Spygate is unravelling

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Joe
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Joe » Thu Dec 29, 2022 2:41 am

Brian Peacock wrote:
Thu Dec 29, 2022 12:43 am
I didn't know you were a gymnast Joe! :tea:
I understand it's great cardio. :coffee:
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by BarnettNewman » Fri Jan 20, 2023 11:40 am

Lol

Judge Orders Trump and Lawyer to Pay Nearly $1 Million for Bogus Suit - The New York Times
The suit names Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and other people and entities that he claimed conspired to damage him in the 2016 election with what he called false claims about his ties to Russia. Among the defendants were Mr. Comey; the former deputy F.B.I. director Andrew G. McCabe, who opened the counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia; and the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who helped circulate a dossier of lurid claims about Mr. Trump and Russia, many of which were unsubstantiated.

The conspiracy-minded racketeering suit was filed with hyperbole and exaggerations, and made claims easily shown to be false. In the ruling on Thursday, Judge Middlebrooks broke down how the suit’s claims — including that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Comey had conspired to take down Mr. Trump — were “implausible” and “categorically absurd.”

Mr. Trump’s claims were “a hodgepodge of disconnected, often immaterial events, followed by an implausible conclusion,” the judge wrote, adding, “This is a deliberate attempt to harass; to tell a story without regard to facts.”

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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by macdoc » Fri Jan 20, 2023 5:46 pm

to tell a story without regard to facts.”
nothing new there :x
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Svartalf » Fri Jan 20, 2023 6:57 pm

Did anybody mention rupert murdoch?
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Sat Jan 28, 2023 2:22 am

Durham is not looking so squeaky clean these days. This article is biased against him in my opinion, but the facts it relays are damning enough.

'Why Merrick Garland Should Fire Special Counsel Durham Now'
[T]he problem with Durham is that his assignment arose from Barr’s efforts to undermine the Russia probe to aid Trump and Durham compounded that unethical origin with his own unethical actions.

Actions that included: privately trying to convince the DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz to change his conclusion that found no evidence the Russia probe had been politically motivated and then later publicly disagreeing with those findings; circumventing a federal judge’s order to stop seeking private email information by subpoena and instead securing the information through direct contact with the company; and, apparently burying a criminal inquiry into Trump that arose after Italian authorities told Durham and Barr about allegations of Trump’s financial wrongdoing.

Durham’s conduct also sparked resignations from his own staff. Durham’s own top deputy resigned in protest over his drafting of an interim report at Barr’s request to be circulated before election day. And in apparent disagreement with Durham over his decision to indict his first lost case, two prosecutors left his team with one resigning in protest and the other taking a job in the private sector.

Durham’s substantive “work” is unquestionably at an end. The grand jury he was using has expired and he supposedly is working on his final report. That report–originally due to DOJ in May of 2022–is still not completed. Given Durham’s history, his report is likely to be a morass of disinformation meant in part to cover his own failures while still seeking to serve Barr by pushing conspiracy theories that the Russian probe was a baseless effort to discredit Trump.

The American people would not be well served by such a report. Special counsel reports are not opportunities to engage in political free speech under the First Amendment. Rather they are supposed to be evidence-based disclosures rooted in integrity. Durham gives no indication that he is capable of producing such a product.
The New York Times had a piece related to this as well. Amongst other things, we learn that Barr and Durham went to Italy in pursuit of dirt to discredit the investigation of the Trump campaign's Russia connections. They didn't get that, but the Italians gave them leads on Trump's shady financial dealing. Instead of putting a special counsel in charge of investigating that material, Barr put Durham on it, and Durham quietly shelved it.

'How Barr's Quest to Find Flaws in the Russia Inquiry Unraveled'
A year into the Durham inquiry, Mr. Barr declared that the attempt “to get to the bottom of what happened” in 2016 “cannot be, and it will not be, a tit-for-tat exercise. We are not going to lower the standards just to achieve a result.”

