Brane Space: Holman Jenkins Jr. 's Anti-Mueller, Anti-Dem Propaganda Still Doesn't Justify AG Garland Keeping Durham Around

The moronic mendacity of WSJ op-ed scribe Holman Jenkins Jr. is now legendary, dating from when - in May, 2020 - he insisted Trump never said to inject bleach to get rid of Covid. It was the big bad "liberal media" reporters who put the words into poor Trump's mouth. A claim people can see is patently false just by viewing this Youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9kWsUwTcj8

In one of his latest suspect efforts, e.g.

In Durham Investigation vs. the Press, Who’s the Straight Shooter?

The Top WSJ Troll and resident buffoon tries to resurrect the once stellar reputation of the DOJ's John Durham, by employing a mixture of truth and lies, hyperbole and propaganda. First the aspects of truth:

"Bush and Obama administrations trusted him to investigate potential CIA abuses. The Clinton administration trusted him to investigate FBI corruption in dealings with the Boston mob. Mr. Durham, after 45 years, became untrustworthy to Democrats and their press allies only when he began investigating a matter inconvenient to Democrats and their press allies—when Trump Attorney General William Barr tasked him with reviewing the FBI’s Russia-meddling investigations."

But let's get clear Barr was Trump's political hit man in the DOJ, his 'take down guy' for the Mueller probe and everything connected to it, to rescue Trump. This was evident from the moment Barr trotted out his own distorted summary of the probe back in early 2019, insisting Trump could not be found guilty of obstruction of justice - when Part II of Mueller's Report, e.g.

www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

directly contradicted that baloney, see e.g.

Barr Gives Trump A "Get Out Of Jail Free" Card. ...

Why Barr would do that is clear, or should be by now. He was acting as Trump's hit man for any probes to implicate Trump and to muddy the investigative waters, espeially heading into potential impeachment. As a then commentary by Charlie Pierce put it:

"And thereby hangs the upcoming brawl. Mueller says essentially that he is drawing no conclusions on obstruction of justice. Meanwhile, Barr—and Rod Rosenstein—are saying that, because Mueller drew no conclusions, he did in fact draw a conclusion. The law, as it has been said, is an ass.

There will be insufferable cock-a-doodle-doo'ing from the usual suspects for the next two years, and we all better get used to it. I suspect that both Barr and Mueller will get hauled before various congressional committees."

Further, we know there was not a damn thing wrong with the FBI's investigation of the Trump campaign rats, or the wiretaps on them. The 434-page report issued by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz back in December, 2019, concluded the FBI had an “authorized purpose” when it initiated its investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, into the Trump campaign. In doing so, Horowitz implicitly rejected GOP assertions that the case was launched out of political animus, or that the FBI broke its own rules on using informants.

This is precisely when Durham became "untrustworthy" and more a lackey and lapdog for Barr and Trump, i.e. to sideline Democratic investigations and impeachment efforts - then getting underway - while turning the tables on the investigators. But Holman goes on to babble:"This brings us to the irony of the press carping about Mr. Durham; it ankle-bites at side aspects of his proceedings, since nobody can really counter the colossal burden of his revelations, that the press and FBI let themselves be manipulated into promoting baseless smears against a presidential candidate and president."

Which is total balderdash! From the minute Traitor Trump fired FBI chief James Comey he exposed himself fully as conscious of his own guilt, as well as his henchmen and bad actors, from Paul Manafort to Michael Flynn and Roger Stone. See:

Of Course There’s Evidence Trump Colluded with Russian Intelligence - Lawfare (lawfareblog.com)

Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe, indeed, memorialized the import of Mueller's findings on MSNBC soon after they came out, e.g.

"What we have here is a situation where the Mueller report shows without any doubt that a hostile foreign power attacked the United States in this (2016) election. That Donald Trump welcomed that attack, benefited from it and then - the last couple of years - tried to cover it up every possible way."

Is Holman now going to assert he knows more than a top notch Harvard law professor? In fact, anyone with two eyes, a brain and working neurons could see every move Trump made was criminal to its depths. From imploring the Russians to hack Hillary's emails and expose them back in the summer of 2016, to his 2019 effort to extort favors from Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, to openly inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, after already spreading seditious lies about having the 2020 election stolen from him. This stuff is not 'rocket science', though Jenkins Jr. tries to make it so and that he's the only voice to unlock obscure truths.

It is clear then that the whole concept of the Barr -Durham-Trump initiative to investigate the investigators was to undermine any justice to hold Trump and his minions accountable (this even after he pardoned Manafort and Flynn, exposing yet another level of consciousness of guilt) and to kneecap any further DOJ efforts to assist the January 6th House Select Committee. Hence, it is fully understandable now in retrospect why Merrick Garland has delayed issuing contempt charges against the likes of Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Sean Hannity and others - after blowing off the Committee and refusing to appear to answer questions. Why do that if there is a Trump mole still being harbored at DOJ pursuing a totally contradictory "investigation" ? But this makes no sense given one arm of DOJ is now obviously working against the other, e.g.

