Durham hearing shows Democrats don’t care about democracy after all
Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing with former special counsel John Durham broke little news, but it was still plenty revealing.
Republicans mainly asked Durham to review his findings, which exposed gross FBI and Justice Department malfeasance in opening and pursuing the Russiagate probe.
Democrats spent their time assailing him as “a partisan hack” because they dislike those findings.
Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) even “mocked” him for failing to indict Hunter Biden, who was never part of the probe. Manhattan’s Rep. Jerry Nadler accused him of being an eager Trump enabler.
None of which changes the fact that the FBI and Justice opened the Crossfire Hurricane probe on the basis of gossip and never found anything more (nor did the years-long Mueller probe).
“The FBI was too willing to accept and use politically-funded and uncorroborated opposition research such as the Steele Dossier,” Durham explained.
And: “If there was evidence inconsistent with the narrative, they didn’t pay attention to it, they didn’t explore it, they didn’t take the logical investigative steps that should have been taken.”
Indeed, “any number of significant red flags” were raised but “simply ignored.” Agents who pushed the “wrong way” got transferred away.
Worse, top federal law-enforcers repeatedly lied to the courts to justify wiretaps of minor Trump figures.
And they concealed from the agents doing the investigations that intelligence had uncovered “a Clinton campaign plan underway to stir up a scandal tying Trump to Russia,” as Durham put it.
And when “we interviewed the first supervisor of the Crossfire investigation — the operational person — we showed him the intelligence information. He indicated he had never seen it before. He immediately became emotional, got up and left the room with his lawyer, spent some time in the hallway and came back.” Yep: “The information was kept from him.”
FBI professionals know Crossfire Hurricane was a horror, Durham testified: “I have had any number of FBI agents who I’ve worked with over the years — some of them retired, some of them still in place — who have come to me and apologized for the manner in which that investigation was undertaken.”
Even those who despise Donald Trump should still see this weaponization of federal law enforcement as a threat to, well, our democracy.
But the very Dems who talk the most about “protecting our democracy” would rather smear the messengers — Durham and former Attorney General Bill Barr, who tapped him for this probe.
FBI chief Chris Wray is at least claiming to take Durham’s findings to heart, aiming to ensure the Bureau never goes so far off-course again.
Yet it’s hard to see him succeeding when the party that still holds the White House and Senate keeps insisting the real problem is that the FBI didn’t go far enough.
