About That Durham Report

The long-awaited Durham report came out on Monday, May 15. It’s over 300 pages, so, while there has been a lot of immediate response, there may also be a longer time for some things to boil up to the surface. There are two main responses:

·        Yes, just as we knew, the whole Russia collusion hoax was indeed an invention of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

·        But why is no one being prosecuted?

So there’s the satisfaction of having the evidence laid out for the public to see—although the public that hadn’t already seen it won’t be fed this information from the press who kept them from seeing what the rest of us saw all along. And there’s also the disappointment that we’re not about to see perp walks of the many colluders who have been fighting against our rights and freedoms.

You can read the Durham Report in full here. 

I’ll do a fairly brief summary of the highlights. And then list a few of the sources I listened to, some of which have a thought or two to add.

The full Durham Report is available here.

 

The Summary

Glenn Beck did a fairly good summary here. I’ll go through what he said, using some of the transcript and an occasional paraphrase of his words:

There was a meeting August 3, 2016, a briefing by CIA director John Brennan, in the Oval Office, with Barack Obama (president at the time), Joe Biden (VP at the time), James Comey (FBI Director at the time), and other senior administration officials. According to Brennan’s handwritten notes and his recollections from the meeting, he briefed those in the room on relevant intelligence known to date on Russian election interference, including “the Clinton Plan intelligence.”

Durham writes, “specifically Director Brennan’s declassified handwritten notes reflect that he briefed the meeting’s participants regarding the alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on the 26th of July of a proposal from one of her campaign advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian Security Services.”

When the Steele dossier comes out, they all know that it is the Clinton Plan intelligence.

When they receive it, they know it is false, that it is the Clinton campaign invention, but they launch a full (not preliminary) investigation anyway. The agents didn’t then or in hindsight have any belief that any of the claims in the dossier were true.

Then they leak the information to the press, knowing it to be false.

There’s more. On August 22, 2016, an FBI cyber analyst sent an email to the Bureau employees and senior intelligence officials informing them of the details of the Clinton Plan. They “failed to remember” any follow-up actions the Bureau might have taken after the second briefing on it.

The FBI, when it got the Steele dossier, knowing it to be the Clinton campaign fabrication they were briefed would be coming—when they got it, they went to Christopher Steele (author of the dossier) and offered to pay him $1 million, and pay his primary sources money, if anyone was able to provide proof (or at least provide plausible evidence).

As Glenn Beck explains, what we see is that, when Hillary Clinton’s operatives couldn’t get anything really solid, they pass the made-up dossier to the FBI. The FBI looks at it and goes, “This is garbage.” “Yeah, I know, but it could be true.” “All right. Offer him a million dollars if he can come up with something.”

FBI Agent Brian Auten traveled to Rome and met with Steele in October 2016. And he made the offer knowing that the dossier relied primarily on one person or sub-source. The Bureau paid that sub-source, Igor Danchenko, around $250,000 (of our tax money) even after he was unable to provide any evidence for a single claim.

The FBI made this payout even though they had significant evidence that Danchenko himself was Russian Intelligence. It had closed a counterintelligence investigation into him in 2011, because agents mistakenly believed he had left the country. The FBI had investigated Danchenko as a possible Russian spy from 2009-2011, after a colleague at the Brooking Institute, the left-leaning think tank where he worked, told the FBI that Danchenko raised the prospect of paying him for classified information if the colleague would join the Obama administration.

A second Brookings employee also told the FBI that he suspected Danchenko of being connected to Russian Intelligence. It became a full-fledged investigation when the FBI realized that Danchenko was a known associate of two other spies and had contacts with known Russian Intelligence officers, and had said he wanted to join the Russian diplomatic service. He also told another person that he worked on “special matters” for the Russian army and that his Russian passport listed him as connected to the Russian military intelligence service.

They paid Danchenko $250,000 to prove that Trump was colluding with people like him. He couldn’t come up with that evidence.

The Clinton campaign, with significant help from the FBI, and at least tacit approval from Obama, Biden, and the other senior administration officials, colluded with Russian spies to interfere with the 2016 election by claiming that Trump was doing the very thing they were actually doing.

Let’s add to that a few details.

The FBI comes out with a statement, after the report came out Monday: “The conduct in the 2016 and 2017 special counsel Durham examined was the reason that the current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which now have been in place for some time.” As Glenn Beck adds, with some irony, “So they fixed it. Nothing to see here. No one went to jail. No one was fired. No one was held accountable. But trust us, they say, we’ve fixed it.”

