The Durham Report

In the fantasy world created by Hollywood and the mainstream TV shows it produces, the FBI is a crusader for justice both domestically and internationally. Agents are all telegenic. The crimes they pursue are all solved without bias or mistake. In the real world, things are rather different. 

Executives within the FBI, along with their counterparts within the Department of Justice and various intelligence agencies have now been shown to be partisan  players who are perfectly willing to work for their favored political party (do I really need to state that the party name  begins with a "D"?). In doing so they have actively participated in hoax after hoax, providing well-placed leaks with a complicit propaganda media in an explicit effort to affect election outcomes. The recent release of The Durham Report delineates all of this in troubling detail.

The editors of the Washington Examiner write:

The FBI allowed itself to be weaponized for political purposes during the 2016 presidential election. That is the conclusion of special counsel John Durham's damning final report released Monday.

It is a sobering conclusion, one strongly supported by the facts in the 306-page report and one that should prompt lawmakers from both parties to clean house at what is supposed to be the nation's premier bastion of law enforcement, not law bending or breaking. 

Not surprisingly, the propaganda media (e.g., the NYT and WaPo) downplay the most damning findings, instead trying to shift focus to anything that will make their readers continue to believe in the hoaxes that won them Pulitzer Prizes (for reporting false information, a.k.a., "fake news"). In fact, the level of main stream media reporting on Durham's findings has been meager, at best.

But that changes nothing. The FBI, the DoJ and some intelligence agencies have been weaponized in a partisan way. This is against the charter of these government agencies; it is unethical, if not criminal; it is the stuff of banana republics, and worse, it is greeted by many Democrats with a smile and a yawn.

The problem as I see it is serious. Executives (decision makers) in government law enforcement and intelligence agencies are now politically aligned with the propaganda media. They know they will not be held to account by the media organizations that used to investigate government wrongdoing and then widely publicize it. As a consequence, the government decision makers have become unafraid and arrogant, knowing that whatever they decide to do to shape the political conversation in the United States will be viewed by many as appropriate and justified.

The irony is that more than a few media organizations have adopted the WaPo's sanctimonious and hypocritical claim that "Democracy Dies in Darkness," and they they are the bringers of light. That's a joke that is not at all funny. 

Working with the agencies that have been weaponized, the propaganda media demonize their opposition, promulgate phony narratives, and soon, threaten (or worse) those who oppose their political ideology. That's the true darkness, and it should trouble all of us.

UPDATE-1:

As if to put an exclamation mark on the notion that "government decision makers have become unafraid and arrogant, knowing that whatever they decide to do to shape the political conversation in the United States will be viewed by many as appropriate and justified," the New York Post reports:

WASHINGTON — The IRS on Monday removed the “entire investigative team” from its long-running tax fraud probe of first son Hunter Biden in alleged retaliation against the whistleblower who recently contacted Congress to allege a cover-up in the case, The Post has learned.

The purge allegedly was done on the orders of the Justice Department, the whistleblower’s attorneys informed congressional leaders in a letter.

“Today the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Supervisory Special Agent we represent was informed that he and his entire investigative team are being removed from the ongoing and sensitive investigation of the high-profile, controversial subject about which our client sought to make whistleblower disclosures to Congress. He was informed the change was at the request of the Department of Justice,” Mark Lytle and Tristan Leavitt wrote.

The whistleblower, who supervised the Hunter Biden probe since early 2020, hasn’t publicly identified the first son as the subject of the case that he says is being brushed under the rug, but congressional sources confirmed it.

Yup ... the NYP is emphasizing this story (as it should), but the rest of the propaganda media—not so much.

UPDATE-2 (17 May 2023):

I have on numerous occasions noted that Democrats are guilty of psychological projection when they accuse their opponents of being a "threat to democracy." In reality, recent investigations (including the Durham Report) and the hard facts that support them indicate that Democrat supporters within the deep state along with Democrats embedded within the Clinton Campaign (among others) are the actual threat to democracy.

James Freeman writes about cross fire hurricane (the FBI participation in Clinton's Russia collusion hoax that I first wrote about in 2019 and also discussed here, here, and here):

... the FBI’s conduct went from biased, reckless and irresponsible all the way to criminal in the case of FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith. He falsified an email that was critical to securing surveillance approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to target a law-abiding American participating in politics.

