Special Counsel Durham Delivers a Special Dose of Reality on FBI Corruption and Weaponization
“The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign.”
~ Special Counsel John Durham, excerpt from the Durham Report.
What is the Durham Report and why it matters more than you think?
On May 17th, 2023, the highly-awaited Durham Report was revealed to the public. The Report was the culmination of a 3 ½ years long investigation by Special Counsel John Durham of Connecticut. Durham was tapped by President Trump to carry out the examination into the FBI’s dubious investigation of collusion between the Trump administration and Russia. Where the FBI based their false investigation on the allegation that Trump colluded with the Russian government in order to manipulate the outcome of the 2016 election, the Durham Report provided irrefutable evidence of the FBI manipulating this very election. Durham’s Special Counsel appointment began under former Attorney General William Barr in October 2020, while he was continuing research into the origins of the FBI’s highly suspect investigation—“Operation Crossfire Hurricane”. Where the Mueller investigation established that there was absolutely no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, the Durham Report exposes why the Bureau carelessly launched an investigation without actionable intel or probable cause.
Cui bono (Who benefits?). What was the FBI’s motivation or “angle” in so blatantly and treacherously sabotaging Trump’s 2020 election bid, which high-level military sources now reveal that in the 2020 presidential election President Trump actually won all 50 states receiving over 80% of the vote vs. Joe Biden.
Despite many pundits in mainstream media downplaying the severity of the findings, a number of articles point to how its findings actually confirm the worst suspicions of FBI corruption and misconduct. Durham’s Report validates mounting criticisms that depicted the FBI as a den of Deep State insiders operating by their own set of standards outside of the confines of the law to target their political foes. When assessing how the FBI’s fraudulent basis for spying on the Trump campaign was initiated, one key factor was that the Bureau launched the investigation outside of the traditional protocol, in absence of consulting those who provided essential information to the case. Compounding this failure, was that the FBI even disregarded its own intelligence banks while pursuing the matter.
According the Executive Summary of the Report, “The FBI did so without (i) any significant review of its own intelligence databases, (ii) collection and examination of any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities, (iii) interviews of witnesses essential to understand the raw information it had received or (iv) using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence.”
The Durham Report pointed to a clear disregard of prosecutorial fairness, improper considerations, and a lack of objectivity toward what was a one-sided investigation. The FBI investigators orchestrating Crossfire Hurricane lacked a legitimate incentive to target the Trump family during the election and failed to operate based on principles of fidelity and fairness. Despite widespread silence among mainstream news networks, Durham’s scathing review of the FBI’s misconduct was important development in what has been a rapidly ongoing series of revelations on the weaponization of government — To destroy one political candidate in favor of another candidate the Bureau prefers.
FBI Grows Careless—Throws Away Existing Protocols to Investigate Trump
Durham’s Report excoriates the FBI for its blatant unorthodoxy in conducting a counterintelligence investigation without proper due diligence. The FBI taskforce heading Crossfire Hurricane seemed to have went rogue from Bureau protocol and failure from adhering to any of its established procedures. Lasting from July 31, 2016, to May 17, 2017, the Bureau seemingly threw all caution to the wind in spending millions of taxpayer money on a wild goose chase of Trump associates and Russian government operatives. The FBI analyst tasked with overseeing American-Russian relations clearly did not possess any indication of Trump engagement with senior government officials linked to Putin. According to the report, “Had it [FBI investigator] done so [i.e., followed normal procedures], again as set out in Sections IV.A.3.b and c, the FBI would have learned that their own experienced Russia analysts had no information about Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials, nor were others in sensitive positions at the CIA, the NSA, and the Department of State aware of such evidence concerning the subject.”
Special Counsel John Durham in Washington, May 17, 2022. PHOTO: JULIA NIKHINSON/REUTERS
So, not only did FBI officials lack the intel needed to justify launching such an intensive investigation into Trump’s business, his close connections, campaign activities and collaborations with Russian individuals, but other high-level intelligence agencies (CIA, NSA) were also in lack of such intel. Protection of individual privacy was cast to the wayside. Such is the nature for government agencies to coordinate intel with each other, especially when involving a high-profile matter as this. When no government agency possessed actionable data on the Trump campaign colluding with the Russian government, then there never was a justification for the FBI’s probe.
