Tangle - John Durham's final report.

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

The Durham report. On Monday, special counsel John Durham released his long-awaited report examining how the FBI handled its investigation of Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia. Durham's report came after four years investigating the FBI’s investigation, and after losing both of the criminal cases he took to trial.You can find our previous coverage of the Durham probe here.You can read today's podcast here, the Blindspot report on the left here and on the right here, today’s “Under the Radar” story ⁠here⁠, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here. Our latest YouTube video premieres tonight at 5pm EST here.Today’s clickables: Quick hits (2:12), Today’s story (4:20), Right’s take (8:38), Left’s take (12:19), Isaac’s take (16:24), Listener Question (21:25), Blindspot Report (23:10), Under the Radar (23:40), Numbers (24:16), Have a nice day (24:49)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Dangle Podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the John Durham Report. On Monday, Special Counsel John Durham released his report. We're going to discuss what

was in it. Before we do, though, I unfortunately have to issue a quick correction and also actually a clarification from yesterday's newsletter. The correction first, I noted yesterday that Daniel Penny had raised over $2 million in a GoFundMe for his defense. In fact, Penny raised the money on GiveSendGo, not GoFundMe, which is actually a notable distinction because GoFundMe has faced some political criticism for banning certain donation drives. Separately, I also published a sloppy thought yesterday I wanted to clarify. I said on the podcast that, quote, nobody should be able to kill someone without being tried for a crime. As many listeners and readers pointed out, this is kind of a ridiculous, absolutist position to take. And I agree, they're right. There are plenty of instances where someone

acts in self-defense or might use lethal force reasonably and should not end up facing a trial for a crime. I don't currently believe Penny's actions are an example of that, but those cases definitely exist and it was a mistake of mine to imply otherwise. So the GoFundMe error is our 84th correction in Tangle's 199-week history, and our first since May 4th. I tracked these corrections and placed them at the top of the newsletter in an effort to maximize transparency with readers and listeners. All right, that is it for the corrections, so we'll jump in with some quick hits. First up, President Biden and congressional leaders resumed debt ceiling talks yesterday,

and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the Republican from California, said a deal could be struck by the weekend. Number two, State Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the Republican, won Kentucky's gubernatorial primary and will now face Andy Beshear in November. Separately, Sherelle Parker, who advocated the return of stop and frisk and hiring more police to fight crime won the Democratic primary in Philadelphia's mayoral race. Number three, a former employee of Rudy Giuliani sued him, alleging sexual harassment, assault, and violations of New York labor laws. She also alleges Giuliani was selling presidential pardons for $2 million and claims she has tapes to support some of her allegations. Number four, North Carolina

lawmakers voted to override Governor Roy Cooper's veto of a 12-week abortion ban. Number five, the World Meteorological Organization forecasted Earth has a 66% chance of breaking the 1.5 Celsius threshold set in the 2015 Paris Climate Accord in the next five years. The FBI is facing heavy criticism over its probe into possible ties between Russia and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. In a report released Monday, Special Counsel John Durham concluded the agency did not have actual evidence to investigate candidate Trump's campaign in 2016. The final report made public by John Durham, the special counsel appointed by former President Trump's Attorney General Bill Barr.

Durham was investigating the origins of the FBI's Russia investigation, his 300-page report very origins of the FBI's Russia investigation. His 300-page report, very critical of the FBI. Despite four years of investigation, the special counsel did not find much new. His report affirms failures by the FBI. And today, the FBI is again acknowledging that serious mistakes were made and saying that reforms have been put in place to keep these kinds of failures from happening again. reforms have been put in place to keep these kinds of failures from happening again. On Monday, Special Counsel John Durham released his long-awaited report examining how the FBI handled its investigation of Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia. Durham's report came

