Attorney General Barr has named U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut to head a DOJ investigation into the origins of Russiagate. Durham appears to be an ideal choice. When nominated as U.S. Attorney in 2017, he had the support of both Democratic Senators from the state. He has a career as a prosecutor, which covered a wide range of high-profile cases, from FBI corruption in the "Whitey" Bolger dealings to CIA violations in aggressive interrogations.
Barr rejected the idea of appointing a new special prosecutor, and according to news accounts, this was a good decision. Durham, who has been quietly conducting his probe for weeks, is not restricted by the limited mandates of a special prosecutor. Barr has solicited and gotten cooperation from DNI Coats and CIA Director Haspel to extend the probe into involvement of intelligence officials (Brennan, Clapper and their key aides) in the foisting of the Trump-Russia saga and the obtaining of tainted "evidence" to secure FISA warrants.
Durham will be closely coordinating his investigation with the work of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who is nearing completion of his own investigation into DOJ and FBI corruption and political bias in the Trump-Russia probe. In recent meetings with Republican Member of Congress Jim Jordan, Horowitz indicated he was preparing criminal referrals as part of his final report.
U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber was appointed by former Attorney General Sessions to conduct a similar, but more limited probe into FBI and DOJ misconduct in the launching of Trumpgate/Russiagate but Republicans have been frustrated at the lack of progress.
Clearly, there is a good deal more confidence that Durham will go all-out to get to the bottom of the story.
Two recent FOIA cases have shed further light on the ambush of Trump during the final months of the campaign. A State Department deputy to Victoria Nuland met with former MI6 spook Christopher Steele in October 2016, and sent around a note to other State Department officials indicating Steele was anxious for his dossier to be published before the November 2016 elections. Steele has publicly denied he was shopping the dossier to the media. Now clearly a lie.
A second FOIA case brought by Judicial Watch obtained emails and text messages from Nellie Ohr, the wife of top DOJ official Bruce Ohr, who was working with Steele at Fusion GPS on the Trump-Russia dossier. She was a conduit for Steele's material to a number of DOJ officials. This, too, was prior to the 2016 elections, and was clearly aimed at impacting the outcome by pushing the counterintelligence investigation into candidate Trump. It didn't stop after his election, but accelerated.
Durham has a full plate of leads to explore.
Why didn’t US attorney Huber make any progress? Would the same issues hamper Durham?
The big question, what is AG Barr’s motivation in exposing potential misconduct at the DOJ, FBI, CIA, DNI?
My impression is that the climate has changed dramatically with the release of the final Mueller report and the lack of evidence, after two years vigorous investigation, of Trump collusion with the Russians. Sessions replaced by Barr and Durham a hard-charging prosecutor better fits the current political moment of opportunity. On a deeper level, the Clinton and Trump probes revealed publicly a level of political corruption within the upper echelons of both the DOJ and FBI. Need for cleanout is probably greater than at any time since the Church and Pike committees of the 1970s, which revealed things like Cointelpro and Operation Chaos.
BP,
“…what is AG Barr’s motivation in exposing potential misconduct at the DOJ, FBI, CIA, DNI?”
Exposing misconduct isn’t his motivation, prosecuting criminal conduct is the AG’s job.
He can prosecute the malefactors.
Today, it stares us in the face, as citizens of this great country our federal bureaucracies interfered in the 2016 presidential election by spying, leaking and investigating the two candidates and then identifying the candidates as innocent individuals showing that those investigations should never have occurred. They have usurped the rights of all citizens.
Granted we all can quibble over individual parts of these Investigations pertaining to the unethical aspects in how these investigations were conducted but the heads & relevant upper management of Justice, FBI, CIA and other agencies, during the investigating period, should all be sanctioned for their actions.
We as citizens need to instruct our legislators to enact laws or regulations that will curb future actions by these agencies from repeating this colossal error.
I recently, not quite concentrated, stumbled across a another theory, apparently. At least it felt like. Linking the US and UK with special interest entities. I was only looking for distraction, having different matters on my plate. Thus please don’t ask me for details. Arte? May well be.
But this while not being able to stop the rumor mill completely, going forward that is, is good news.
Those two conspiracies Russiagate vs Clintogate facing each other, need to be cleared up as best they can be.
I’m still skeptical…..that the swamp will ever prosecute itself.
The swamp has been in power for so long that it will fight to the death.
My hope is that as this whole bad high school play comes to light the swamp creatures will be destroyed by their own gross incompetence.
I would suspect and hope that his personal motivation stems from his taking his oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States seriously. I suppose that falls somewhere under the “personal integrity” rubric. I’ve heard him praised as an upstanding prosecutor beholden to the law, and I’ve heard him castigated as just another swamp creature. I don’t know enough about the man to make that call, but again, I hope his actions thus far are indicative of some degree of integrity.
Ditto
I’ll match that ditto and raise you one.