Much of this careless disregard for proper protocol emanated from corrupted FBI officials who should not have been cleared to oversee such a case, given obvious animus against the target of the investigation. When seeking out those with a bone to pick against Trump, eager to cast out protocol in order to weaponize an intel agency against his emergent Presidency, look no further than former FBI agent, Peter Strzok and his girlfriend, FBI lawyer, Lisa Page. Recall that these two harbored a vehement hatred for Donald Trump, as seen across their brash chain of text messages that were exposed by a Justice Department watchdog and later cross-examined in a series of congressional hearings. These were the two agents tasked by FBI Director, Robert Mueller with collecting objective intel on Trump, the guise of which they used to launch a virulently partisan, hate-fueled character-assassination campaign to delegitimize Trump’s campaign for President. Instead of seeking out potential Russian interference in the 2016 election, Strzok and Page became the very interfering force from the shadows. The following text exchange best words the type of people spear-heading the investigatory efforts of Crossfire Hurricane:
[Page to Strzok] “[Trump is] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page, who also worked on Mueller’s staff, responded.
“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok texted back.
FBI Severely Lacked Integrity, Proper Evidence and “analytical rigor”
An underlying refrain in Durham’s Report is that the FBI taskforce pursuing Crossfire Hurricane lacked the integrity required to match the facts of what was known at the time with the reality of zero collusion. A clean and fair investigation could never have taken place when the principal investigators were predetermined not to follow the rules or abide by proper protocol. The outcome was established well before these corrupted officials even launched the investigation—tarnish Trump’s credibility by sowing seeds of doubt in his national allegiances and potential engagement with an “adversarial” country. Even though the facts didn’t remotely support this premise, the motivations for pursuing such an investigation stuck, justifying this Deep State hitjob against an innocent man and his unfortunate associates implicated by this targeting. This is why Durham argued in his report that “Ultimately, of course, meeting those responsibilities comes down to the integrity of the people who take an oath to follow the guidelines and policies currently in place, guidelines that date from the time of Attorney General Levi and that are designed to ensure the rule of law is upheld. As such, the answer is not the creation of new rules but a renewed fidelity to the old.”
Special Counsel John Durham attends a congressional hearing before the House Judiciary Committee (June 21, 2023)
Durham’s Report underscores how the investigation was conducted without actionable intel or viable evidence necessary to guide any subsequent conclusions about Trump’s engagement with Russian officials. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation without proper support from within the intelligence apparatus of the FBI that would warrant such a widescale probe into the Trump’s family affairs, business dealings, and campaign efforts. According to Durham, McCabe and Strzok launched the unwarranted investigation, “without (i) any significant review of its own intelligence databases, (ii) collection and examination of any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities, (iii) interviews of witnesses essential to understand the raw information it had received or (iv) using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence. Had it done so,… the FBI would have learned that their own experienced Russia analysts had no information about Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials, nor were others in sensitive positions at the CIA, the NSA, and the Department of State aware of such evidence concerning the subject.”
FBI is Becoming Increasingly Politicized, and even Hostile to its own Employees
Further corroding the integrity of FBI investigators was the testimony of several FBI Whistleblowers appearing before the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government. These whistleblowers—Marcus Allen, Steve Friend, and Garret O’Boyle—described how they were very much opposed to the corrupt, unorthodox methods carried out by their superiors during the Trump-Russia investigation. They voiced their opposition openly at the Bureau and made it known to their superiors, who in-turn reprimanded and punished them.
The repayment they received for raising objective concerns regarding investigatory misconduct and personnel impropriety was having their security clearances revoked, effectively removing them from the investigation. Such revocation essentially rendered the agents powerless to pursue their work in other areas, according to the hearing. At the hearing, many GOP Congressmen expressed disgust over the retaliatory actions of senior FBI officials, noting that an employee should never be punished for voicing objective concerns over corrupt methods. The three whistleblowers seemed to agree in unison with assessments by former FBI employees that the Bureau had become heavily politicized.