But Robert Luskin, a criminal defense lawyer and former Justice Department prosecutor who represented two witnesses Mr. Durham interviewed, said that he had a hard time squaring Mr. Durham’s prior reputation as an independent-minded straight shooter with his end-of-career conduct as Mr. Barr’s special counsel.

“This stuff has my head spinning,” Mr. Luskin said. “When did these guys drink the Kool-Aid, and who served it to them?”

...

While attorneys general overseeing politically sensitive inquiries tend to keep their distance from the investigators, Mr. Durham visited Mr. Barr in his office for at times weekly updates and consultations about his day-to-day work. They also sometimes dined and sipped Scotch together, people familiar with their work said.

...

[T]he broader findings [in Justice Department Inspector General Horowitz's report] contradicted Mr. Trump’s accusations and the rationale for Mr. Durham’s inquiry. Mr. Horowitz found no evidence that F.B.I. actions were politically motivated. And he concluded that the investigation’s basis — an Australian diplomat’s tip that a Trump campaign adviser had seemed to disclose advance knowledge that Russia would release hacked Democratic emails — had been sufficient to lawfully open it.

The week before Mr. Horowitz released the report, he and aides came to Mr. Durham’s offices — nondescript suites on two floors of a building in northeast Washington — to go over it.

Mr. Durham lobbied Mr. Horowitz to drop his finding that the diplomat’s tip had been sufficient for the F.B.I. to open its “full” counterintelligence investigation, arguing that it was enough at most for a “preliminary” inquiry, according to officials. But Mr. Horowitz did not change his mind.

That weekend, Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham decided to weigh in publicly to shape the narrative on their terms.

Minutes before the inspector general’s report went online, Mr. Barr issued a statement contradicting Mr. Horowitz’s major finding, declaring that the F.B.I. opened the investigation “on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient.” He would later tell Fox News that the investigation began “without any basis,” as if the diplomat’s tip never happened.

...

And the Justice Department sent reporters a statement from Mr. Durham that clashed with both Justice Department principles about not discussing ongoing investigations and his personal reputation as particularly tight-lipped. He said he disagreed with Mr. Horowitz’s conclusions about the Russia investigation’s origins, citing his own access to more information and “evidence collected to date.”

But as Mr. Durham’s inquiry proceeded, he never presented any evidence contradicting Mr. Horowitz’s factual findings about the basis on which F.B.I. officials opened the investigation.

By summer 2020, it was clear that the hunt for evidence supporting Mr. Barr’s hunch about intelligence abuses had failed. But he waited until after the 2020 election to publicly concede that there had turned out to be no sign of “foreign government activity” and that the C.I.A. had “stayed in its lane” after all.

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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Sat May 13, 2023 5:00 pm

Maybe the sound of a whimper?

'American Oversight Receives Indication That Durham Investigation Has Closed'
On Friday, the Department of Justice dropped a key objection to the release of more than 4,500 pages of documents related to the Durham investigation, the Trump-era inquiry into the origins of the FBI’s probe of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The DOJ had previously withheld the records claiming that their disclosure would interfere with an ongoing law enforcement investigation. Instead of filing an anticipated brief that would have defended the withholdings, the department withdrew its assertion of the “ongoing investigation” exemption — strongly suggesting that the Durham investigation has been closed.

The reversal was announced in a motion filed in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit American Oversight brought in August 2019 to compel the release of documents related to the Durham inquiry, including communications between Durham and senior Justice Department officials and any communications Durham or DOJ officials may have had with the Trump White House or Congress.

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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Svartalf » Sat May 13, 2023 6:09 pm

I'm sure the investigators closed the door with a bang aq they went out
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Tue May 16, 2023 12:35 am

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Finally we will hear how Obama and the Deep State done dear Donald wrong. Or something.

'Special counsel issues report criticizing FBI for launching Trump-Russia investigation'
The special counsel who spent four years investigating the Trump-Russia probe accused the FBI of acting negligently by opening the investigation based on vague and insufficient information in a sweeping 300-page report made public Monday.

