“After all, this was a collective effort. In Washington, the more people involved in a conspiracy, the less culpable it becomes. They all did it, so no one did.” - Jonathan Turley

By James Howard Kunstler - May 19, 2023

Historians of the future, boiling up a nice spring bouillabaisse of nettles, cattail tubers, and frogs over their campfires, will pore over John Durham’s mystifying RussiaGate report for clues as to what begat the smoldering wreck of the legal system that once girded all the rough-and-ready ways of the old America, turning us into a land of simpering zombies. There was, apparently, a strange, Satanic cult called the FBI that cast a spell over the land, giving license to wickedness and depravity that transformed a once-upright folk into liars, until nobody knew what was the right way to do anything anymore….

Of course, we do not live in the future, only on the thrilling edge of it, and it is still possible to see through the fog of mystification creeping over our lives. Though one Rachel Maddow yet raves on, and the FBI still sends SWAT teams hither and yon to cow the righteous, and an evil mummy resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, our country knows the score. It was hoaxed, played, bamboozled. A trip was laid on us. The law was turned against the people by the very officers of the courts: the lawyers. Shakespeare had the right idea — and forgive me for not spelling it out (but consult Henry VI, Part I, Scene II at your leisure).

Yes, John Durham’s report was a disappointment, but isn’t it obvious that he was already done-in by the bootless prosecutions last year of Michael Sussmann and Igor Danchenko in the gangrenous DC district federal court, which sent the message: Hey, why bother, pal? Any additional cases against the likes of James Comey, Peter Stzrok, Andrew McCabe, and the rest of the gang would have resulted in the greatest exhibition of memory-loss ever seen in the annals of jurisprudence. And, as to expecting the government to produce documents in evidence… well, who amongst us can hold his breath for, say, seventy-five years.

It is impossible for now to know the constraints placed on Mr. Durham by Attorney General Merrick Garland — though it appears that Mr. Garland is just the latest initiate into the years-long shuck-and-jive that amounts to a seditious conspiracy against the republic. That is, add Mr. Garland to the long list of officials who have a lot at risk and a lot to hide, so he’s used his vested powers to hamstring Mr. Durham. But the heart of the story is out, despite all that, and pretty baldly stated: Hillary Clinton started the whole RussiaGate gag to take the heat off her own turpitudes. The federal agency heads and their lieutenants avidly used Hillary’s concocted falsehoods to foment malicious prosecutions and drive the naively accommodating President Trump out of office, and stopped at nothing until they succeeded.

There it is. We will now have to muddle through and go forward, a savagely deformed polity. Still, it will be edifying to see Mr. Durham testify before The House Judiciary Committee next week, as Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has requested. Mr. Durham may even wish to use the opportunity to redeem his tarnished reputation. Some items for review: Why did Mr. Durham omit to investigate the deceitful Mueller team (especially its actual director, Andrew Weissmann), which was an obvious cover-up operation? Ditto: the role played by President Barack Obama in the scheme to interfere in the 2016 election? Ditto: the operation to hide and then discredit Hunter Biden’s crime-stuffed laptop during the 2020 presidential election? Ditto: what has been the CIA’s role in all of this? I believe Mr. Durham will provide many interesting answers to these queries. It may be the only forum that will ever avail him to speak honestly.

Presumably the House Judiciary Committee members are lawyers, and have a host of aide lawyers to fall back on for legal advice. Can someone please ask Mr. Durham why he did not bring a charge of conspiracy to commit sedition under the RICO act against the whole gang of RussiaGate players based on the “enterprise rationale” that the evidence suggests they were all vested in an effort to defenestrate a sitting president?

We will go forward from this whether we like it or not, of course, because . . .

[SNIP]