after four years investigating the FBI's investigation and after losing both of the criminal cases he took to trial. Quick refresher, do you remember the Trump-Russia investigation, the one that occupied Special Counsel Robert Mueller for two years? Well, there were questions about how that investigation was conducted. In 2019, Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report on the investigation, criticizing how the FBI applied for surveillance warrants and ultimately concluding the investigation was warranted. That same year, Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham as a new special

counsel to look into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe and to find out if everything that led to the investigation was above board. Durham ultimately secured a single guilty plea from FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted to altering an email in order to seek a warrant to monitor former policy advisor to Trump, Carter Page. So now what? In his 300-page report, Durham said FBI officials who decided to launch the investigation into Trump displayed, quote, a serious lack of analytical rigor. He was sharply critical of the FBI's handling of the investigation, but did not offer any new revelations or propose any new charges. In his report, Durham

criticized the FBI for pursuing a vague tip about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian authorities and concluded the FBI was more cautious and skeptical of foreign influence on the Clinton campaign than on the Trump campaign. He noted how quickly the FBI began scrutinizing the Trump campaign and how its investigation, based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence, also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached similar allegations about Clinton while ultimately ignoring them. He also reported that the FBI provided briefings to the Clinton campaign, but not to the Trump campaign. Durham also wrote that the FBI was influenced by confirmation bias

in its decision-making and willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of collusion between Trump and Russia. Much like a previously published Inspector General report, Durham found that FBI officials were aggressively pushing the Trump-Russia investigation forward in a manner not typical of the agency. Durham did not make any new recommendations for changes at the FBI, though he did suggest exploring the creation of an oversight position that would review the decisions behind each step of politically charged investigations. The lack of any other recommendations is due in part to current FBI Director Christopher Wray having already instituted dozens of new policies for how the Bureau handles surveillance warrants and other issues related to Durham's investigation. Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report would have been prevented, the FBI said in a response to Durham's report. said in a response to Durham's report. Durham ultimately conducted more than 480 interviews,

reviewed over 6 million pages of documents, and issued 190 subpoenas for his report. The investigation cost over $6 million. President Trump, who once promised the report would unveil a conspiracy among intelligence officials to undermine his campaign and called it the crime of the century, reacted on Truth Social. Wow. After extensive research, special counsel John Durham concludes the FBI never should have launched the Trump-Russia probe. In other words, the American public was scammed just as it is being scammed right now by those who don't want to see greatness for America, he said. Meanwhile, Democratic Representative Dan Goldman, a former federal prosecutor in New York who led some of the Trump-related investigations, called the report a political hatchet job

and said it retreads the same material that both Mueller and the IG found to justify the opening of the 2016 investigation. You can read our previous coverage of the Durham probe with a link in today's episode description. Today, we're going to examine some reactions from the right and the left of the report, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying. Many on the right celebrate the report's findings, saying it confirms the FBI was out to get Trump and the agency helped spread disinformation.

Some say it exonerates Trump and makes it clear the Trump-Russia investigation was filled with innuendo and animus toward Trump. Others say it's the latest evidence that the allegations against Trump were a hoax. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said the report makes it clear that a partisan FBI became a funnel for disinformation from the Hillary Clinton campaign. Durham lost two cases, but his indictments laid out how the Clinton campaign used foreign nationals, an oppo research outfit, and political insiders to feed the FBI and the media lies about Trump collusion, the board said. Durham's specific findings included no basis for the investigation, given the FBI lacked any actual evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. There was also bias and partisan hostility that played a role in the probe. There were double standards, including

several instances in which the FBI was concerned that agents of foreign governments were seeking influence by donating to the Clinton campaign or the Clinton Foundation, but did not investigate it. Finally, there was willful ignorance, including numerous examples of the FBI ignoring evidence that it was being used by the Clinton campaign to execute a political dirty trick. execute a political dirty trick. The whole thing may have even begun as a Russian intelligence operation, given two members of Russia's intel service were aware of Steele's election investigation, meaning his sources may have been compromised. In Newsweek, Alan Dershowitz said the report exonerates Trump and implicates the anti-Trump double standard. The FBI applied a completely different standard to the Trump campaign, opening a full-scale criminal investigation despite the absence of any actual evidence of collusion between that campaign and Russia, all while they had evidence the Clinton campaign was planning to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin. Durham's report says plainly neither U.S. law enforcement nor

