The Great Big Nothing Burger
Despite the Durham report, no one will pay for the attempt to fix a Presidential election and drive a sitting President from office.
The Durham report into the Russian Collusion Investigation of the Trump campaign and administration has “dropped”, as they say. Bill Barr, who replaced the hapless Jeff Sessions as Attorney General of the Department of Justice, called in his friend Durham to tidy up what Bob Mueller’s Russian Investigation had started – and by the time the statute of limitations has passed for the catalogue of criminal offences Durham describes it will be 2025. (I think Robert Barnes' legal summary of Durham’s report is worth a listen). No one will pay for the attempt to fix a Presidential election and drive a sitting President from office.
I started On the Settled Questions with an opening missive on the FBI raid of President Trump’s home. In fairness, the Trump campaign and period in office completely changed my view of politics in America and anywhere else for that matter. Between 2016-18 I had already pieced together from numerous articles, YouTube, and podcasts - and a fair amount of going down the wrong rabbit holes - most of Durham’s conclusions. I knew my Carter Pages from my Alexander Downers, Joseph Mifsuds or even George Papadopoulos’ from your Perkins Coie or Fusion GPS. But Van Jones’ “Great Nothing Burger” just rolled on (see above).
It's also worth remembering that in 2017 the Q Anon hoax was ratcheting up with an alleged member of the Trump inner circle with Q government clearance leaking inside information on behalf of the President. The Q’s central claim was that the Trump Administration contained "White-hats" - behind-the-scenes patriots, mainly in the military, that were working with the new President to restore law and order by what can only be described as ex-judicial trials at Guantanamo Bay, and a virtual fascist coup d'état. People needed cheering up, I guess. It was a pussy-hat world after all.
Against this fictional army, you had the "Black hats" who were out to destabilise, frustrate, and prevent the Trump administration from functioning, starting with the FBI hit job on Michael Flynn, President Trump’s National Security Advisor, that led to Mike Pence pressuring President Trump to sack Flynn. When Trump removed Comey as Head of the FBI, the real war inside the government opened up. A three-year Mueller inquiry into Russia collusion, followed by two spurious failed impeachments. (The recent prosecution of President Trump by the Manhattan Attorney’s Office and E Jean Carroll’s spurious defamation case, found in her favour but subject to appeal, is a continuation of this process - to prevent Trump from winning the Republican Nomination and running for president for a third time. It will fail, of course).
So many tweeters shared their own take on Q Anon, creating an industry. Remember Stealth Jeff, a tweeter who claimed the hopeless Sessions was, in fact, integral to the Trump strategy to expose his enemies. Jeff was actually a White hat, even when President Trump did not hide his loathing for his first pick as Attorney General. I can remember being told everyone, including Bob Mueller and Rod Rosenstein, were White hats. The blessed Devan Nunez of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence had been the first to expose what Durham has recently confirmed. Nunez still seems the real deal.
Virtually every news outlet on the American centre-right brought into some notion of a divided powers correction. We were told the system would right itself, Trump would be vindicated, the Clinton Foundation Uranium to Russia, Pizzagate (yeah, that old hoax), whatever, would all be exposed. Michael Horowitz, Inspector General of the Department of Justice’s “bombshell” report, eventually “slow-walked” its way into the public domain and fizzled out. The Manichean war rolled on.
Tick-tocking Fox News’ Sean Hannity, with guest reporter Sara Carter, and Dan Bongino, all reported on the Trump hidden fightback from “sources” that never actually materialised. The October surprises were never really surprising. The Daily Wire flip-flopped between never-Trump and maybe-Trump. Whilst the Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel wrote more measured pieces.
But everyone told their audiences that the system would triumph, the latest internal investigation would expose the wrongdoing, and Trump would be vindicated. It was not the FBI as a whole, just the top two floors of political hacks and the out-of-control Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. But looking back on it now, no significant action was taken by anyone. it was not a few rotten apples - it was the whole of the FBI.
The Alt-lite and Alt-right had their take. However, the latter has mostly been driven off of YouTube. And notably, Alex Jones. Alt-lite par excellence was given the full bankrupting show trial treatment by an appalling Judge and prosecution that is yet to be overturned by a higher court.
Durham will make no difference because those that believed President Trump was a Russian asset won’t believe Durham, and those that did not will, like me, largely dismiss Durham as window dressing. The report is conclusive and would normally be devastating, but not today. If anything, it normalises the actions because it calls no one to answer for the crimes committed.
It is important to know that most of the American media and political class knew Russia-gate was lies from the get-go or shortly thereafter but kept saying the opposite, partly because they hated Donald Trump, partly because they expected something bad to emerge about Donald Trump, and partly because they hated Donald Trump. Did I say they hated Donald Trump and anyone that voted for him? I did? Okay, I’ll move on.
Instead, we got process crimes, where any mistakes made by the person being investigated can lead to charges of obstruction of justice. This was used against Flynn, Papadopoulos, Manafort and Roger Stone; and eventually Trump as part of the failed impeachment hearings. A bit like Covid, it is easy to forget that, at the time, we did not see this coming. The unfolding events taught me so much; I do not think I will ever view the political world the same.
