Tangle - John Durham's testimony.

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

On Wednesday, Special Counsel John Durham testified for over five hours before Congress. Durham spent four years scrutinizing the origins of the FBI's investigation into possible links between Russia and former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. During his testimony, he detailed the "sobering" findings of that investigation outlined in the controversial report he released in May.You can read today's podcast here, today’s “Under the Radar” story here, and today’s “Have A Nice Day” story here. Tickets to our event in Philadelphia on August 3rd are available here!Today’s clickables: Quick Hits (1:00), Today’s Story (02:45), Right’s Take (06:15), Left’’s Take (9:59), Isaac’s Take (13:48), Your Questions Answered (17:57), Under the Radar (21:13), Numbers (21:59), Have A Nice Day (22:46)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 Zosha Warpeha. 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+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about maybe, for the last time, John Durham after he testified before Congress about his 316-page report. We're going to talk about what happened during that testimony, what, if anything, we learned, and obviously some takes from the right and the left about it, and then my take. Before we jump in, though, as always, we'll start off with some quick hits.

First up, CNN has published the audio recording of former President Donald Trump discussing highly confidential papers in his possession. The audio was a key piece of evidence in the federal indictment of Trump. Number two, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, in his first statement since the revolt, reiterated that he did not seek to overthrow the Russian government. Number three, Fox News has chosen Jesse Walker as still the primetime slot that was previously headlined by Tucker Carlson. Number four, the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal from Louisiana after the state tried to stop its congressional maps from being redrawn. The case

now returns to the lower courts. Number five, the Biden administration announced the release of $42.5 billion in funding for nationwide broadband internet access, with hopes of extending high-speed broadband to every American by 2030. Trump-era special counsel John Durham is testifying before lawmakers today in connection with the controversial report released last month. Durham's report concluded the FBI should have never launched a full investigation into Russia and former President Trump's 2016 campaign. Durham was appointed back in 2019 by then Attorney General Bill Barr to review the origins of the FBI's investigation into potential ties between Russia and Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.

So during his testimony, Durham accused both the Department of Justice and the FBI of becoming, quote, political weapons against citizens and former President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, Special Counsel John Durham testified over five hours before Congress. Durham spent four years scrutinizing the origins of the FBI's investigation into possible links between Russia and former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. During his testimony, he detailed the sobering findings of that investigation captured in the controversial report he released in May. In that 300-page report, Durham suggested FBI officials investigating Trump displayed a

serious lack of analytical rigor and said the FBI pursued tips about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia without sufficient skepticism. Durham suggested FBI agents were influenced by confirmation bias and pushed the investigation in a manner that was not typical of the agency. We covered the initial report in a May podcast edition of Tangle, which you can find in our archives, and you can find all our previous coverage of Durham's probe with a link in today's newsletter. Durham filed charges in three instances as a result of his investigation. Two of those cases he lost in court, while the third resulted in FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleading guilty to doctoring an email while applying for a surveillance application of

former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. During his testimony, Durham underscored that the widely discredited Steele dossier was funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. He suggested this document was deeply flawed and used by the FBI to secure surveillance warrants. As he did in his report, Durham reiterated that the FBI had an affirmative duty to open some kind of investigation into the allegation that Trump's campaign had advanced knowledge of Russia dumping hacked Democratic emails, but he also maintained that the information the FBI had did not amount to a legitimate basis to open a full investigation. Durham also called out instances where FBI officials kept pertinent information, like CIA intelligence that Hillary Clinton had approved a plan to tie then-candidate

Trump to Russia, hidden from members of the FBI who were conducting the investigation. Trump to Russia, hidden from members of the FBI who were conducting the investigation. There were identified, documented, significant failures of a highly sensitive, unique investigation that was undertaken by the FBI, Mr. Durham said. The investigation clearly reveals that decisions that were made were made in one direction. If there was something that was inconsistent with the notion that Trump was involved in a well-coordinated conspiracy with the Russians, that information was largely discarded or ignored. In Durham's report, he said the FBI failed to act on clear signs it was being manipulated for political purposes during the 2016 election. We found troubling violations of law and policy in the conduct of highly consequential investigations directed at members of a presidential campaign and ultimately a presidential administration, Durham said. To me, it matters not whether it was a Republican campaign

or a Democrat campaign. Under questioning from Representative Eric Swalwell, the Democrat from California, Durham agreed that he had the authority to charge Clinton or former FBI Director James Comey, but had not uncovered evidence to charge either of any crimes. He also agreed that Attorney General Merrick Garland never interfered with his investigation. Today, we're going to examine some reactions and details about the nearly six-hour testimony from the with what the right is saying. Many on the right are praising Durham, arguing his testimony made it clear the investigation was corrupted with bias from the FBI. Some criticize Democrats for continuing to push

