What Do We Do With Durham's Report Now?

Where's the accountability? We'll have to wait for the next President.

It’s the cardinal rule of behavior change: What gets rewarded gets repeated.

Don’t expect the “Durham Report” to change behavior at the corrupted Federal Bureau of Investigation or their fellow travelers. His report, while critical of the FBI’s behavior, included no indictments or recommended rule changes. But stay tuned.

Many stories have been written about Special Counsel John Durham’s 306-page report. It was almost exactly four years ago (May 13, 2019) that then-Attorney General William Barr directed then-US Attorney John Durham (Connecticut) “to conduct a preliminary review into certain matters related to the 2016 presidential election campaigns.”

One of many memes coursing the internet when Durham’s investigation into 2016 election malfeasance was launched. Nobody was punished. Not even close.

Barr followed that up in February 2020 by naming Durham as Special Counsel “to investigate whether any federal official, employee, or any other person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump, including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III.”

Conservatives became excited that the celebrated career prosecutor from Connecticut and recipient of bipartisan praise known for his “fierce” prosecutions would lead the charge. Durham ultimately indicted three officials, winning only one conviction for a Justice Department lawyer who doctored evidence - a CIA email - to suggest that Trump advisor Carter Page was somehow under the influence of Russian intelligence (he, in fact, was a CIA asset). Kevin Clinesmith’s punishment? Losing his law license for one year. He’s already back at work. And Igor Danchenko, the primary sub-source for the widely-discredited “Steele Dossier” (‘pee tape’), was one of the two who got off.

It’s funny, in a way, but no laughing matter: The Hillary Clinton campaign, determined to smear Donald Trump as a compromised Russian stooge, used someone with connections to Russian intelligence to concoct her plan - Danchenko. The Clinton campaign was apparently influenced by Russian intelligence, not Trump or his campaign. The Durham report also chronicled how four separate FBI investigations into the Clinton Foundation - run by Bill and Hillary Clinton - magically faded away before the 2016 election.

The FBI didn’t prosecute but instead protected Hillary Clinton.

And get this: The FBI paid Danchenko hundreds of thousands of dollars to perpetuate the Russia collusion hoax despite being the subject of a counter-intelligence investigation in the recent past by the very same FBI. You can’t make this stuff up.

A failure to indict doesn’t mean Durham’s report was worthless. He documented several issues with the FBI’s deeply corrupt management culture that appear to have worsened since the election of Joe Biden and the confirmation of the feckless Merrick Garland as Attorney General or the worthless sycophant Chris Wray (FBI Director). After all, Durham’s charges were brought before juries in one of the most Democratic-leaning and anti-Trump jurisdictions in America, the District of Columbia. That’s some jury pool. Here are a few of the gems from Durham’s report:

“Our investigation … revealed that senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially … from politically affiliated persons and entities. … In particular, there was significant reliance on investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents. The Department did not adequately examine or question these materials and the motivations of those providing them…”

“FBI personnel … acknowledge[d] — both then and in hindsight — that they did not genuinely believe there was probable cause to believe that the [Trump campaign] was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of a foreign power, or knowingly helping another person in such activities.”

“[T]here is a continuing need for the FBI and the [Justice] Department to recognize that lack of analytical rigor, apparent confirmation bias, and an over-willingness to rely on information from individuals connected to political opponents caused investigators to fail to adequately consider alternative hypotheses and to act without appropriate objectivity or restraint in pursuing allegations of collusion or conspiracy between a U.S. political campaign and a foreign power. Although recognizing that in hindsight much is clearer, much of this also seems to have been clear at the time.”

There’s more.

“The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign.”

In other less-bureaucratic gobbledygook, the FBI cooperated in a coup against a duly-elected and sitting President of the United States. The Durham report reads like an insurrection to me—a real one.

If the Pulitzer Prize Committee or the recipients of their prize for perpetuating this hoax, The Washington Post, and The New York Times had a shred of integrity, those awards would be rescinded or returned. But don’t hold your breath. In fact, that is the most damning aspect of the Durham investigation and the reaction from our government and media institutions - the lack of accountability. They are just as corrupted as the government partisans who fed them.

And this failure to hold corrupt, partisan behavior to account means we’re seeing this corruption of our official federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies become even more brazen in real-time. What - or who - is going to stop them? Two examples: The FBI’s handling Biden laptop investigation - very different from “Crossfire Hurricane” - and the FBI’s openly illegal treatment of whistleblowers, as we learned this week. Durham’s report confirmed that the FBI’s Baltimore field office - which also serves the Wilmington US Attorney’s office (Biden laptop investigation, anyone?) botched the Danyenko investigation. Hmmm. How long has the Biden laptop investigation been going on? Longer than the January 6th investigations, that we know.