Some liberals have stopped worrying about abuses by the intelligence community because their team has generally been the beneficiary.

I think the word "generally" is inappropriate. In recent years and with regard to Donald Trump, the Democrats are always the beneficiary of deep state machinations.

The real question is whether reform is possible. Freeman suggests a first step:

As a very modest first step in limiting the ability of the rogue agencies to abuse our constitutional rights again in 2024, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) should demand significant FBI and CIA budget cuts, including defunding any offices that have participated in any efforts to influence what is reported and shared in U.S. media.

I don't think that or any other substantive steps will happen, and that is very, very concerning. Even worse, it appears that the Dems and their propaganda media are quite happy with the weaponization of the deep state against those who oppose their policies.  

A WSJ commenter, "Victor Cabrera Flores,"suggests a more aggressive approach that I wholly endorse:

Charge Brennan, Clapper, Mueller, Comey, Priestap, Rice, Weissman, McCabe, Baker, Rosenstein, Blumenthal, Strzok, and Ohr with:

i ) overarching conspiracy to defraud the US Government of the honest services of its employees (FBI, CIA, DOJ, NSA, Treasury Dept., State Dept.)

ii) overarching conspiracy to defraud the US Government of the faithful enforcement of the law,

iii) conspiracy to deny the Civil Rights of American citizens by spying on them illegally, initiating an investigation without the authority to do so and leaking that information in order to embarrass and besmirch them and

iv) conspiracy to corrupt the Intelligence apparatus of the US through fraud and dissembling.

Seek Federal Prison Time of 5 years minimum.  

Of course, a compromised DoJ won't go anywhere near that. The fix is in, allowing people like "Brennan, Clapper, Mueller, Comey, Priestap, Rice, Weissman, McCabe, Baker, Rosenstein, Blumenthal, Strzok, and Ohr" and Hillary to act with absolute impunity. 

UPDATE-3 (17 May 2023):

Maybe I've been unfair in emphasizing the propaganda media (e.g., NYT, WaPo, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, LAT, ABC) complicity in the promotion of the Russian collusion lies that the deep state fed them. After all, the "media" also includes Hollywood, and true to form, Hollywood worked overtime to cement the notion that a sitting president was a Russian stooge. Christian Toto comments:

Late-night humorists carried the media’s water.

The most infamous, and damning, moment came when far-Left “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert called Trump a “c*** holster” for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.
This Monologue Goes Out To You, Mr. President

Colbert was far from alone.

Night after night, joke after joke, late-night satirists pummeled President Trump for allegedly stealing the election. When, in reality, Clinton’s dirty trick proved one for the ages. Some of the biggest stars in the industry rallied, over and again, to push the false narrative.

It's great to be a member of the Hollywood glitterati. You can be dead wrong repeatedly, egregiously, and knowingly, defaming those who you don't like—and suffer no consequences whatsoever. That's what biased and stupid late night humorists did, and that's why their collective rating are in the toilet. Well, I suppose that is a consequence, although they all continue to collect their multi-million dollar salaries.

Aside:  In a similar vein, here's a comment I wrote about Jimmy Kimmel when he stupidly ragged on Elon Musk after he acquired twitter:

As an example of the vitriol, we have this tweet from celebrity spokesperson for the Left, Jimmy Kimmel, a late night comedian who demonstrates repeatedly why his audience share is tanking.

Kimmel, like the vast majority of Hollywood glitterati, seems to equate a presence on TV (or the movies) with actual accomplishment. Elon Musk, on the other hand, makes things that actually matter—to the hundreds of thousands of people he directly and indirectly employs, to a cleaner planet that progressives like Kimmel tell us they care sooo much about, to real life communication (via SpaceX Starlink), to transportation (via Tesla), and now (via the acquisition of Twitter) to free speech. 

Kimmel has accomplished almost nothing that really matters, unless you think that making inane, snarky jokes late at night are somehow a 'contribution' to the human condition. As his shrinking hipster audience laughs at Kimmel's insults, we should all remember that in 20 years he will be remembered as just another has-been Hollywood type—slightly pathetic but mostly just unimportant. That will never happen to Musk, no matter how many contemptible tweets Jimmy posts. Maybe that's why Jimmy seems so angry.