Except, remember that guy who paid Steele in Rome? Agent Brian Auten? He was a primary figure in squelching the Hunter Biden laptop story just before the 2020 election. 2016 was the first attempt to take out Trump with election interference; 2020 was when they pulled out all the stops, and that was just one of them. So, no, the FBI hasn’t “fixed it,” clearly.

There’s this other niggling detail. I’m not sure yet whether it’s in the report. But the Steele dossier got them the FISA warrant, to spy on the Trump campaign. That was illegal, since they knew the dossier was fake, and was provided by the Clinton campaign, although they hid that information from the FISA judge.

But they kept spying, even after Trump was in the White House. Without any reason or pretext, they spied on a sitting president of the United States. If they would do that, what would they not do?

One question about this period is about the Adam Schiff lie. He was chair of the House Intelligence Committee at the time. Law professor Jonathan Turley tweets this:

Given Durham's findings that there was no basis for the actions taken by the FBI in launching this investigation, this would be a good time for former House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff to reveal that evidence he said showed the Russian collusion… Schiff and other Democrats previously sought to prevent Durham from continuing his investigation and issuing this report.

Yes, I’d like to see exactly what evidence Schiff could produce, that he was referring to back then. But don’t expect media to actually ask the question.

Glenn Beck explains the Durham Report.
screenshot from here

 

The Commentary

Several of the commentators responding have referred to the episode as an attempted coup. That is not hyperbole. By definition, it was “a sudden appropriation of leadership or power; a takeover.” The people are supposed to be in power in America; we choose our leaders, who are obliged to abide by the law and listen to the people in making laws. 2016 was definitely a coup attempt. So was the Ukraine phonecall they impeached Trump for—wherein there were no laws broken, and in reality it was a cautious warning to Ukraine’s new president at the time of corruption in his government—which Biden was deeply involved in.

Then there was the 2020 election—in which they interfered by claiming the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation so as to sway the election. And then there were all the changes in election law, supposedly because of COVID, making cheating easier. A coup is the Occam’s Razor explanation for a feeble candidate such as Biden, who barely campaigned and had no excited support, winning the election with more votes than any candidate in history.

Then there have been the various lawsuits, which in sane times would get immediately dismissed, but in our insane times seem to be an attempt to find something that will make Trump ineligible to run again, or at least make him even more unpalatable to voters. Add to that the raid on his home in Mar-a-Lago, over negotiations of papers the National Archives wanted and that he was cooperating with them on. The coup attempts continue into the foreseeable future.

So, here are a few perspectives I found worth listening to this week:

·       “FBI Insider REVEALS ALL To Mr Reagan - Durham Report EXPOSED” Chris Cole interviews former FBI Agent and current state Senate candidate for Northern Virginia, Mike Van Meter, discussing the Durham Report, May 17, 2023.

·       “LIVE: Inside the New Durham Report: Where’s the Accountability?—Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke” Jan Jekielek on American Thought Leaders for EpochTV, May 15, 2023. 

·       “Durham Bombshell Reveals Palace Coup Against America” Joshua Philipp on Crossroads, for EpochTV, May 16, 2023.  

·       “[DS] Staged A Coup, Treason, FBI/DOJ Cleaning, The 40,000ft View Reveals The Path – Ep. 3070” X22 Report, May 16, 2023.  

·       “Durham Report EXPLAINED: Here’s EVERYTHING we learned” Glenn Beck for The Blaze, May 16, 2023.  [This is the one I reference above.]

Here’s a bonus. Glenn Beck did a special Thursday evening, called "The Reckoning." He recognizes that we’re not satisfied with what we see as crimes being committed without penalty, while unfair accusations and law-fare are being wielded against innocent people. He suggests a plan, and he starts this series with the Biden crime family. He and his research team have identified 150 crimes committed by Hunter Biden—identifying only those with rock solid evidence, ranging from drugs, guns, and prostitution, to influence peddling and tax fraud. These are undisputed and well documented. He suggests that, while we have a partisan, corrupt DOJ who won’t prosecute, those crimes were committed in various states and localities. It’s possible to prosecute at the state or local level, without having to wait for a federal prosecutor. There’s plenty of precedent with various states going after Trump on invented charges. We don’t have to invent charges or evidence; we just have to make use of the evidence.

screenshot from here

Beck has provided the documents. And he asks that we do some crowdsourcing—go through the documents, find crimes that were committed in our state or county or city, and pressure local officials to prosecute. Enough prosecutions from enough places could lead to some eventual reckoning.

The video is here: “The Reckoning: Biden Crime Family” Glenn Beck for TheBlaze, May 16, 2023. 

You can get the documents here.