the intelligence community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The report also documents the special animus toward Trump, at least on the part of certain persons intimately involved in the matter, and notes this animus was not limited to partisan Democrats. Many Republicans and independents shared the view that Trump was uniquely dangerous to national security and that anything that could be done to prevent his presidency should be done, regardless of the evidence and lack thereof, Dershowitz said. The Durham report is a small but essential step in the right direction.

In Fox News, Greg Jarrett said the FBI was instrumental in perpetrating the Russia hoax. The Bureau never had any plausible evidence or verified intelligence when it wrongfully launched a dilating and damaging investigation of Donald Trump, he wrote. Nothing was ever vetted or corroborated. Indeed, the FBI knew it was a pernicious lie from the outset. Under James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strzok, the agency manipulated facts and contorted the law to frame an innocent person for unidentified crimes that he did not commit. The FBI discovered almost immediately in the summer of 2016 that the claims of Trump-Russia collusion had been manufactured by Hillary Clinton and her

confederates. The damning of fiction constituted what is surely the dirtiest trick in American politics, and it triggered the greatest mass delusion in history, Jarrett said. The mainstream media, riven with bias, became witting accessories to the lie and effectively convicted Trump in the court of public opinion without a whiff of supportable evidence. All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. Many on the left said Durham brought little new information to light. While some concede the FBI was unethical in some of its behavior, many point to the lack of criminal convictions from the four-year probe, especially compared to Mueller's 36 charges.

Some accuse Durham of wasting $6.5 million of taxpayer money for partisan gain. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The Washington Post editorial board said Durham revealed nothing but a broken process. Despite some commentators' efforts to portray

the actual result of the four-year investigation as damning, the reality is the Justice Department special counsel uncovered next to nothing, the board said. The upshot? There were flaws in the FBI's handling of the matter, especially involving dubious Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA applications to surveil 2016 Trump advisor Carter Page, but they flowed from confirmation bias rather than politically motivated misconduct. Though Durham continues to disagree that it was appropriate for the FBI to open a full investigation rather than a preliminary one, he makes no finding that doing so was prohibited under agency rules.

There was no involvement by the CIA, National Security Agency, or any other snoops. And there is no reason to send anyone to prison, the board said. Indeed, the special counsel faced two acquittals in the case, and he developed a guilty plea resulting from a referral by the Justice Department's inspector general. Even now, conservatives are seizing on Mr. Durham's report, which contains indignant rhetoric that suggests dramatically more wrongdoing than its substance backs up to assert a deep state plot. In The New Republic, Tory Otten said Durham's investigation ended with a whimper. Trump promised at the time that Durham would uncover the crime of the century. Instead, in a more than 300-page report released Monday, Durham sharply criticized the FBI,

but failed to bring about the raft of criminal convictions the previous administration had expected, Otten said. Over the course of Durham's entire investigation, his team only charged three people. A former FBI lawyer pleaded guilty to altering an email the bureau cited when applying to eavesdrop on an ex-Trump campaign aide. The other two defendants, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton's campaign and an analyst for a Russian American think tank, were both acquitted of charges of lying to the FBI. Mueller, by comparison, issued about 36 criminal charges, including for more than half a dozen Trump associates. He determined that Russia had intervened in the election for Trump, which the campaign welcomed, but that it had not actively colluded with Team Trump, Otten said.

This is not the first time the Republicans have touted an investigation that turned up a whole lot of nothing. House Republicans have been investigating President Joe Biden and his family for months, but have been unable to prove any actual evidence linking Biden to any wrongdoing. In the Daily Beast, Shan Wu said Durham owes Americans an apology for wasting their money. As a prosecutor who served as a supervisor on an independent counsel investigation, I find Durham's investigation to be a complete waste of taxpayer dollars, Wu wrote. After $6.5 million in four years, it yielded nothing. Recall that Mueller's probe yielded indictments of 34 individuals, two companies, and convictions of top Trump campaign officials.

