Declassifications Show Durham Is Democrats’ Worst Nightmare

Commentary

Let’s hope, for more reasons than one, that the CCP virus is no longer too heavily with us this summer, because America is going to need its full attention, or what’s left of it, for what’s coming down the pike—the Durham report and all that entails.

That means, of course, the investigation of how and why the Mueller/Russia probe happened, and whether anyone will be prosecuted for it.

Many have been skeptical that any of the possible guilty parties in this situation would be punished, but the tide toward prosecution may be turning.

We had an indication a few nights ago, when Attorney General William Barr used some pretty strong language on Laura Ingraham’s show during an interview with the host:

“What happened to him [President Trump] was one of the greatest travesties in American history—without any basis,” Barr said. “They started this investigation of his campaign. And even more concerning, actually, is what happened after the campaign. A whole pattern of events while he was president … to sabotage the presidency … or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.”

A number of Democratic Party and liberal sources dismissed this interview as so much biased Fox News claptrap, but one wonders why someone with Barr’s reputation would go that far out on a limb if he didn’t know something. Toward what end?

And he is, as the investigator John Durham’s boss, clearly in a position to know. Not only that, Barr told us months ago that Durham wouldn’t deliver his report and indictments, if any, until summer. That makes sense. If you go for the king, as they say, you’d better not miss.

And now, lo and behold, several days after the Ingraham interview and not more than five hours before I am typing this, the following evidence (with more likely to come) appears on Twitter from premier investigative reporter Catherine Herridge, once of Fox but now of CBS:

“SCOOP @CBSNews obtains newly declassified footnotes IG report w/multiple warnings to FBI about dossier, Russian targeting, disinformation. Footnote 342 “two persons affiliated with (Russian Intel) were aware of Steele’s election investigation in early July 2016.”

Beneath the tweet is a photograph of a formerly redacted page of footnotes from the inspector general’s report on Mueller/FISA. (Quick query: Why did IG Horowitz seemingly put the most important material in footnotes, and why was it almost always redacted? … Well, we can guess.)

The substance of the multiple footnotes is that, as of July 2016, a minimum four months before the election, the FBI was well aware that the Steele Dossier was at least in substantial part the product of Russian disinformation, some of it emanating from a purported supporter of Hillary Clinton who was Christopher Steele’s so-called “sub-source.”

Was he KGB? FSB? Or, in FBI parlance, RIS (Russian intelligence sources)? Who knows?

As a one-time mystery writer, I could take this in a lot of directions, none of them good, but I will resist speculating. A few things are evident, however.

First, one of the big lies promulgated by Mueller & Co. was that the Russians favored Trump. This was always dubious. The dossier makes Trump look terrible, and since we now have evidence some of it comes from a Russian source, that the Russians wanted him to win seems pretty idiotic. As always, the Russians wanted to sow dissension.

More importantly, these footnotes expand the investigation considerably beyond the “mere” fudging of FISA applications to surveil Carter Page—into areas of treason and sedition.

What in the Sam Hill was the FBI doing dealing with someone, Steele, they knew was being manipulated by Russian intelligence four months before a presidential election? In other words, they understood in July, or possibly even June 2016, that Steele was compromised, yet they continued with and expanded their investigation based on his information, knowing it was false.

Why, if not for seditious or treasonous purposes? Someone has to explain.

The Chinese communists apparently fudged the data on the CCP virus, commonly called the novel coronavirus, and lied to the world about it, but what’s becoming clear is that our FBI, at least part of it, is or was not all that much better.

Who among the Democrats will have the courage to stand up against this? I’m sad to say that I’m skeptical that any will. The results, where it might lead, might be too devastating for them to handle.

Roger L. Simon—the Epoch Times’ senior political columnist—is also a prize-winning novelist and an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter. His latest book is “The GOAT,” a Faust-like story set in the world of big-time tennis.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.