The whole destabilisation of the Trump campaign and administration was a destabilisation and demoralisation of the USA itself. It’s what the CIA does to other countries, like, say, Ukraine? Divide the population into two warring camps so that things are so polarised that unconscionable state actions will appear reasonable. Today’s media is integral to this. They launder the false stories and then repeat them again and again and again. They relegate factual reporting in favour of editorialising, dumbing down, and opinion pieces; and they hunt in packs, repeating the same messaging often week by week, across all platforms.
Publishers commission anti-Trump books aplenty; you see them in cheap book retailers going for £3 as Christmas stocking fillers. Trump is not beyond balanced criticism, lots of it, but he will never receive any from these quarters. And the damage done to the centre ground of politics, the agreed presuppositions, the morally accepted premisses, and the very foundations of journalistic ethics is profound. If Presidents can be ousted, who cares about a Prime Minister, let alone a Home Secretary or two?
As we now know, there were very few white hats and so many black hats that the distinction became meaningless. So many people wanted Trump silenced, out of office and prevented from running again, so the list would be endless; even those who appear to have served him well, like Pompeo, now distance themselves.
The current ridiculous court cases against President Trump are just the continuation of the policy. Each case was breathlessly spread by a media that still hate Trump. Nothing has changed. This is what the media is. And in the UK, we don’t have a Tucker Carlson, Bill of Rights, binding written constitution, or Supreme Court worth the name. The new Talk TV and GBNews are increasingly doing anything to gin up the base of their viewers, get them clicking, and increase advertising income.
From its founding, the FBI targeted politicians just as frequently as gangsters or minority political groups. The Cointelpro programme showed how the FBI infiltrated radical organisations such as the Black Panthers and had assets in virtually every American counter-culture group. It used these assets to provoke conflict and criminal acts that it could then use to arrest and prosecute the individuals caught up in these incidents, whilst the assets become unindicted co-conspirators, snitches.
Lest you forget the FBI set up the January 6th “false flag”. Their agents and assets infiltrated all the grassroots Trump-supporting groups, and the “attack on Capital Hill” was choreographed by the FBI; the doors were opened by ordinary security, the protestors were led in by assets and agents, and then the protesters were attacked, provoking the melee. Everyone who was not working for the FBI was arrested, prosecuted, and is sitting in jail, several without proper charges, two years later.
Eventually, new House and Senate committees will investigate, no one will be charged with anything, more fundraising showboating, and the January 6th protestors will rot in prison if Trump is not re-elected. Durham is seventy-two. Perhaps he might be dragged out of retirement to deliver another report in four years’ time confirming what you could see on the internet within days of January 6th. No doubt the FBI will accept all the recommendations.
The Crossfire Hurricane “investigation” itself is misdirection; the FBI needed to set up George Papadopoulos as cover for an already active surveillance, it was their “insurance policy” cover story just in case Trump got in, to justify the surveillance retrospectively. The Russia story and the Mueller inquiry were used to both misdirect, cover up and destabilise the Trump administration and the midterm elections. Trump lost 3 years of his besieged presidency.
But what Durham confirms to me is the fact that the rich, powerful, and politically connected are obviously completely above the law, corruption is rife, and the Federal government is out of control. The Russian collusion hoax was infinitely bigger than Watergate, and no one has paid any price. Some conservative black commentators have pointed out to white MAGA patriots - shocked or caught up in the FBI-coordinated January 6th false flag - welcome to our world. The FBI has been framing, planting, or concealing evidence, turning assets, or infiltrating organisations and encouraging them to break the law so that they can blame, lock up or criminalise the innocent and the gullible for nearly a century.
But there is something more worrying about the state’s response to the Trump election and, indeed, Brexit. The state and political classes’ resistance to popularism happened on both sides of the pond, and British intelligence, either directly or working through ex-agents such as Christopher Steel, has its fingerprints all over the Russia hoax. And as the years have wore on, it is impossible not to see that we have also passed some form of tipping point in the USA, United Kingdom, and Europe.
The old normal politics about party manifestos, and bread and butter issues, better schooling, law and order, sensible immigration and asylum, home ownership, and university places, all of this seems shelved if Presidents can be driven from power, if the Surveillance states want rid - democracy becomes a charade. Now we can guarantee that anyone we vote into Number Ten will be very unlikely to be in power at the following general election if they challenge the real power brokers.
And macro-political narratives and overriding policies render old-style politics irrelevant. Zero Carbon is economic and environmental suicide, and without a vibrant and growing economy, we cannot afford to attend to the other disastrous macro bipartisan policies that have been forced upon us and championed by the media: pandemic Lockdowns, massive net immigration, mRNA “died suddenlies”, Trans Binary medical child abuse, Misinformation and cancel culture, and the Ukrainian war. Until these top-down mega policies are investigated, exposed and jettisoned, there can be no real opportunity for actual politics, bottom-up and on a human scale.