Instead, he aided and abetted the killing of a lot of trees for a 300-plus page report that reads like a plagiarized version of the Inspector General report from 2019. Durham adds nothing to the OIG report, but does sound like he pulled from Wikipedia concepts like confirmation bias to make it look like he was adding new conclusions to what the OIG had already concluded, Wu said. Of course, confirmation bias is a real psychological term defined roughly as how people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. But it shouldn't take four years and $6.5 million to warn that confirmation bias isn't among the best practices for criminal investigations or, for that matter,

any investigation. All right, so that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So there are so many complicating factors here that it's enough to make my head spin. I'm not exactly sure the best way to approach this, but a few things seem right to me. From the conservative or Trump perspective, I think the argument is correct that first, the FBI broke the law in parts of its Trump surveillance. Two, there were clearly anti-Trump agents driving this investigation forward. Three, the beginning of the investigation was based on paper-thin evidence. And four, the agency was leaking to the media, who was exaggerating stories to the public with the aim of making the

investigation as politically damaging for Trump as it could be. We already published a lengthy 6,000-plus word piece on all the things the media got wrong about the Trump-Russia story and the many ways the FBI contributed to those narratives, which I think is a much bigger, though somewhat interconnected, story than the one laid out by Durham. To the left's point, I think there are three good arguments, too. First, Trump overpromised on the crime of the century when really the only crime Durham got a conviction for was a single lawyer doctoring an email. Two, Durham's investigation does nothing to undermine the actual crimes Mueller found. And three, Durham himself concedes that neither the lack of judgment

nor the pernicious anti-Trump bias he found at the FBI crossed the realm into criminal activity. Remember, Durham isn't claiming that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election or did not want Trump to win or was not behind WikiLeaks. In fact, his claims would expand the role that Russia and other foreign nations had. He's saying Russia could also have been responsible for the Trump-Russia allegations by compromising Christopher Steele and other foreign governments could have been attempting to influence the Clinton campaign, though the FBI never investigated it. In other words, the quote-unquote Russia hoax is not that Russia's role didn't exist, or that there weren't contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign, or that the Trump team didn't at times welcome the assist in

their battle with Clinton. It's that there was some outspoken and obvious anti-Trump bias inside the FBI, and that the initial evidence for collusion was far too thin and never should have been enough to open a full investigation into Trump's campaign. Even Durham says the evidence was enough for a preliminary investigation, which would have been a sensible step, he wrote on page 295. Horowitz disagreed with that assessment, but neither Horowitz nor Durham came to the conclusion that the investigation didn't eventually uncover enough evidence to merit its existence. This is made clear by the simple fact that Mueller convicted some Trump insiders of crimes as a result of the probe. So what's all this mean? It means Trump is

right that the FBI acted unethically in its pursuit of investigating him, and that the spy agencies clearly displayed favoritism for Clinton and treated her differently in 2016. That's despite Comey damaging her with an announcement about an investigation into her emails two weeks before the election. For some, this anti-Trump bias will be proof of the deep state, and for others, like the traditionally FBI critical left, it'll be more evidence of our law enforcement acting unethically or with bias behind closed doors. I don't feel the need to label it either way. This is just the reality of what happened. Durham's report doesn't mean Russia had no role in the 2016 election or

the Trump camp was innocent of any wrongdoing. Ironically, Durham's words about the FBI's conduct could also apply to the Trump team's conduct. He said, quote, the law does not always make a person's bad judgment, even horribly bad judgment, a crime. Almost a year ago, in June of 2022, I wrote this about Durham's investigation. Is there more? I asked. Right now, we've got one more trial coming in which we'll learn a lot more about the Steele dossier's origins. In February, I said Durham was tugging at how deeply connected the Clinton campaign was to the obsessive coverage around the Trump-Russia collusion, but new charges or evidence was needed to make it the political

