Sadly, Over 10 Years After Snowden’s Disclosures, Little Has Changed.

THERE IS AN INTERESTING U.S. Supreme Court case that has received little publicity, but which was covered in some detail in theconservativeteehouse.com (CT), to the point a reporter was subpoenaed for writing about the underlying facts. The case, X Corp. v. Merrick Garland, involves governmental control over social media, and originated years ago in the Obama administration. It eventually wound its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which on Monday declined to review the lower courts based on traditional deference afforded the executive branch in matters of military and national security. The Writ of Certiorari is here. 

There are oodles of precedential case law to support the Court’s declination to review, but CT writes that Deep State law enforcement and intelligence agencies, such as DOJ, FBI, and DHS,  have been weaponized to use this deference as a tool of lawfare against unwitting Americans in order to control or limit their thoughts, speech, and behaviors. It almost morphs these Deep State agencies into an unconstitutional Fourth Branch of Government. (I concur with CT’s position.) 

Some background: In 2014, during Obama’s reign, Twitter (now known as X) sued the federal government after it was prevented from simply disclosing the number of requests made by officials for user information that were allegedly related to ‘national security.’ Twitter wanted the number and frequency of such government requests to be published in its biannual online ‘Transparency Report.’ And it being blocked from doing so by the government unconstitutionally restrained its speech, Twitter asserted in its lawsuit. The government had also placed strict controls or ‘guidance’ on what Twitter could publish on its platform or give to researchers.

A federal district court ruled in 2020 that the government’s classification of this information was justified and that “no more narrow tailoring of the restrictions can be made.” The case went to a three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed the lower court’s decision, again, stating the redactions made by the government were as narrowly tailored as they could be. Some pleadings in the case have been filed under seal because of the ‘national security’ sensitivity involved, but it can be deduced the appeals court believed that the disclosure of the number and frequency of requests could somehow tip off foreign enemies of what the government was aware/not aware of and that could somehow give them unspecified advantages.

This sounds like a very strained rationale. The Surveillance State and weaponization of law enforcement and intelligence agencies became particularly prevalent under Obama and then-A.G. Eric Holder. The deference the judiciary gives isn’t one some Americans are willing to give after The Snowden Revelations of 2013 or The Twitter Files of 2023, or all that came in between. One might perhaps be more understanding if government had an established pattern of integrity in conducting its business. It too often doesn’t.  Over-classification is one thing; weaponizing the process, another thing altogether. It’s why Warrant Canaries had to be hatched.

The ‘2023 Festivus Report’ Cost Taxpayers’ Nearly $1 Trillion

EVERY YEAR for nearly a decade, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) issues his Festivus Report showing taxpayers where their money was squandered by oh-so-many self-serving, oh-so-few self-sacrificing lawmakers in the D.C. Swamp. This year’s grand total was $900,000,000,000, and Paul has the receipts. You can view them here in the report, since you and I paid nearly $1 trillion for it.

Breitbart chose to highlight expenditures of the National Institutes of Health using part of a $2.4 million grant to study Russian cats on treadmills, and Barbies being used to prove identity for Covid Paycheck Protection Program funds. Money was wasted by the Dept. of Defense to the tune of $169 million because they didn’t take care of the equipment they were entrusted with. The Small Business Administration generously provided much-needed funding of over $200 million to wealthy and successful music artists such as Post Malone, Chris Brown, and Lil Wayne. And tourism in Egypt received $6 million from something called the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

My own personal favorite, due to its unabashed blatant corruption, is the $400 million pot of gold at the end of the 1040 rainbow. It’s that box you check on a tax return designating $3 to go to presidential campaigns, but which never does because no candidate of any significance has accepted the funds since 2008. (The $400.6 million remaining in the fund must have John Anthony Castro’s name and account number on it!) Another good one is the $3.8 million used by National Institutes of Health for ‘studying’ Covid-19 ‘misinformation’ on social media, which really sounds like a front for taxpayer-funded government propaganda.

Last year’s Festivus Report revealed $482,276,543,907 in government waste, fraud, or abuse. Paul noted the national debt last year was $30 trillion, but is nearing $34 trillion this year. Paul singled out Dr. Anthony Fauci for dishonorable mention. (Did you notice the good doc’s work on ‘transgender’ monkeys and other cruelties?)  It is certainly possible some incidental value to the field of medicine can be mustered from this expensive science, but to quote the White House occupant: “C’mon, man!” Just in case you were thinking things might get better soon, let me dissuade you of that notion. The U.S. House left for Christmas break with a nearly $1 trillion military spending bill, the NDAA. Not only does it reward neocons with big bucks for pet projects, it extends §702 of FISA for yet another four months—long enough to surveil you, me, and Trump through the primaries!

