (recall the DNC hacks and releases of information, social media activities and so on). Recall the Mueller Report https://www.documentcloud.org/docume...Mueller-Report .

Once more this would be misbehavior of some FBI officers and not partisan weaponization of the FBI.

I did manage to skim, and it seems to several times keep itself to just those FBI officers who Durham found acted inappropriately. In particular, read page 18/19.

He didn't even charge Strzok who he singled out as having acted in a biased manner (on page 9).

At no point in the Executive Summary does Durham talk about the partisan weaponization of the FBI or imply the existence of such weaponization.

JM

[Berzerker]

I heard there was a leak coming from the NYC office after they got Wiener's laptop, so Comey had to go public. A few days later he said nothing relevant was found and closed the case again, but ofc the damage was done. I dont think people voted on that, its an amorphous issue. People dont get riled about how emails or secret documents were handled.

[Berzerker]

Why did Page deserve to be hassled?

[Jon Miller]

I then dropped down to page page 303-306 where he provides his conclusions.

He says that he disagrees with Horowitz because the bias that was involved was confirmation bias. In that even Strzok was trying to be the best FBI agent he could and not be a partisan actor, bur that because the information that was coming to Strzok (And others) confirmed their bias against Trump, that they believed it (and didn't believe information that came in that would cast their conclusions into doubt). And so were bad FBI agents.

This isn't even an explicitly partisan action by the FBI agents that Durham identified as acting inappropriately.

See end of page 305.

His suggestion of an improvement, which I think might be reasonable, is on page 306 and reflects... I think.. his position. Which is that of course some officers are going to have various biases, and you have to accept that. But for political matters, you should have someone who is not biased with respect to the political issue of the day (in 2016 both Hillary and Trump, since 2016, Trump, maybe now also Hunter Biden or even Biden Sr) who provides criticism to the investigation.

JM

[Berzerker]

No, I dont believe that. One guy tampered with evidence to frame Page to keep spying on Trump and the FBI targeted Flynn after Obama and Biden met with Comey. And the use of the Steele dossier to spy on Trump was not honest people getting suckered, they knew it was BS before the election when Steele was offered money to back anything up and he couldn't.

[Berzerker]

Okay...I have read the executive summary of the report now. Holy Smoke! If anybody doesn't think that there was an internal Partisan bias in the FBI after reading that then they are just plain crazy. I hate to say it, but Trump was right...A total "witch hunt"! Serious change and increased oversight is necessary in the FBI. That was ridiculous!

And that wont happen without a Trump presidency... I dont think DeSantis will take on these people. Chuck Schumer told Trump in '17 to stop criticizing the intel people or they will mess him up and they did. And it appears the CIA was involved with the letter signed by their former bosses in '20 so it wasn't just 'private citizens' offering an opinion.

[Jon Miller]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/17/us/politics/fbi-security-clearance-jan-6.html

JM

[-Jrabbit]

What continues to amaze me is this laser-like focus on re-litigating the only election that Trump actually won.
Aren't these the same people who spent years telling the libs to "get over it" when he did?

Well, get over it.

[PLATO]

After reading the executive summary I fail to see how anyone could not see this type of action as very dangerous to our country. The disparate treatment of information about intelligence on both candidates was plainly documented. It matters not that an agent "Thought" they were doing something the right way. Procedures for these type of investigations should be well documented and followed. In this case an obvious political bias was present weather conscious or unconscious. This cannot be tolerated in a free society. It does not matter that the bias was against Trump. It would be equally as large a problem if the reverse was true. This issue goes beyond party or candidate. There must be a standard and the standard must be upheld.

If we let this go and "just get over it" then we are opening the door to similar issues in the future. This is a big deal and clearly oversight is needed to make sure standards of equality and fairness are upheld. If not, how can we claim we have a democracy?