During the 2016 presidential election, the Hillary Clinton campaign engaged in a massive dirty trick – to concoct “evidence” that then-candidate Donald Trump was (1) under threat of being blackmailed by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and (2) was coordinating and conspiring with Russia’s meddling in the election.
The primary – and only — “evidence” was a Dossier alleging Trump’s improper and salacious activities in Russia. It was said to have been received by former British intelligence agent Michael Steele from a “source” in Russia.
The Steele Dossier – as it was dubbed by the media – was obtained by the Clinton campaign and leaked to the media. It was also provided to the FBI by a lawyer claiming to be acting in the public interest. Turned out he was operating on behalf of the Clinton campaign.
The dossier did not serve its purpose – to snatch the election for Clinton. Trump won. However, it was then used to launch an investigation of Trump and his campaign in the hope that the conspiracy with Russian claims would lead to impeachment and Trump’s removal from office.
As it turns out, “evidence” of a conspiracy between Trump and Russia did not exist. The Dossier was proven to be fake. Even worse. The phony Dossier – and its political uses – were funded by the Clinton campaign. It was arguably the most elaborate political dirty trick in American history – and unprecedented in terms of its use … make that misuse … of government agencies.
Mueller Report
While it did not stop Trump from being elected President of the United States – and did not lead to his removal from office – it was used by Democrats and their media allies to smear Trump for more than four years. It triggered the naming of Special Counsel Robert Mueller – in the hope that he would find Trump guilty of criminal conspiracy with Russia.
Democrats and the left-leaning news platforms issued daily statements and reports of the certainty of Trump’s guilt. California Democrat Congressman Adam Schiff – an outspoken advocate of the conspiracy accusations and Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee – announced publicly that he had seen incontrovertible evidence of Trump’s guilt. He was lying, of course.
Despite the best efforts of the anti-Trump folks in government and in the media, after two years of investigation at a cost of more than $35 million, Mueller reported that there was no evidence of any such conspiracy between Trump or his campaign and Russia. It was all a huge political hoax empowered by politically compromised government officials and baseless (fake??) news reports.
The fake narrative was so embedded in the leftwing establishment that the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for reports supporting the phony conspiracy theory.
That came long after the FBI – using the Dossier as their sole rationale – launched the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. They used the phony Dossier to obtain wiretap authority without telling the FISA Court that the “evidence” was unvetted and had been paid for by the Clinton campaign.
More disturbing is the fact that most of those promoting the conspiracy accusations and the ensuing investigation knew that the Dossier was phony – a product of the Clinton campaign.
It was such a fiasco, that even those involved could not prevent the spotlight from turning on them and their roles in propping up the fake Dossier and launching the investigation against Trump. Top officials in the FBI (Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Assistant Deputy Director Peter Strzok, and others) were complicit in a conspiracy against Trump.
The false narrative was supported by officials of the outgoing Obama administration and former intelligence officials, such as former CIA Director John Brennan and former head of national intelligence James Clapper.
Durham Report
Department of Justice official John Durham was named special counsel to investigate the role of the investigators – after the FBI’s Inspector General had raised concerns about the legitimacy of Crossfire Hurricane. The essential question was whether FBI officials acted properly in handling the Dossier and the Trump investigation.
Like the Mueller Report, The Durham Report contained no recommendations of indictments against officials who abused power to launch the investigation of Trump, but it did answer questions left unanswered by Mueller.
Did government officials – especially those in the upper ranks of the FBI – proceed with a major investigation of a presidential candidate without sufficient evidence – or any real evidence at all?
The Durham Report is unequivocal on that question.
They did, indeed.
It is clear from the Durham Report that political considerations trumped credible evidence in launching Crossfire Hurricane – and that key individuals had abused their power based on political biases to weaponize the offices they held at the time.
Summary
Whatever one thinks of Trump – or what even his culpability may be in the various court cases he faces – we should all be able to agree that the entire Russian conspiracy controversy was nothing more than a political dirty trick by the Clinton Campaign that led to dangerous abuses of power by politically compromised individual in key positions – damaging the image and credibility of the FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department as non-partisan law enforcement agencies.
While the left points to various paranoid conspiracy theories on the right, they turn their back on the largest, most destructive, and dangerous conspiracy theory in history – a conspiracy created and proffered for years by Democrats, partisan government officials, and a biased news media solely for political purposes.
But the exposure by the Durham investigation is no reason to abandon concern. The role of the FBI in supporting the initial false claim that the Hunter Biden laptop was merely a Russian invention – and the signatures of 51 former intelligence officials on a letter reinforcing the false claim that the laptop was a Russian trick – is sufficient reason to do a little more investigating of what was – and perhaps is — going on within the intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
So, there ‘tis.