The Un-Friendly Skies: Stalking and Surveilling the American Way

FOR QUITE SOME TIME, the mission of the U.S. government has been to divide and conquer Americans: to have about half paying taxes and redistribute that money to the other half who pay nothing and receive refundable credits. Align the two party system to the halves: the G.O.P. goes to the taxpayers; Dems, to the takers. These halves will probably self-segregate on their own, but if they don’t, have ‘red’ states and ‘blue’ states’ that are merely microcosms of what’s happening at the national level. Likewise, with cities: they’re either ‘sanctuaries’ or not.

With this in place, there isn’t a chance there will be a meeting of the collective mind with people, and therefore, they will cause no trouble. But just in case…

Of all organizations, the Air Marshals have been co-opted by government to surveil innocent Americans. Fox News interviewed Sonya Labosco, the Director of the Air Marshals National Council, who stated the marshals are no longer targeting potential terrorists or troublemakers because they have been recruited to stalk and surveil every single person who flew into the Capitol area around Jan. of 2021—even if they went no where near the Capitol building itself. It mattered not that they may have simply been in town to visit family, go on a job interview, or attend a conference. Labosco said:

“We’re not flying right now. The only missions that we are doing are ‘Quiet Skies’ missions and those are missions that are following the January 2021 people. So we’re either on the border for illegal immigrants or we’re following folks from January 2021. We’re not doing our regular missions where we’re out there looking for the bad guys so for now most flights you’re not gonna have Air Marshalls.”

According to Labosco, that broad swath of people was put on a specific TSA list to be followed even though they haven’t been charged with any crime. And here we are—three years after the fact. 

“Quiet Skies?” The Fox News host was a tad perplexed. Air Marshals aren’t tracking terrorists in the skies? Nope.

The Fox News segment was shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, here. As for their work on the border? Seriously, they’re handing out bottles of water to thirsty illegals. That’s all.

When will Americans on either side wake up and understand what their government is doing?

So Many Defendants to Spy On. Too Many F.B.I. Informants to Count.

MIRANDA DEVINE reports that, according to a former assistant director of the bureau, the F.B.I. had so many paid informants at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 that it lost track of them all and had to perform an audit later on to try to figure out a somewhat accurate number. The problem, in part, was that many different field offices sent ‘confidential human sources,’ and the proverbial left hand wing didn’t know what the right hand wing was doing. 

Steven D’Antuono, who formerly commanded the Washington field office, said at least one informant was in communication with his F.B.I. handler in a closed-door session with the House Judiciary Committee. He also disclosed that some informants would attend a “Stop the Steal” rally, but he learned later that informants at other field offices were also there, along with others who attended on their own initiative (for some unknown and possibly sinister reason.) The Washington field office had to ask F.B.I. headquarters “to do a poll or put out something to people saying w[ere] any CHSs involved,” he admitted, just to get a vague idea of just how widespread the spying and surveillance operations were on that day. One paid informant from Kansas City’s field office was at the Capitol and in touch with his handler and told him he was “going in.” As for the total number of informants that day, D’Antuono could only say, “a handful.”

Given the F.B.I. admits to expending an average of $42 million a year to pay off its Confidential Human Sources, according to the D.O.J.’s Office of the Inspector General, it’s reasonable to be concerned about how thoroughly and accurately these people are vetted. Given it doesn’t know what the right and left are doing, it’s even more disturbing. As he explained in his letter to F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), D’Antuono’s testimony was “extremely concerning” because it indicates “the F.B.I. cannot adequately track the activities and operations of its informants, and that it lost control of its CHSs present at the Capitol on January 6.” He added: 

“These revelations reinforce existing concerns, identified by Special Counsel [John] Durham, about the FBI’s use of, and payment to, CHSs who have fabricated evidence and misrepresented information. The Justice Department Inspector General also identified critical problems in the FBI’s CHS program, including the FBI’s failure to fully vet CHSs and the FBI’s willingness to ignore red flags that would call into question an informant’s reliability.”

