The real story behind the Durham report is the people reporting on it

18 May 2023

The real story behind the Durham report is more disturbing than what’s being reported this week, because the people reporting on the Durham report are avoiding putting themselves at the center of the story. They are the real story.

The truth, meanwhile, is beside the point.

The Durham report is named after Special Prosecutor John Durham. He was appointed in 2019 by then-US Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the people who investigated Russia’s sabotage of the 2016 presidential election.

Led by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, that inquiry “produced more than two dozen criminal cases, including against a half-dozen Trump associates,” the AP said. “Though it did not charge any Trump aide with working with Russia to tip the election, it did find that Russia interfered on Trump’s behalf and that the campaign welcomed, rather than discouraged, the help.”

The Mueller report wounded Donald Trump. He never recovered, though he spent most of a single term trying, which in turn only deepened the wound. Trump and his comrades had hoped that the Durham report would heal the wound by investigating the investigators and, at least, generate “alternative facts” with which to tell a story that Trump and his comrades want to tell.

But after four years of searching, Durham found practically nothing with which to rewrite history. His investigation yielded one conviction but also two acquittals, and even that one conviction wasn’t his success. It was due to a separate 2019 investigation by the Department of Justice’s inspector general.

Most important of all, in terms of the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency, was that “none of the three [cases] undid core findings by Mueller that Russia had interfered with the 2016 election in sweeping fashion,” according to the AP.

That Donald Trump “welcomed, rather than discouraged, the help” of Russian saboteurs is an indisputable, inalienable fact that will go with him to his grave.

Durham “sharply criticizes” the FBI, but his criticism goes where the inspector general report would not go. That report, from 2019, found that “applications for warrants to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page, contained significant errors and omitted information that would likely have weakened or undermined the premise of the application,” the AP reported.

But, the AP report added, the inspector general report found no evidence that the FBI “acted with political bias and said there was a legitimate basis to open a full investigation into potential collusion, though Durham has disagreed.”

(The Timeswas more pointed. The inspector general report “kneecapped Mr. Durham’s investigation by finding no evidence that FBI actions were politically motivated,” Charlie Savage said. “He also concluded that the basis of the Russia inquiry — an Australian diplomat’s tip related to the release of Democratic emails hacked by Russia — was sufficient to open a full investigation.”)

But Durham didn’t disagree with the inspector general so much as with the facts of his investigation. The facts, you could say, have a liberal bias.

To the illiberal mind, a painting of the truth is not done according to the facts that are available to the painter. The painter already knows the truth. What he needs is facts that cooperate. That the facts did not cooperate in Durham’s case isn’t occasion to revise a truth-painting. (The painter already knows the truth.) It's an occasion to keep looking till the painter finds the “correct facts.”

This is an eternal feature of right-wing politics. We can expect the Republicans to do this every time they have the opportunity, as they did when Bill Barr was the attorney general and as they did when the GOP took the House to launch an investigation into “the Biden family.” That investigation, like Durham’s, found no dead bodies but plenty of “smoking guns.” Proof is beside the point, which is always making allegations of The Truth seem truer than they are.

The question isn’t whether the Republicans will or won’t launch one phony investigation after another in the ever-hopeful search for “correct facts.” The question is whether the Washington press corps will recognize what they’re doing and decide what’s in the best interest of the Washington press corps.

Given that the interest of the Washington press corps is always best served by generating as much attention as possible to the Washington press corps, it shouldn’t be surprising that these investigations are struggling for attention.

Even if the Washington press corps played along with making allegations of The Truth seem truer than they are, practically no one is paying attention to stuff that happened six years ago (the Durham investigation) or stuff that has no relevance the year before an election year (“the Biden family” investigation).

Some are saying these investigations are struggling for attention, because they aren’t true. I don’t think so. They are struggling for attention because the Washington press corps has decided, consciously as well as not, that they aren’t good for generating the attention the Washington press corps needs.

Alas, that’s the real story behind the Durham report. It’s more disturbing than what’s being reported, because the people reporting on the Durham report are avoiding putting themselves at the center of the story. They are the real story.

The truth, meanwhile, is beside the point.

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