the collusion narrative. Others say the bombshell testimony should chill Americans who worry about political corruption in law enforcement. In the Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins Jr. said collusion lives despite the Durham testimony. Fresh from being censured for collusion lies, Representative Adam Schiff spread a collusion lie, Jenkins wrote. It wasn't the Russian government, as Mr. Schiff said, but a British music industry publicist who offered dirt on Hillary Clinton, and it was a private Russian lawyer who later showed up at Trump Tower and delivered instead a pitch on sanctions relief, apparently on behalf of an oligarch client. But, as Durham noted, not only did the FBI open a case on a presidential campaign in the middle of an election, it did so on a piece of evidence that broke all records for vagueness and thinness, involving an opaque remark by an unimportant Trump volunteer to an Australian diplomat. no collusion. One was an FBI falsified CIA email to say Carter Page hadn't been a CIA informant

when he had, and the other was intelligence the FBI kept from the team investigating collusion that the Clinton campaign was planning to promote collusion fictions against the Trump campaign. In Fox News, David Marcus said Durham's testimony should chill Americans to the core. Durham told the House Judiciary Committee the FBI was too willing to accept and use politically funded and uncorroborated opposition research such as the Steele dossier. The FBI relied on the dossier and the FISA applications knowing there was likely material originating from a political campaign or political opponent. And whose political campaign might you ask was funneling this false information to the FBI, Marcus asked? Why, that would be Hillary Clinton's. Put bluntly, according to Durham,

the FBI had ample evidence to believe that the dirt dug up on Trump was coming from Clinton's camp and that it was opposition research, not the product of a legitimate investigation. But they didn't care, Marcus wrote. In another stunning revelation, we learn that the original head of Crossfire Hurricane, as the probe into Trump was known, was never shown the key information that pointed to the Clinton campaign as the source. This all came at a time when FBI agents Peter Stork and Lisa Page were texting love notes about how they would never let Trump become president. In The Federalist, Tristan Justice said Durham put to rest any doubts about the Department of Justice's weaponization by left-wing ideologues. Testifying with the calm and collected demeanor

of a credible prosecutor, Durham made clear there is not a single substantive piece of information in the Steele dossier that has ever been corroborated by the FBI or, to my knowledge, anyone else. Durham said FBI agents even apologized to him for the manner in which the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was undertaken. Durham also told lawmakers at the hearing that the FBI ignored evidence indicating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton planned to link Trump to Russia, Justice wrote. When questioned by Adam Schiff, Durham even pointed out the representative's own history of soliciting dirt from foreign sources on political opponents.

Schiff pressed Durham on a 2016 meeting between Trump's children campaign manager and a Russian lawyer where they were promised dirt on Clinton. Durham said, I don't think the situation is unique in your experience. That was a reference to 2017, when Schiff became the target of a prank by Russian radio hosts who posed as Ukrainian politicians claiming to have nude photos of Trump. All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. Many on the left say the hearings went terribly for Trump world and Republicans. Some point out the ways in which Durham supported the narrative that Trump needed to be investigated and that Russia posed a serious threat. Others suggest that Durham got embarrassed by Democrats over and over. In MSNBC, Hayes Brown said Durham said exactly what Trump World didn't

want to hear. It wasn't the most riveting of hearings, but here's the bottom line. John Durham found nothing to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, Brown wrote. At no point in his testimony did he take the bait from Republicans to give credence to Trump's Russia hoax rhetoric. Most of the accusations thrown around were relatively incomprehensible, especially since Durham found no specific wrongdoing of note from any particular member of FBI or Justice Department leadership. That's not to say the day was completely pointless, Brown wrote. Durham confirmed under Democratic questioning that Attorney General Merrick Garland didn't interfere with his investigation, and he admitted that former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton still walk free because there's simply no evidence of wrongdoing. Likewise,

none of the three individuals he did prosecute, two of whom were acquitted, were accused of taking part in a supposed deep state plot to take down Trump. What we got was a far cry from what Trump called the crime of the century. In New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait criticized Durham for knowing so little about Mueller's investigation into Trump. The man seems to have become so hopelessly brain-poisoned by Fox News that he has lost all touch with facts outside the Republican information bubble, Chait said. Eric Swalwell asked Durham about a deal outlined in the Mueller report in which the Russian government promised Trump several hundreds of millions of dollars of profit

at no risk to himself to license a tower in Moscow. Durham said he didn't know anything about that. When Adam Schiff asked Durham if Russians released stolen information through cutouts, he replied, I'm not sure. Schiff responded, the answer is yes. When Schiff asked Durham if he knew that hours after Trump publicly asked Russia to find Hillary Clinton's State Department emails and release them, Russian hackers made an attempt to hack Clinton emails. Durham replied, If that happened, I'm not aware of that. When asked if Trump referred to those stolen emails

more than 100 times on the campaign trail, Durham answered, I don't really read newspapers and listen to the news. Of course, being unaware of all these facts explains why Durham would assume the FBI investigation into Trump's ties to Russia was a witch hunt. 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 flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average

of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.