That’s little solace to the Jan. 6th defendants still awaiting trial.

Disorderly Prosecution

LAST WEEK, RAY EPPS, 61, was actually charged by the D.O.J. in connection to his actions on Jan. 6th, 2021. It’s just a misdemeanor, though: one count of disorderly conduct. This is like something a young man might get charged with after a drink too many at a bachelor party or something: something he’d apologize in court for and get continued without a finding by a judge who’s seen it a million times before. 

The count was confirmed by the Associated Press on 9/19/23.

Epps, a former Marine (if you believe there is such a thing), claimed in a lawsuit he recently filed against deep-pockets Fox News, that it made him a scapegoat for the disruption wrongly. Specifically, then-Fox commentator Tucker Carlson accused Epps of being a “federal agent who helped stage-manage the insurrection [sic].”

Many believe, correctly I believe, that Epps was not charged because he was/is a government operative who infiltrated the crowd and instigated the events of the day so as to blame President Donald Trump and his supporters.  

There is ample video evidence that can support that belief. It is noteworthy that not all the videos have been publicly released despite the fact they are available and could be used as exculpatory evidence in the trials of the many defendants still waiting in jail. One video that has been widely replayed shows Epps egging on others in the crowd to join him in entering the Capitol, but there are others. 

What is strange is that Epps wasn’t charged earlier given his presence and identity were well known to authorities. It is also odd that others who did far less were charged with so much more. And it’s inexplicable why the D.O.J. would even bother with this charge at all if it was as trivial as it was pleaded. 

Just as they did with Hunter Biden and his recent ‘gun charge,’ prosecutors charged Epps with the absolute minimum it could muster so as to be able to claim they followed through as prosecutors, but make sure he gets off at the end of the day. 

Too bad neither pass the snicker test. 

Chris Wray: The “R” After His Name Stands for ‘Reprobate.’

HO HUM. ANOTHER DAY, another Congressional hearing (this time the House Judiciary Committee), another pol off the hook. Such was the case again on Wednesday when F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray (a Republican—sort of) took the hot seat.

Of course not all members were adversarial, like Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), whose name Zoe Lofgren may ring a bell from managing one of 45th President Donald Trump’s impeachments. Lofgren accused her G.O.P. colleagues of “engaging in conspiracy theories” to delegitimize the the Bureau “without any evidence,” a favorite blame-game among her ilk.

She’s wrong, of course, but why let the truth stand in the way of an untrue accusation? She just doesn’t remember the recent opinion in Missouri v. Biden or the findings from the Twitter Files that fly in what should be the very red faces of the bureaucrats who so enthusiastically censored any opposing views. Writing for The Federalist, Tristan Justice helpfully has provided Rep. Lofgren with the mounting pile of evidence to this effect, here. 

On questioning, Wray simply blew Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) off on the topic of Jan. 6th. He dismissed the notion that undercover agents were involved in any way by calling the allegation “ludicrous.” (There were, and it’s been well documented.)

The fact he refused to answer anything further may have told the Committee everything they needed to know. While it can be true the F.B.I. must, at times, keep matters of ‘humint’ under wraps, one would think that time has come and gone even though American citizens still sit in a D.C. jail awaiting trial. When Rep.  Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked Wray, “How many individuals that were FBI employees were in the Jan. 6th entry of the Capitol?” Wray replied, I really need to be careful here about were we have or have not used confidential human sources.” And so it went.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) inquired about the agency’s attempt to locate a suspected pipe bomber who had left devices at both the DNC and RNC Thomas Massie on Jan. 6th.  About two months ago, Massie and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked to be briefed on the F.B.I.’s failure to track the suspect’s vehicle down after it had been identified. Massie and Jordan had been tipped off by a whistleblower that the F.B.I. was derelict in its duty in failing to follow up on perfectly good leads. In a characteristic noncommital answer, Wray said he didn’t talk about ongoing investigations. Fair enough, perhaps, but as Massie pointed out, it’s been 900 days.

Based on a new interim report issued on Monday by the House Judiciary’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, it appears that the F.B.I. colluded with the Security Service of Ukrainian to flag social media posts of Americans for ‘partners’ in Silicon Valley to censor to further the government’s desired narrative. (More here.)