Opinion | Biden’s Justice Department Should Not Be Pursuing Trump’s Political Vendetta - POLITICO

The irrepressible Jenkins goes on to croak:

"The latest buzz concerns his case against Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann, accused by Mr. Durham of lying to the FBI to conceal a Clinton campaign role in spurious evidence he was presenting of Trump-Russia collusion. A new filing doesn’t bring new charges. It simply asks a judge to examine potential conflicts of interest involving Mr. Sussmann’s legal counsel and certain Clinton campaign associates. If the filing contains any “aha!” value, it reinforces the revelation that Clinton agents were behind a now-discredited story at Slate.com and the New Yorker magazine that Mr. Trump, a Russian bank and a Michigan healthcare company were in secret computer cahoots."

But this codswallop has already been righteously shot down in multiple venues. For example, with regard to his blather about the "Clinton campaign role in spurious evidence of Trump-Russia collusion", MSNBC's Chris Hayes has pointed out:

Remember this, during the campaign the only investigation that became public was the one regarding Hillary Clinton, which arguably lost her the election. The FBI was investigating Trump at the very same time but no one uttered a word about it. If they were so desperate to bring Trump down you'd think someone would have said something

As far as the Sussman issue, as an earlier Mother Jones article, e.g.

Is John Durham Deliberately Stoking Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories? – Mother Jones

Noted:

Durham, appointed by Trump Attorney General William Barr, filed what normally is a routine and technical motion in a legal proceeding as part of his case against Michael Sussmann, a Democratic lawyer who Durham has indicted for allegedly lying to an FBI official. The filing concerned a possible conflict of interest involving Sussmann’s attorneys. But the motion included several paragraphs of supposed “factual background” that exploded within right-wing media. It led to a Fox News story with a dramatic headline: “Clinton Campaign Paid to ‘Infiltrate” Trump Tower, White House Servers to Link Trump to Russia, Durham Finds.” Other conservative outlets followed suit. The Washington Examiner howled, “Durham says Democrat-allied tech executive spied on Trump’s White House office.”

Donald Trump got into the act. He issued a statement claiming Durham’s latest filing “provides indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia.”

Adding:

The researchers examining the DNS data were not infiltrating anything. Lawyers for Joffe and David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who helped develop the research Sussmann shared with the CIA, have challenged Durham’s representations. Dagon’s attorneys note that the DNS logs examined related to the Russian phone service came from the time of Barack Obama’s presidency. That appears credible, given that Sussmann’s meeting with the CIA was only three weeks after Trump had taken office. And they told the New York Times that Dagon and associates were using “nonprivate” DNS data and “were investigating malware in the White House, not spying on the Trump campaign.”

And finally, the killer, that it was a renegade Trump zombie named Kash Patel who initially sowed the false meme on a FOX appearance, and has been rightly subpoenaed to appear before the House Select Committee i.e.

It’s clear from Durham’s own filing that there is no evidence that Trump and White House servers were infiltrated. This charge originated with Kash Patel, a onetime aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and pro-Trump operative who has long toiled to discredit the Trump-Russia scandal. Discussing the Durham motion, he made an inaccurate claim to Fox that the document showed that Clinton lawyers had tried to “infiltrate” Trump Tower and White House servers

What is now clear, despite Durham getting the FOXites to pull back in their wild conspiracy claims, is that his "investigation" needs to conclude so the DOJ can resume being in alignment with the January 6th House Committee. Especially as Durham now has to know Kash Patel was the one who initially sowed the 'bomb' leading Barr and Trump to impress him into their specious service. In other words the whole investigation is bunkum amounting to little more than 'picking gnat shit out of sawdust" as Russell Long once referred to the Warren Commission's efforts to try to frame Oswald as the lone JFK assassin.

Or to return to the Mother Jones report conclusion:

Ultimately, the fault for this phony bombshell rests with Durham. His filing did not specify the exact time period the DNS lookup research covered. It did not include sufficient details of the alleged links between Joffe and the Clinton campaign to provide a clear picture.

Holman more or less wraps up his piece with this twaddle:

"It wasn’t some off-the-wall whimsy to suggest, in 2019, that candidate Joe Biden might do himself and the country a favor by endorsing the Durham investigation. Crazies on both sides could step back from the brink. It would benefit Trump voters especially to know that, while some of the paranoia they’ve been encouraged to adopt may be unfounded, their concerns aren’t unreasonable and are being treated respectfully by the legal system."

But endorsing a bogus investigation - conceived and instigated by the lying scum that Biden vowed to replace, to resurrect the nation's "soul" - would be tantamount to a political self-immolation. Further resorting to 'both sides' false equivalence doesn't work in this case for Holman any more than it has in his earlier pathetic efforts. There is only one side - the Repuke Right - full of crazies, who even now believe their insurrection was "legitimate political discourse".

In order to prove it wasn't and return this nation to the rule of law Merrick Garland needs to have Durham wrap up his ongoing monkey show forthwith. No more delays, especially as the House Select Committee nears the date of public hearings.

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