Learn more at fluselvax.ca. was ferreted out by Inspector General Michael Horowitz and swift acquittals in the only two cases he brought to trial, Dye said. Durham concluded his efforts with a 316-page report full of unsubstantiated allegations of skullduggery by the Clinton campaign and FBI bias, but without making any substantive recommendations on how the DOJ should change its policies. Hoping to squeeze a drop or two of political juice out of Durham's dud of an investigation, Republicans asked him to testify publicly. Instead, he got ritually pantsed by the committee's Democrats. Durham's big reveal was that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation should have been opened as a pre-investigation or a baby investigation or maybe a mild query. He pooh-poohs the fact that it was opened after Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos bragged to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer that the Russians were going

to help Trump's campaign by releasing hacked the right are saying, which brings us to my take. There are plenty of things to take away from this testimony, but the biggest thing I felt was sympathy for the impossible situation Durham has found himself in. Ever since his probe began, he has, by the pressures of both norms and policy, had to stay silent. For four years, between Republicans claiming he was going to uncover the crime of the century and the New York Times reporting that his team was quitting because he was on a witch hunt of his own, Durham has never gotten to speak. That means that every move, every sentence in every report, every part of his investigation has gone through the partisan meat grinder before Durham had the chance to explain his findings to the public. And last week,

when Durham did speak, it became pretty clear pretty quickly that he was simply trying to do the job he was asked to do. Consider this. In his opening statement, Durham said plainly that his report, quote, should not be read to suggest in any way that the Russian election interference was not a threat. It was, end quote. This was the opposite of how many conservatives interpreted his words. And because they interpreted them this way was often what many Democrats thought Durham believed. He said plainly, I have the greatest regard, the highest regard for Director Mueller. He is a patriot, end quote. Remember, Durham was investigating the roots of the investigation Mueller took over, but made it clear he believed the special counsel did an admirable job in his work.

At the same time, Durham also made no bones about the things the FBI missed. He said plainly that when presented with evidence that the Clinton campaign was going to try to tie Trump to Russia, the FBI failed to apply the same standards to allegations it received about the Clinton and Trump campaigns. He hammered the much-hyped Steele dossier, saying under oath that, as far as he knows, there is not a single substantive piece of information in the Steele dossier that has ever been corroborated by the FBI or, to my knowledge, anyone else. that has ever been corroborated by the FBI or, to my knowledge, anyone else. Durham's report and his words are those of a man genuinely striving to stick to the facts, which don't corroborate any fully partisan version of events. This is why Democrats called the report a dud, because it didn't reveal the explosive criminal conspiracy Trump and others said it would,

and why Republicans hail it as damning, because it did make it clear the public was misled and confirmation bias infected the FBI. Durham said both that an investigation into allegations about Trump colluding with Russia was needed, but also that the full-scale investigation wasn't yet justified at the time it was initiated. He praised the work of Mueller, but said many of the Trump collusion allegations could be traced back to the Clinton campaign. The most disappointing part of his testimony was, as Jonathan Chait wrote under what the left is saying, how little he knew or pretended not to know about Mueller's actual findings. Most jarring was when Schiff asked Durham about Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, passing polling data to Konstantin Kilinik, a Russian intelligence agent, which was

probably the closest thing the investigation ever found to collusion. This was what the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee called a grave counterintelligence threat, yet Durham suggested the question was going beyond the depth of his knowledge. Whether he's dodging or being honest, it wasn't a great look for a man in his shoes. Still, what Durham got for his attempt to stick to his work and make it clear this was both a damaging report for the FBI and the Clinton campaign, while also decidedly not the crime of the century, was this. Representative Matt Gaetz, the Republican from Florida, accused him of being part of the cover-up and suggested the four years he dedicated to the investigation was essentially a farce.