Wray’s response to inquiries into this was just that the Ukrainian Security Service had been a “longstanding good partner” of the F.B.I., despite the fact it has been found to be notoriously compromised by the Kremlin. (Russian collusion, anyone?) The full interim report is here.

Remarkably, Wray admitted to surveillance of Catholic parishes in the U.S. that prefer Latin masses. Apparently a F.B.I. Special Agent named Kyle Seraphin disclosed that the Richmond Division thought it could prevent ‘white supremacy’ by doing so. House Republicans wrote to Wray about this in April. Jordan asked Wray, “Do you think priests should be informants inside the church?”” Wray conceded the fact the F.B.I. may have engaged in such surveillance, but seemed to suggest it was all okay because it didn’t result in any investigative action.

Then there was the Bureau’s raid on and arrest of a ‘pro-life’ activist, ultimately acquitted. Wray said he wouldn’t “second-guess” the agents on the ground. Roy asked if that wasn’t exactly what his job was.

When Wray was asked if he thought the D.O.J. should rescind a memo it issued targeting concerned parents at school board meetings, Wray passed the buck to the A.G., but said the F.B.I. conducted itself properly. An interim staff report by House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee in March concluded there was no legitimate basis to have done this.

Wray also admitted the F.B.I. got Americans’ records from Bank of America without a warrant, and apparently, other banks, as a routine practice. Again, it was a whistleblower who revealed they had a “huge list” of Americans’ financial transactions on credit and debit cards used near the Capitol around Jan. 6th.

Massie asked about similar overly-broad records regarding gun purchases. Wray said he thought it was legal for business ‘partners’ to report or share info with the agency.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) read a transcript of Hunter Biden’s email threat to get paid that referenced Joe. Gaetz asked Wray if it wounded like a shake-down to him. Wray demurred in answering. When asked if he was protecting the Bidens, Wray said, “absolutely not.”

That is inconsistent with reports of at least two whistleblowers, one of whom is facing the wrath of the U.S. government. Dual American-Israeli citizen, Dr. Gal Luft, worked for CEFC, the same company as Hunter did, and did the same type of work. Hunter used the F.B.I. to leak classified data to C.C.P.-linked CEFC for kickbacks. Luft did not. Both violated Foreign Agents Registration Act. One was indicted this week. The other lives freely at the White House.

Zuck ‘Threads’ the Privacy Needle

META’S C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, is among my least-admired people on this planet. I don’t begrudge the man’s wealth at all. In fact, I aspire to it (fruitlessly, I’m afraid). But to obtain such wealth by the complete and utter disregard for your fellow human beings’ health and well-being, which includes dignity and respect for privacy), is downright reprehensible. That’s Zuck.

His latest foray into your life and privacy, now two-days old, is some bone-headed app called ‘Threads.’ It’s been dubbed as the “Twitter-Killer.” That remains to be seen, but Zuck is billing it as a ‘nice’ Twitter. Meta execs say it will be “sanely run.” After being available for only 24 hours, Threads had 70-million sign-ups.

The Threads app is actually part and parcel of Instagram, but it’s text-based. Zuck says it doesn’t need, and won’t have the ‘negativity’ of hard news and politics. What on Earth will it have, then? I don’t know. Maybe recipes, helpful hints, and knock-knock jokes. Should be a barrel of laughs.

The plan will up the bottom line, no doubt. Meta has been threatened with having to pay newsrooms for the content they republish and leverage to generate their own advertising revenue. Who knows if Meta will downrank news or shadow-ban it: they won’t say. I won’t be there, though. I like hard news and politics. (And my privacy.)

Recently, Canada enacted new legislation requiring Meta and Google and others to pay up what could amount to about C$329 million to news sources. Zuck, in his selfish, arrogant, and entitled fashion, blocked Canadian outlets from appearing on Meta and Instagram search results. He did the same thing to Australian outlets last year, too. One would expect that same with Threads. Meta’s emphasis away from news, then, may be due not to ‘negativity,’ but to the negativity of the social media platform having to pay up. 

Like I said, I won’t be there, so I can only report what others, like The Guardian, have said about Threads so far. It sounds as if it’s a clone of Twitter, to a capital-T. After downloading the app from your selected app store, they say you’ll find the platform easy to use, intuitive, and fun, and that it integrates well with Instagram, an account of which you must have to use Threads. (Likewise, if you delete your Threads, your Instagram will be deleted, too.) Threads is also an “eerily Twitter-like microblogging experience.”

