{"id":9972,"date":"2023-02-11T23:44:06","date_gmt":"2023-02-11T23:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=9972"},"modified":"2023-02-11T23:44:06","modified_gmt":"2023-02-11T23:44:06","slug":"the-stunning-hypocrisy-of-bill-barrs-probe-into-the-russia-trump-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=9972","title":{"rendered":"The stunning hypocrisy of Bill Barr\u2019s probe into the Russia-Trump investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“In 2019, a few weeks after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election<\/a>,the Trump administration flipped the script and began investigating the investigators<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attorney General Bill Barr appointed US Attorney John Durham to investigate those government officials<\/a> who had presumed to look into Donald Trump\u2019s ties to Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The FBI\u2019sTrump-Russia probe, Barr argued publicly<\/a>, was born of chasing thin conspiracy theories and relied on phony evidence, and its investigators were either blinded by political bias or acting with blatant political motives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then Durham and Barr proceeded to do all those same things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new, detailed expos\u00e9 by the New York Times\u2019s Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman, and Katie Benner<\/a> digs into what exactly happened with the nearly four-year Durham investigation, which is purportedly about to conclude, and it isn\u2019t pretty. Anecdote after anecdote portrays Durham and Barr as believing in conspiracy theories without evidence but with clear political motives to bolster one of Trump\u2019s favorite arguments: that he was the victim of a nefarious plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basically, Durham and Barr wanted to prove that the Trump-Russia investigation was manufactured in bad faith by either \u201cdeep state\u201d officials or the Clinton campaign (or both), with the goal of hurting Trump politically. Again and again, Durham pursued various versions of this theory, and again and again, he fell short of proving his case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Barr and Durham started off with suspicions but found upon investigation that they were baseless, that\u2019s not necessarily so terrible. Yet both men kept on saying or implying publicly that the \u201c\u2018deep state\u2019\/Clinton campaign hit job\u201d theory was true \u2014 Barr in public statements where he said this outright<\/a> and Durham in court filings<\/a> and trial questioning<\/a> that seemed designed to advance a narrative he couldn\u2019t actually prove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bizarrely enough, when checking out one of these theories \u2014 that Italian officials were somehow involved in launching the Trump-Russia investigation \u2014 Durham and Barr were instead presented with evidence linking Trump himself to potential financial crimes. \u201cMr. Barr and Mr. Durham decided that the tip was too serious and credible to ignore,\u201d the Times reporters write<\/a>. Barr kept this new investigation of Trump in Durham\u2019s hands, and it\u2019s unclear what became of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump-Russia investigation certainly shouldn\u2019t be exempt from criticism, and a fair-minded review of whether investigators made misjudgments would be reasonable. But the Durham probe was not that. Instead, it repeatedly assumed dastardly plots against Trump, even when the evidence kept failing to establish those plots, while Barr seeded a narrative to conservative media and President Trump himself that Durham was closing in on Trump\u2019s \u201cdeep state\u201d enemies. The politicized, blinkered investigation they were looking for was inside them all along.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/2023\/1\/27\/23573026\/durham-barr-new-york-times-trump-investigation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“In 2019, a few weeks after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Trump administration flipped the script and began investigating the investigators.
\nAttorney General Bill Barr appointed US Attorney John Durham to investigate those government officials who had presumed to look into Donald Trump\u2019s ties to Russia.<\/p>\n

The FBI\u2019s Trump-Russia probe, Barr argued publicly, was born of chasing thin conspiracy theories and relied on phony evidence, and its investigators were either blinded by political bias or acting with blatant political motives.<\/p>\n

And then Durham and Barr proceeded to do all those same things.<\/p>\n

A new, detailed expos\u00e9 by the New York Times\u2019s Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman, and Katie Benner digs into what exactly happened with the nearly four-year Durham investigation, which is purportedly about to conclude, and it isn\u2019t pretty. Anecdote after anecdote portrays Durham and Barr as believing in conspiracy theories without evidence but with clear political motives to bolster one of Trump\u2019s favorite arguments: that he was the victim of a nefarious plot.<\/p>\n

Basically, Durham and Barr wanted to prove that the Trump-Russia investigation was manufactured in bad faith by either \u201cdeep state\u201d officials or the Clinton campaign (or both), with the goal of hurting Trump politically. Again and again, Durham pursued various versions of this theory, and again and again, he fell short of proving his case.<\/p>\n

If Barr and Durham started off with suspicions but found upon investigation that they were baseless, that\u2019s not necessarily so terrible. Yet both men kept on saying or implying publicly that the \u201c\u2018deep state\u2019\/Clinton campaign hit job\u201d theory was true \u2014 Barr in public statements where he said this outright and Durham in court filings and trial questioning that seemed designed to advance a narrative he couldn\u2019t actually prove.<\/p>\n

Bizarrely enough, when checking out one of these theories \u2014 that Italian officials were somehow involved in launching the Trump-Russia investigation \u2014 Durham and Barr were instead presented with evidence linking Trump himself to potential financial crimes. \u201cMr. Barr and Mr. Durham decided that the tip was too serious and credible to ignore,\u201d the Times reporters write. Barr kept this new investigation of Trump in Durham\u2019s hands, and it\u2019s unclear what became of it.<\/p>\n

The Trump-Russia investigation certainly shouldn\u2019t be exempt from criticism, and a fair-minded review of whether investigators made misjudgments would be reasonable. But the Durham probe was not that. Instead, it repeatedly assumed dastardly plots against Trump, even when the evidence kept failing to establish those plots, while Barr seeded a narrative to conservative media and President Trump himself that Durham was closing in on Trump\u2019s \u201cdeep state\u201d enemies. The politicized, blinkered investigation they were looking for was inside them all along.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/2023\/1\/27\/23573026\/durham-barr-new-york-times-trump-investigation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[817,221,119,315],"class_list":["post-9972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-bill-barr","tag-donald-trump","tag-investigations","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9972"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9973,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9972\/revisions\/9973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}