Bill Barr's 'Investigate The Investigators' Obamagate Drug Deal Just Lost Its Lead Investigator

Having broken DOJ, Barr leans on Durham for October surprise.

In case we hadn't all grokked that Bill Barr's pal US Attorney John Durham is cooking up some hinky shit for an October surprise, the Hartford Courant   reported Friday that Durham's lead investigator Nora Dannehy just noped out rather than be associated with a political hit job.

Federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy, a top aide to U.S. Attorney John H. Durham in his Russia investigation, has quietly resigned from the U.S. Justice Department probe - at least partly out of concern that the investigative team is being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done, colleagues said.

Last year Durham recruited Dannehy, a Justice Department alum who managed politically sensitive investigations for both the Bush and Obama administrations, to run the investigation. As the New York Times   points out , in 2010 Dannehy authored a report saying that, "[P]ressuring a prosecutor to indict a case more quickly to affect the outcome of an upcoming election could be a corrupt attempt to influence the prosecution in violation of the obstruction of justice statute. The same reasoning could apply to pressuring a prosecutor to take partisan political considerations into account in his charging decisions."

And now she's leaving, before the job is done, without even the fig leaf of excusing herself to spend more time with the family while thanking Holy Father Trump for the privilege of allowing her to serve. Something's rotten in the state of Connecticut!

While other media outlets have been unable to match the Courant's reporting that Dannehy "has been concerned in recent weeks by what she believed was pressure from Barr - who appointed Durham - to produce results before the election," they did get confirmation from Durham's spokesman that Dannehy has resigned from the DOJ because "no comment."

In May of 2019, jowly Roy Cohn tapped Durham to get to the bottom of the FBI investigation into Donald Trump's campaign and its many ties to the very country that ratfucked our election to put Orange Foolius in the Oval Office. Inspector General Michael Horowitz has already concluded that the FBI's "Crossfire Hurricane" inquiry was properly predicated and not politically motivated, and the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee just dropped an exhaustive report on Russia's ratfucking and the Trump campaign's grateful acceptance of help. Nonetheless, Barr conscripted the US Attorney in Connecticut to prove that the Obama Deep State did tapps to Trump's wires and Ukraine is the real collusion.

" J'accuse !" the pair shouted at the Italian government on a field trip last year trying to gin up evidence that our various European allies were in on it . (It shoulda been " Io accuso ," but Bill Barr gets confused easy. Allegedly.) They've also accused the Brits of going along with the nefarious scheme, because sure, why not!

Barr insists there's no barrier to releasing the Durham report before November 3, despite longstanding DOJ rules prohibiting release of information that might affect the outcome of an election, because "whatever [Biden's] level of involvement," he's not a target of the investigation. The Justice Department's own policy manual states that "DOJ personnel shall not respond to questions about the existence of an ongoing investigation or comment on its nature or progress before charges are publicly filed." But Bill Barr is anything but subtle.

And his boss doesn't even bother pretending that Durham is engaged in anything other than an effort to help him beat Biden.

"Bill Barr can go down as the greatest attorney general in the history of our country, or he can go down as an average guy. We'll see what happens," he told Fox's Maria Bartiromo in August.

"Bill Barr and Durham have a chance to be — Bill Barr is great most of the time, but if he wants to be politically correct, he'll be just another guy," said Trump, adding later, "They have all the answers. It goes all to Obama, and it goes right to Biden."

And just last week, Bartiromo hosted Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to flog Durham's report.

"Additional documents that I've been able to review say that a number of the players, the Peter Strzoks, the Andy McCabes, the James Comeys, and even others in the administration previously are in real trouble because of their willingness to participate in an unlawful act and I use the word unlawful at best, it broke all kinds of protocols and at worst people should go to jail as I mentioned previously," Meadows gushed .

So nice of Ms. Bartiromo to present a forum where Trumplanders can go to hype Durham's findings without any pushback or annoying questions about the propriety of political appointees accessing grand jury material, much less discussing it publicly while an investigation is still pending.

Against this backdrop, Justice Department alumni are sounding the alarm about Dannehy's sudden departure.

"Dannehy managed as politically-sensitive a probe as you can imagine, the Bush era firing of US attorneys, for both Mukasey and Holder," tweeted Matthew Miller, the former director of the DOJ's public affairs office. "Says a lot that she can't do it for Barr."

Other former prosecutors note that prosecutors resigning or withdrawing from cases to protest political interference was once unheard of, but is now common under Bill Barr.

@RDEliason @BarbMcQuade @danielsgoldman @EricColumbus @eliehonig Exactly. And that was under Republican and Democra… https: //t.co/JeIKflefjE

— Mimi Rocah (@Mimi Rocah) 1599940195.0 

Yikes. So will Dannehy appear before the House and say what she knows the way Roger Stone prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky did? Or will she stay silent out of loyalty to her longtime friend Durham and the DOJ as an institution?

Keep your eye on this one, Wonkers, it's gonna be ugly.

[ Hartford Courant / NYT / Just Security ]

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