A user is limited to 500 words per post, ten photos, and videos no more than five minutes long. However, unlike Twitter, Threads doesn’t use hashtags or have a search feature. (Why not?) Twitter may already be preparing litigation given the similarities.

What about privacy? This is from the company that just settled a $725 million class-action lawsuit for ‘sharing’ data Meta mined without users’ permission. Threads can, and presumably does collect health, financial, and other info. It uses your location, contacts, and search and browsing histories to feed you ads that are thits bread and butter. In fact, you can’t use it in the European Union, where there are strong data privacy rules. 

Then there’s the censorship. Whether Threads uses the infamous ‘fact checks’ that it later had to concede was just someone else’s progressive opinion, many believe there will be no meaningful ‘free’ speech. Despite Zuck hailing Threads as a “a free and open platform,” there is already evidence of censorship.

One new user , ‘dc_draino,’ posted about wanting to expose Biden’s corrupt government and quickly got flagged. “Are you sure you want to follow dc_draino? This account has repeatedly posted false information that was reviewed by independent fact-checkers or went against our Community Guidelines,” Threads warned any potential followers.

Other accounts of conservatives were similarly flagged. In response to a post stating only that “Non-binary isn’t real,” Threads removed it, saying the comment “goes against our guidelines on hate speech or symbols.”

Remarkably, the new app debuted a mere day after a historic ruling enjoining the Biden regime from pressuring social media companies to censor certain speech.

It would be funny if it weren’t so pernicious. A critic of Meta and Threads wrote on Twitter, “Great Tweet on this story, further demonstrating Meta’s COMPLETE lack of care about privacy.” Twitter C.E.O. Elon Musk replied, “Thank goodness they’re so sanely run.”

But Twitter has had its own problems of late, not the least of which is that legacy media, or MSM, is unabashedly rooting for Threads to win the competition. (Of course, there’s also Bluesky, Mastadon, and others, but…)

Of Twitter’s recent problems is excessive ‘data scraping,’ necessitating limiting the number of tweets users to engage with. Over 7,000 users were on the Down Detector website complaining on Saturday last week. They were blocked from full use of the platform. Musk claimed every AI company on Earth was scraping Twitter data.

It’s done to generate insights into opinions, sentiments, and trends in order to build an effective search engine optimization program. While doing so can be done through the Twitter API, it can be done through scraping more quickly and efficiently (and possibly legally).

The information gleaned is a veritable goldmine: it helps understand customers, market to influencers, monitor brand and reputation, analyze sentiment, and monitor competition.

Maybe Elon should scrape Threads…

A Decade Later…

A WEB SEARCH indicates the U.S. has no day to honor press freedom. The world does, though. It’s on May 3rd and is called, cleverly enough, World Press Freedom Day. Of all people, Biden issued a statement about it.

On May 3rd, businesses are all open, including banks. So are government facilities and post offices. Schools aren’t recessed. No one takes a long weekend to celebrate it. Hardly anyone even knows about it even though it was first celebrated a little over thirty years ago. It’s just as opaque as the newly minted ‘woke’ holiday of ‘Juneteenth,’ which no one can clearly or consistently explain. Press Freedom? That’s easy and important. I’d propose that we declare our own national version of the international one established by the United Nations all those decades ago. 

And what better time to do it? According to a Pew Research Center survey of almost 12,000 U.S.-based journalists, a majority are highly concerned about potential restraints on press freedoms at home, with 33% being “extremely” so; 24% “very,” and 23% “somewhat.” Eleven percent were concerned “a little,” with a mere nine percent, “not at all.” The concerns are supported by the fact the U.S. ranks only 42 worldwide for press freedom per Reporters Without Borders.

We could select June 5th as the day the U.S. celebrates press freedom. The day marks the anniversary of whistleblower (and Freedom of the Press Foundation board member) Edward Snowden’s astonishing revelations of likely unconstitutional warrantless indiscriminate mass surveillance of innocent Americans by the unrestrained National Security Agency. (This year was the tenth anniversary of the revelations.) It was the press that Snowden sought to help blow the whistle, most specifically, The Guardian and The Washington Post. Their journalists did their jobs judiciously and fervently, leaving Americans stunned. 