Special counsel John Durham, named by then-Attorney General William Barr to examine the origins and conduct of the investigation into whether Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia, criticized the FBI at length in the report.

“The [Justice] Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to law,” the conclusion section of Durham’s report says. “Senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor toward the information they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons or entities.”

The FBI, in response to the report, indicated that the missteps identified by Durham have already been addressed.

...

Durham lost the only two prosecutions he brought to court. But the report released Monday appeared to be an appeal to the court of public opinion — an argument that Trump was treated unfairly by FBI officials who were too quick to unleash the bureau’s investigative powers.

...

Durham’s central conclusions were previously contradicted by a 2019 report by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, which found that while the FBI made a series of mistakes, the decision to open the probe was justified as a matter of law and policy — and untainted by any evidence of political bias.

Durham, who issued a statement disagreeing with the Justice Department inspector general’s report at the time, expanded his dissent in the report released Monday.


300 + pages of 'I don't think they should have investigated Trump's connections with Russia':

'Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns '

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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Wed May 17, 2023 4:38 am

The Durham report is not getting good reviews from the Enemies of the People and the horrible 'experts'. As former US Attorney Barb McQuade observes:
Durham Report is in. After four years, review of 1 million documents, 490 interviews, his conclusion is that FBI should have opened a preliminary investigation (PI) instead of a full investigation (FI) in 2016.

The only difference between FI and PI is the duration and the authorities that may be used. This is a hairsplitting quibble, and one on which FBI officials routinely disagree.
She goes on to point out some of the less salutary elements of the Durham product.

Also, '"Circle of Garbage": Experts Slam Durham "Wild Goose Chase" as Investigation Into DOJ Trump-Russia Probe Ends With "Bupkis"
Legal and public policy experts, journalists, and political commentators are mocking Durham and his investigation, with several pointing out that Durham’s conclusions do not match the legal record, including sworn testimony.

... experts say – and prove – the report obscures the actual facts.

...

In fact, attorney and former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa observed, “I’ll be interested to see how Durham argues that there was no predication in the Russia probe when the DOJ’s OIG [Office of the Inspector General] found the opposite AND a Republican-led Senate Intel Committee found that Trump’s campaign manager was, in fact, in frequent contact with a Russian intel officer,” she wrote. “As many have noted, even before Durham’s report was released Monday, that FBI investigation Durham claimed had no basis of being opened, resulted in dozens of criminal prosecutions.

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti also takes Durham to task. He writes, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller “rightfully resisted using the term ‘collusion,’ which has no legal meaning in this context, instead focusing on conspiracy law. Durham’s report comes out and says there is “no actual evidence of collusion,” a media soundbite, not a legal conclusion. What a contrast,” he notes.

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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Joe » Wed May 17, 2023 1:16 pm

You mean Trump still isn't exonerated???? :dq:
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu May 18, 2023 7:35 am

Some people are saying... many, many people... you probably don't know this... but everyone is saying that this report... by our beautiful patriot prosecutor Gerald Durrell... that this report... is the biggest exoneration in history... the biggest exoneration in the history of exonerations.
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Joe » Thu May 18, 2023 12:52 pm

Gerald Durrell. :spray:
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by JimC » Thu May 18, 2023 8:39 pm

I loved "My Family and other animals"...
Nurse, where the fuck's my cardigan?
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Svartalf » Thu May 18, 2023 10:32 pm

Why I ate my father, that's also him isn't it? I'd check straight from the source, but people rearranged my books shelves under the excuse of dusting, and I no longer know exactly where that book is.
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by JimC » Fri May 19, 2023 7:57 pm

Svartalf wrote:
Thu May 18, 2023 10:32 pm
Why I ate my father, that's also him isn't it?
Definitely not!
Nurse, where the fuck's my cardigan?
And my gin!

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