Ex-FBI official, Nicole Parker, has appeared in a host of media interviews and events like the America First Policy Institute’s (AFPI) recent Police Week forum, voicing her concerns over how the FBI has been weaponized against private and public citizens. Gone are the days of agents being directed to pursue objective leads or preserve American peace and safety above all. The organization has been hijacked by an entrenched bureaucracy of individuals driven purely by political interests and concerned only with satisfying a dark agenda. And as evident in Durham’s Report, these individuals would go so far as to forsake decades of tradition and intel protocol in order to carry out their immediate desires. Parker had testified before the same Weaponization Committee prior to the three men, and echoed similar concerns.
As Parker observes, the Weaponization Committee found that the FBI suspended his security clearance and his job without pay as retaliation against him releasing protected disclosures about the bureau’s controversial handling of the January 6, 2021, domestic extremism incidents. Similarly, Allen expressed how disheartened and perplexed he was to learn that he had been unjustly punished for soliciting emails with links to allegations about law enforcement infiltration among the protesters at the Capitol. These were reports that revealed undercover FBI agents blending in as protestors and facilitating the civil unrest at the Capitol, which were well within Allen’s right to disclose. During a Fox News interview, Parker makes an astute observation on how every FBI whistleblower that has come forward in recent years has been a rank-and-file operative, rather than someone from senior management. She attributes this a possible sign of fearfulness by those in the upper-echelon will have their pensions suspended and face severe vilification by those complicit with the brand of corruption that is corroding morale at the Bureau.
“Look at what has happened to the many people who have spoken up. There is retaliation and it’s uncomfortable for their families. It ruins their family’s lives. Can you blame them for not wanting to speak?”
You can read more about key takeaways and findings from Durham’s comprehensive report here, as provided by AFPI.
Conclusion: Durham Brings to Light the FBI’s Shadowy Corruption
The Durham Report has exposed the underbelly of corruption that has been festering for years at the FBI. In an ironic twist, while it was the Democrats who pressed the false Russian-Trump collusion conspiracy theory for years, Republicans have been the ones to shed light on how an FBI conspiracy to undermine innocent Americans is very real. Durham and the FISA Court have demonstrated that such a dark, twisted FBI conspiracy was in-fact a present obstruction to Trump’s election efforts. One of the most controversial findings from Durham’s Report was the disparate treatment that the Trump investigations received compared to the multiple Clinton Foundation investigations of 2016. *N.B.: For further reading regarding the rampant corruption of the FISA courts see my Feb. 2018 article – FBI Fascism? False FISA Memo generates Russiagate scandal.
Where the Bureau decided to pursue the Trump investigations in full steam, they were all the willing to put down the Clinton Foundation probes, despite there being a comparable level of political attention and hearsay claims between the two. This disparate treatment has fueled renewed criticisms of a two-tiered justice system where the connected elites are let off the hook at the expense of the less connected, more despised figures. Another compelling reveal from the report that compounds this unfortunate reality is how former President Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, former FBI Director James Comey, and former AG Loretta Lynch all held active meetings with awareness on how the Clinton dossier was filled with false, salacious material wholly lacking in credibility, and yet did nothing to denounce it.
Despite being undersold by MSM networks, the 306-page Durham Report is a comprehensive collection of evidenced findings implicating an erroneously formed, hastily pursued, and completely unorthodox partisan investigation into Trump’s dealings with Russian individuals. It is far more extensive and well written than the Mueller report, despite receiving less media hype and focus. As Jeff Ross surmises in a Wall Street Journal piece on the matter, “This new, detailed articulation of the FBI’s manifest failings in the Russia collusion hoax clearly isn’t meant for media pundits or the populace, but for historians decades from now, so they will be able to render an objective, dispassionate, decisive and lasting indictment of the FBI’s shameful conduct under James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and others who treated the positions with which they were entrusted as an opportunity to advance a political agenda.”
History will certainly account for the treacherous deeds of the senior FBI officials responsible for this warped, misinformed investigation into an innocent man. What was once in the dark has now brought to light for the world to bear witness of America’s weaponization of government.
Category: Socrates Corner