These newspapers have since changed editorially and Americans have seemingly forgotten about N.S.A. transgressions. New laws have barely scratched the surface in establishing any limiting principles on these unwarranted warrantless searches that sound an awful lot like strictly unconstitutional general warrants. How quickly we forget! How surely we shouldn’t ever forget. To that end, the government must declassify much more than it does, repeal Sec. 702 of FISA, enact the PRESS Act, and designate a day to honor and promote elusive press freedom here at home.

When Law Enforcement Breaks the Law, They Do it Again.

RECENTLY, COURT DOCUMENTS WERE UNSEALED which showed the F.B.I. conducted 278,000 illegal warrantless searches under Sec. 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. More specifically, it used a FISA database against suspects in the Jan. 6th riot, the George Floyd protesters, victims of crimes, and donors of a congressional candidate. The release is further evidence of ever-expanding FISA abuses by the Bureau.

Every time more examples of the abuse is revealed, the F.B.I. claims it has undertaken corrective measures to ensure it will not happen again, or at least not as much. Every time, lawmakers accept the bureau’s representation. Every time, they’re lied to. Every time lawmakers renew FISA. Then they feign shock, SHOCK I tell you!, that the F.B.I. did the exact same thing all over again.

The F.B.I. is only authorized to utilize the FISA database if an agent is reasonably certain they will obtain evidence of a crime or obtain information relevant to foreign intelligence. But in the recently unsealed opinion, the secretive FISA Court actually threatened to take some sort of action if the F.B.I. doesn’t change its ways. It’s about time. The FISA Court found nearly 300,000 cases of noncompliance in a year—between 2020 and 2021.The somewhat redacted opinion of the FISA Court was published by reclaimthenet.org, here. 

For the FISA Court, Judge Rudolph Contreas said that the court was “encouraged by the amendments to the F.B.I.’s querying procedures [but] [n]onetheless, compliance problems with the querying of Section 702 information have proven to be persistent and widespread.” He added, “If they are not substantially mitigated by these recent measures, it may become necessary to consider other responses, such as substantially limiting the number of FBI personnel with access to unminimized Section 702 information.” That would merely be a good start.

When the George Floyd protests reached an apex in June of 2020, the F.B.I. used the database for communications of 133 protesters who were arrested. The F.B.I. argued it was reasonable for them to assume the warrantless searches would return foreign intelligence information. On the face of it, that sounds preposterous, but even if it wasn’t, why not just get a warrant? The bureau further used the database 656 times to obtain information to coerce people to become informants, and 23,132 times on Trump supporters following Jan. 6th to find possible foreign influence. 

COUP!!!

Special Counsel John Durham caused a storm on Monday when late in the afternoon, he at last issued his report on the origins of the F.B.I.’s “Crossfire Hurricane.” It was anti-climactic, to say the least. Durham had been named Special Counsel by then A.G. Bill Barr in Oct. of 2020, only weeks before the rigged presidential election that eventually installed the illegitimate occupant of the White House, Joey Biden. History, here. The 306-page report, here.

For four full years, Durham investigated: 1. Whether there was adequate predication for the Bureau to open the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, 2. Whether the opening of the probe was consistent with Bureau policy, 3. Whether there was evidence that the actions of Bureau employees or third parties violated the law, and 4. Whether the Justice Dept. provided false information on FISA applications for electronic surveillance of certain American citizens.

All told, his investigation yielded a mere three indictments: two defendants were ultimately acquitted and a third, a defendant pleaded guilty to a relatively minot charge. Durham’s probe reportedly cost American taxpayers at least $6.5 million.

Durham took issue with upper ranks of the Bureau, including then-deputy director Andrew McCabe and then-deputy assistant director for counterintelligence Peter Strzok. Bother were fired from the F.B.I. in 2018. The investigatory techniques employed by the F.B.I. in CH were rife with bias, incompleteness, and departed from usual approaches. He also noted the “markedly different” treatment of the Clinton and Trump campaigns by the Bureau. The D.O.J. and F.B.I. both “failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law,” he added.

That the Clinton campaign was known to be the source of what became debunked accusations against Trump and his team was, of course, reprehensible, but despite the failings Durham concluded existed, he only recommended the institution by the Bureau of a policy to handle “politically sensitive investigations” and to make difficult decisions. Expensive advice, but I digress…

In response to the Report, the F.B.I. said, “The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time.” President Trump characteristically called the F.B.I.’s statement “a disgrace” and proceeded to lambast the Bureau’s lack of professionalism.