We know that partisan former intelligence officers, including the partisan former acting director of the CIA, Mike Morrell, and then-Biden campaign official and future Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, concocted the “Russian disinformation” about the Hunter Biden laptop. The lapdog media, led by Twitter, Facebook, and others, quickly censored or canceled those who shared what we know to be true, especially the New York Post.

What gets rewarded gets repeated, indeed.

It gets worse. The FBI now appears to openly and brazenly violate federal law - the Whistleblower Protection Act - that protects employees who report illegal or unethical activities by their employers or colleagues. This week, the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held a hearing of four FBI whistleblowers who the FBI has punished for coming forward. Garret O’Boyle’s testimony was riveting:

The FBI can extract whatever they want from me; I’m willing to bear that burden. I’ve sworn to defend this country from enemies both foreign and domestic, even if that means sacrificing my life. I’ve lived that oath out since enlisting in the Army, consistently saying, “here am I, send me.” My oath, however, did not include sacrificing the hopes, dreams, and livelihood of my family: my strong, beautiful and courageous wife and my four sweet and beautiful daughters, who have endured this process along with me.

In weaponized fashion, the FBI allowed me to accept orders to a new position halfway across the country. They allowed us to sell my family’s home. They ordered me to report to the new unit when our youngest daughter was only two weeks old. Then, on my first day on the new assignment, they suspended me; rendering my family homeless and refused to release our household goods, including our clothes, for weeks.

All I wanted to do was serve my country by stopping bad guys and protecting the innocent. To my chagrin, bad guys have begun running parts of the government making it difficult to continue to serve this Nation and protect the innocent. But I for one, will never stop trying. And I’ll never forget my oath.

Read all four whistleblowers’ testimony.

John Durham is right about one thing, at least from the concluding paragraph of his executive summary. No new rules or training sessions will fix corrupted leadership or an unethical culture (emphasis added).

“This report does not recommend any wholesale changes in the guidelines and policies that the Department and the FBI now have in place to ensure proper conduct and accountability in how counterintelligence activities are carried out. Rather, it is intended to accurately describe the matters that fell under our review and to assist the Attorney General in determining how the Department and the FBI can do a better, more credible job in fulfilling its responsibilities, and in analyzing and responding to politically charged allegations in the future. Ultimately, meeting those responsibilities comes down to the integrity of the people who take an oath to follow the guidelines and policies currently in place, guidelines that date from the time of Attorney General Levi and that are designed to ensure the rule of law is upheld. As such, the answer is not the creation of new rules but a renewed fidelity to the old. The promulgation of additional rules and regulations to be learned in yet more training sessions would likely prove to be a fruitless exercise if the FBI's guiding principles of "Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity" are not engrained in the hearts and minds of those sworn to meet the FBI' s mission of "Protect[ing] the American People and Uphold[ing] the Constitution of the United States."

This is damning, yet the media sycophants who fomented the Russia collusion hoax dismiss the Durham investigation as a nothing burger while clutching their unearned Pulitzers. It is essential to restore integrity as the FBI and elsewhere in government that the next President’s first call, just after he is sworn in, is the wholesale removal of the FBI’s leadership and, in their place, appointed people who will begin to fix what’s broken. There, of course, will be the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth, with the usual sympathetic media. Still, the fact is the President has great powers to fire, hire, reassign, and reorganize the federal workforce consistent with federal law. The next President should test those powers to the hilt.

Especially within the Department of Justice and the FBI. On Day One. From the President’s Desk at the US Capitol. Just after the inauguration at noon on January 20, 2025, before his or her ceremonial post-inaugural lunch in Statuary Hall with Congress.

In fact, as part of the transition process, the new President-elect will be briefed by the FBI director. President DeSantis/Trump/Pence/Haley/Scott/Christie/Ramaswamy/Whoever should conclude the meeting with these words:

“Thank you, Director (Christopher) Wray. I appreciate your briefing. As of noon on January 20th, as soon as I’ve completed my oath of office, your services will no longer be required. Nor will the services of your entire senior team. My transition team will not provide you with the names and offices we intend to fill with patriots but trust me - pause for effect, lean forward, glare into the eyes of Wray - They will be replaced. Immediately.

“You can save me a phone call, a few signature strokes, and some dignity for yourself by resigning in advance. I intend to fix what is broken at the FBI. And you are part of the problem.

“Have a nice day.”

What do we do with the Durham report? Let the next President - and pray to God that he or she is a Republican - will use it as a roadmap to clean house. Thoroughly. It cannot happen soon enough.

Recommended reading: “The Durham report is a damning indictment of the FBI — and the media,” By Marc Thiessen.