New York Times: Durham’s Just Investigating ‘A Series of Conspiracy Theories’

The New York Times, which pushed special investigator Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump-Russia collusion that proved illusory, is reveling in the acquittal of a Democratic operative in special counsel’s John Durham inquiry (an inquiry into “conspiracy theories,” according to Savage) into the possibly corrupted origins of Mueller’s own investigation.

Same Times that threw around “collusion” willy-nilly and defended the now-discredited Steele dossier, commissioned by Democratic operatives on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, is now hammering Durham for the audacity to get to the bottom of this plot.

Legal reporter Charlie Savage pointed to the acquittal in Thursday’s edition. The headline suggested Durham was on a puzzling wild-goose chase: “Sussmann Acquittal Raises Question: What Is Durham Actually Trying to Do?”

Savage took it from the very beginning. While Mueller was a quiet hero to TimesReporters: Durham is portrayed as buffoonish.

Even before 12 jurors voted to acquit Michael Sussmann of lying to the F.B.I. Rebuke to the Trump-era special counselor, John H. Durham, supporters of Donald J. Trump were already laying the groundwork to declare that the prosecutor won despite losing in court.

What really mattered, they essentially claimed, was that Mr. Durham had succeeded in exposing how Hillary Clinton framed Mr. Trump for the “Russia collusion hoax,” an argument that ricocheted across the right-wing news media.

True enough, Durham proved that 2016 Clinton campaign associates — victims of Russian hacking — asked reporters to cover the allegation that the Clinton campaign played a part in it. It was also a theory that there may have been a secret communications channel between Trump’s Russia and Mr. Trump. However, most news media were skeptical and the F.B.I. The matter was quickly dismissed by the F.B.I.

Savage cried phony tears over Durham’s alleged loss of reputation (in the eyes of media liberals, anyway).

In May 2019, Attorney General William P. Barr appointed Mr. Durham to the Russia investigation. He didn’t have a good reputation for following iffy cases, or using his law enforcement powers to make politically sensitive information public.

Savage was having trouble with Durham’s ability to provide context for his files.

In both cases, Mr. Durham The charges were imposed with a tight band with copious information, heavy with insinuations that there had been a conspiracy to trick people into thinking Mr. Trump colluded with Russia — not by “deep state” officials, but by associates of Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

However, Savage had used partisan context before it made Trump guilty of collusion. This was when he listed vague circumstantial suspicions against Trump as if these were somehow justifications for the long investigation.

Mr. Trump had said flattering things about Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, kept bringing on advisers with ties to Russia, had financial ties to Russia, publicly encouraged Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton, and at his nominating convention, the party dropped a plank that called for arming Ukraine against Russian-backed rebels….

In Thursday’s story, he kept railing against Durham’s filings with an unsympathetic nit-picking technique the paper never applied to Mueller’s actual case.

The most shocking Durham filings were either misleading or untangential.

Savage’s bottom line? Mueller was smart, Durham wasn’t.

Any equivalence has its limits. The F.B.I., as Mr. Horowitz indicated, had a sound factual basis to open the Russia investigation; Mr. Barr’s mandate to Mr. Durham appears to have been to investigate a series of conspiracy theories.

Savage tried to defend the Trump Russia investigation last December by downplaying imports of discredited Steele dossiers.