Representative Steve Cohen, the Democrat from Tennessee, said the whole thing was a nothing burger that was set up to hurt the Mueller report and tied Durham to Trump, saying everybody's reputation who gets involved with Donald Trump is damaged. In effect, both sides spent very little time listening to what he actually had to say and a lot of time hammering home their partisan talking points that deviated from his report. Welcome to Washington, D.C. All right, that is it for my take today, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Ken in Lisbon, Wisconsin. Ken said, Couple that with the strong prospect of another presidential election with two incompetent candidates, Biden versus Trump, makes me wonder if there would ever be a better time for a third party, one that is more centrist. Is there time for such a party to form, pick a candidate and get on the ballot in enough states to have a chance at being elected? from readers like once a week. And it's one I turn over in my head a lot. I enjoy thinking about it. I think it's a really challenging prospect, though. Fundamentally, it's also very simple to me. So first, let me just say, I feel compelled to point out that bipartisan legislation actually happens

more than we think. The idea that Congress does nothing is a little overstated. And the story that each new president uses executive actions to undo the previous president's executive actions isn't as widely true as we believe. Congress may not be doing as much as it did in the 1970s, but we're still getting new legislation, and Biden has actually been pretty successful at pushing bipartisan legislation during his term. More likely is that Congress isn't passing the laws many individuals want, which every individual would define through their own partisan lens. Still, you are right that Americans are not happy with the current political system.

Neither the Republican nor Democratic party has a favorability rating over 44%. Joe Biden, the current president and frontrunner for the 2024 Democratic nomination, has a 41.5 percent approval rating, while Donald Trump, the former president and Republican frontrunner, has a 40 percent approval rating. 38 percent called the idea of a Trump-Biden rematch exhausting, and it's worse yet for Congress, which has only once in the last 15 years had an approval rating that ticked over 30%. So, is this the right moment for a third party candidate? Honestly, I think it's always the right moment,

but it doesn't matter unless that party is represented by a legitimate presidential candidate. If enough people don't believe that the third option is quote-unquote real enough, they'll just choose the lesser of two evils. But if there is a third option who can rally enough of a populist base, then this is probably the ideal moment for a candidate like that to build momentum and really strike for a new paradigm. In particular, RFK Jr. could probably rally broad populist support on the right and the left, but his vaccine skepticism that he uses to draw in a lot of support is like an albatross around his neck for voters who would otherwise be drawn to the rest of his message. I'm generally an optimist,

but my honest read is this. The electorate's fear of the party they dislike is greater than their willingness to support an outsider candidate who speaks to some of their ideals. And I think for the foreseeable future, you should get ready for more of the same. Alright, that's it for our reader question today, which brings us to our under-the-radar story. On Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, released a draft of guidelines for the research of therapeutic use of psychedelics. The release of the guidelines will begin a 60-day public comment period and moves the agency one step closer toward potentially legalizing psychedelics like psilocybin and magic mushrooms and MDMA, which is an ecstasy for clinical use. To this point, research on the drugs has largely been backed by private sponsors,

though they've shown real promise for treating addiction, mental health disorders, PTSD, and depression. Axios has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The percentage of Americans who said the Mueller investigation was somewhat or very fair was 65%, according to a poll from July 2019. The percentage of Republicans who said that was 60%, while the percentage of Democrats who said that was 71%. In May, the percentage of Tangle readers who said that the Trump-Russia investigation was an attempt to hurt Trump politically and should not have been conducted was 43.1%. The percentage of Tangle readers who said the Trump-Russia investigation was sloppily done but there were good reasons to start it was 42.4%. The percentage of Tangle readers who said the

Trump-Russia investigation was conducted reasonably and uncovered serious crimes was just 6.7%. was just 6.7%. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. Kragen Folger thought his dream to hike the West Coast Trail, or WCT, of Canada's Vancouver Island was dashed earlier this month when the airline lost all of his hiking gear.

The WCT is a picturesque multi-day hike, a bucket list item for many experienced hikers and an experienced Folger could feel slipping away from him. I kind of went through all the cycles of grief in about 15 minutes, he told the CBC. Once his gear was lost, Folger took to the Facebook group that he used to help prepare for the trip to explain what had happened and to thank everyone for their support in his planning. everyone for their support in his planning. But the group members wouldn't let his journey end there, offering to pick him up and supply him with a backpack, tent, poles, sleeping bag, and other necessary equipment. Thanks to the community effort, Fulger was able to hike the trail. The experience was beyond what I could have imagined, he said. Sunny Skies has the story,

and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. Before we get out of here, a quick reminder, we are selling tickets to our Tangle event, August 3rd, Philadelphia, Brooklyn Bowl in Philadelphia. Tickets are cheap. They're like 20 bucks. Go to our episode description, buy a ticket. We need your support. We need people to come out and support us. You can also go to retangle.com forward slash live. I've been saying backslash live for like three years. Apparently that's wrong. I learned yesterday it's a forward slash. So readtangle.com forward slash live.

You can get some tickets. Also, as always, if you want to keep this podcast going and support our work, please consider becoming a member. Readtangle.com slash membership for just 50 bucks a year. You can keep this whole thing afloat. We really appreciate your support. 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 Zosia Warpea. Our script is edited by Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media manager, Magdalena Vekova, who created our podcast logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, check out our website at www.tangle.com. 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 flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot.

Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.