scandal Trump has framed it as. It's not over yet, but I'm becoming increasingly skeptical that Durham is going to unveil that vast conspiracy Trump, Barr, and others said would be brought to light. In the meantime, we'll be here waiting. I can say now there was no crime of the century. There was a critical institution corrupted with bias who, thankfully, has already undergone some reforms and should continue to do so. As Durham himself said, it's not the rules so much as the people that created problems, and that's an intractable issue I don't have a great solution for. Now, both sides will get into their corners and play their partisan roles, but we should be measured in our language about what this report does and doesn't confirm. The former president can feel vindicated in his allegations about the bias against him, but Durham did not produce revelations of the vast conspiracy he and his

supporters allege were coming. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Augustine in Dubuque, Iowa. Augustine said, if Daniel Penny is convicted of a crime, wouldn't the other two, I think there were two people, who assisted be guilty of a crime and should be charged? I guess that is my personal hesitancy of why I think this is politically motivated, because the others assisted in his death and haven't been charged. So this is actually a great question. As I noted in our initial coverage of the story, there was very little discussion about the two bystanders who aided Penny. One of those bystanders appeared to be Black, which I'm sure played a part in some of

the news organization's decisions not to focus on him as the racial elements of the story already make for clicky and sensational headlines. My best answer to your question, and this is not a justification, just an answer, is that the two others weren't administering the fatal chokehold. Given that the cause of death was ruled compression of the neck, and only one person was holding Neely in a chokehold, it would make sense that Penny is the object of the charges. I don't think not charging the others proves Bragg is politically motivated here. I'm not certain that both the others proves Bragg is politically motivated here. I'm not certain that both of them will evade charges forever either, but it is curious how little attention they are getting. That being said, I do think the other two bystanders are

critical to Penny's defense and this story. Obviously, Penny wasn't the only person on the train who thought Neely needed to be restrained, and one of the bystanders even actively defended Penny from onlookers insisting he let Neely go. I'm sure their perspectives and their roles will be a huge part of any trial, though I don't see them facing similar charges given Neely's cause of death. Alright, next up is our Blindspot Report. Once a week, we present the Blind Spot Report from our partners at Ground News, an app that tells you the bias of news coverage and what stories people on each side are missing. First up, the left missed a story about Donald Trump criticizing a Florida abortion law as being too harsh. Meanwhile, the right missed a story about Russia announcing it was going to build a village outside Moscow for conservative-minded American and Canadian expats. Next up is our under the radar section. A whistleblower from

the IRS who claimed the Justice Department is interfering with the Hunter Biden investigation says he and his entire investigative team are now being removed from the investigation, according to a letter his attorney sent to Congress. One of those attorneys has met with members of Congress to tell them what the whistleblower has to share with investigators and has further alleged the investigation has been hindered by preferential treatment and politics. CBS News has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, and our number section today, the length in days of Mueller's investigation into the Trump-Russia allegations is 675. The number of people indicted as a result of the Mueller investigation is 34.

The estimated cost of the Mueller investigation was $25 million. The number of interviews in Durham's investigation was 480. The number of grand jury subpoenas in Durham's investigation was 190. And the estimated cost of the Durham investigation was $6.5 million. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day section. A math teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma just became teacher of the year for her one good thing ritual. Every day, Rebecca Peterson posts one good thing that happened in her classroom that day on her blog. The daily writing has been extended to her students as she encourages them to do the same in their handwritten journals. Peterson was recently named top teacher in her state and became a finalist to win the National Teacher of the Year award. You can check out her blog with a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you

want to support our work, please go to readtango.com slash membership and consider becoming a member. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. consider becoming a member. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul,

and edited by John Long. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bukova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast

was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, We'll be right back.