Pornstache Durham Got His Ass Handed To Him Again, And Sean Hannity Is FINE WITH IT TOTALLY FINE!
Hannity never really cared about this trial in the first place, OK?
If you live in the regular world with regular people who go outside and walk their dogs and say "howdy neighbor" and aren't impressed by Herschel Walker's cereal box police badges, you may have completely forgotten a special prosecutor named John Durham was investigating the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, because former Attorney General Bill Barr appointed him to chase Donald Trump's buttfart hallucinations about FBI Trump-Russia conspiracies against him.
Durham's investigation was a failure pretty much from the get-go, and it's been a failure as it's continued, because it was never a real investigation into a real thing. As the 2020 election approached and it was clear Durham, the lovechild of a miniature schnauzer and Inspector Gadget, would be delivering no October Surprise that would benefit Trump, Barr was MAD. Pretty much everybody else forgot about it.
But on Fox News it's continued to be an obsession, especially for goons like Sean Hannity. If you watch Fox News, you've been hearing about the Durham probe for years now, about how it's the real Russia investigation, about how it's going to expose the malefactors in the Deep State who insist on persecuting Donald Trump. Whenever Fox News could pretend something big had happened in the Durham probe, it would do so, it would order its regular viewers to fap to it, and it would scream at the rest of us for refusing to go along with the charade.
“Real 'gee, why won't they cover the shit we're making up' vibes”
— Lis Power (@Lis Power) 1644934514
During that moment back in February, Fox News was just cumming itself, with chyrons screaming "CLINTON FRAMED TRUMP" and "INFILTRATING TRUMP" and Sean Hannity telling people, "This is the biggest spying scandal EVER."
John Durham got his ass handed to him yesterday when a jury acquitted Igor Danchenko, the second person's he's indicted in his probe, on four ( flimsy, very stupid ) counts of lying to the FBI. Danchenko was one of the primary sources for the famous/infamous Steele dossier, and Durham alleged Danchenko had lied about his own sources. When Danchenko was indicted, former State Department spox Matthew Miller tweeted that it was one of the "most convoluted indictments" he had ever read.
This comes after a jury acquitted Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman, the first person Durham indicted in his probe, back in May. (The Sussman case was also incredibly stupid. ) If you are a mathlete, you have calculated that that's a 100 percent failure rate Durham's got at trial.
This is what happens when investigations aren't real.
(For the sake of completeness, we should note Durham got a guilty plea last year in another low-level case of an FBI lawyer who falsified an email, which resulted in one year of probation, HOO BOY LOCK HER UP CRIME OF THE CENTURY!)
Sean Hannity spent a lot of time babbling on his radio show yesterday about how the not guilty verdict in the Danchenko trial was "meaningless" to him. He babbled conspiracy theories about the FBI lying to the FISA courts about the dossier in order to get warrants in its Trump-Russia investigation, conspiracy theories that will never be true no matter how much stupid people babble them.
Last night on his TV show, Hannity laughably said, "I never really cared that much," about the Danchenko trial.
“I never really cared that much about Igor Danchenko,” Hannity claimed. “What we learned in the trial is what matters to me more.”
OK.
The Daily Beast notes that in May of 2020, Hannity said that "The great American republic will disintegrate before your eyes” if Durham didn't prove that Obama people did, um, something or other. Also, Hannity was indeed paying attention to the Danchenko investigation:
“@SaraCarterDC Exposes Igor Danchenko’s Massive Role in the Steele Dossier https: //t.co/utOa1wuntE”
— Sean Hannity (@Sean Hannity) 1636401902
Hannity and his guest, Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson, went last night with the spin that Danchenko and Sussman were acquitted because the FBI itself was the REAL killer, or something, it's very unclear.
On Tuesday, the Fox host insisted that there were still unanswered questions.
“Will we ever get to the bottom of any of this?” he asked Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) as a chyron labeled Danchenko a “deep state bad actor.” “Are all of these people that signed those FISA warrants filled with information that they know was not verified—are they ever going to be held accountable, or do we have the two tiered justice system in perpetuity?”
Johnson responded with the wild claim that Danchenko and Sussman were acquitted “because the jury found the FBI was the more corrupt actor in what they did.”
Okeydokey artichokey.
Quick, nobody tell these guys that when you have a 3.5 year investigation with two extremely low-level indictments and two not guilty verdicts, that's probably not an investigation that's going to bear much more fruit. As the Washington Post notes, both of these trials have been about people lying to the FBI and getting acquitted. If Durham is supposed to be finding that the "FBI was the more corrupt actor," as dumbfuck Ron Johnson said, he has a weird way of showing it.
The Post also reports that Durham's Alexandria, Virginia, grand jury — where the Danchenko trial happened — is no longer active, but it's not sure about his panel in DC.
Hey, remember when Special Counsel Robert Mueller would indict somebody and everybody who ended up on their juries, even MAGA ladies, would come back like "GUILTY GUILTY HOLY FUCK GUILTY"?
Compare that to Durham's trials and juries. In the Danchenko trial, the jury was gone for nine hours, and according to a juror the Post talked to, there were no holdouts. Also:
Durham, a longtime federal prosecutor who was U.S. attorney in Connecticut during the Trump administration, personally argued much of the government’s case against Danchenko.
At trial, Durham got MAD when arguments didn't go the way he wanted them to and his own witness completely undercut his case.
Dude is full of shit. For evidence of that, note what he said in his own closing statement at trial, which reads like it was regurgitated out of the bowels of Fox News as opposed to relying on the historical record:
Durham used his closing remarks to defend his own work, telling the jury that his team “spent a considerable period of time away from their families” to figure out why the Russia investigation began after Mueller, “a patriotic American,” concluded that “there’s no evidence of collusion here or conspiracy.”
Sorry, asshole, that's not what Robert Mueller concluded, and anybody who's honest knows it. He said his evidence "did not establish" conspiracy. It said nothing about "collusion," as that's not a legal term. What Durham is copy/pasting here are Bill Barr's lies about the findings of the Mueller Report. Based on that one quote, any reasonable person should have trouble taking John Durham seriously.
But hey, whatever, failure is failure.
Durham has made an investigation based on finding stupid and highly technical alleged infractions to indict, people he's just pretty sure have technically stepped on a crack and technically broken their mothers' backs. Meanwhile, juries keep coming back and saying hey, we just talked to their moms, and their backs are totally fine.
But hey, chin up, MAGA traitors — if Republicans seize/steal back the House, we're sure new Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan will find some way to pick up John Durham's dead chickens and just keep fuckin' 'em.
We have faith in him.
[ Daily Beast / Washington Post ]
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I wonder how many sources got burned/disappeared/faded into the woodwork during Turnip's Prostratin' to Putin Tour, with all his secret unrecorded late night phone calls to Vlad. Or the Saudis. Sure were a lot of dissidents rounded up about the time Jared got that billion dollar infusion of Saudi cash.
If you were an intelligence asset in a highly sensitive position, where discovery meant prison or falling out a window, would you trust the US to keep your identity secret? Maybe now with Biden, but how can you trust that another idiot like GW, or worse, Turnip won't replace him?
I think it will be a while before the intelligence agencies can repair that damage. And Putin wins again.
Gym in an actual court where there are rules of conduct and everything is under oath would be great entertainment