To wit:
The Durham report shows confirmation bias in US intelligence and law-enforcement agencies during the 2016 - 2020 period, but delivers no bombshells.
Mr. Durham delivered a report that scolded the F.B.I. but failed to live up to the expectations of supporters of Donald J. Trump that he would uncover a politically motivated “deep state” conspiracy. He charged no high-level F.B.I. or intelligence official with a crime and acknowledged in a footnote that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign did nothing prosecutable, either.
It's basically an unexciting rehash, replete with mentions of figures we're familiar with: John Brennan, Carter Page, Peter Strzok, John Podesta, Jake Sullivan, etc.
The basic story remains the same. Two things came to the FBI's attention around the same time: the matter of Hillary Clinton's email server, and the Steele Dossier. The FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails was considered preliminary, but the one into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign was full throttle from the get-go. There was a lot of poor judgement all around, but very little that constituted prosecutable offense.
Trump and the Trumpists are already nonetheless howling that this is the "crime of the century" and that some kind of "long knives of the deep state" is the country's most pressing problem.
Of course, the Very Stable Genius is trying to tie to, or at least draw parallels to, the whole matter with which the Durham investigation dealt, the supposedly rigged 2020 election, which was not rigged.
The post-American press also has confirmation bias and is using the report's prevalence in the current news cycle to deflect from very real questions about the Biden family.
Per Holman Jenkins's column today in the Wall Street Journal:
Even so, the news blackout can’t conceal the suspicious details unearthed by congressional investigators about Biden family bank accounts, shell companies and transfers from shady foreign actors. It can’t conceal that Mr. Biden may owe his presidency to a de facto U.S. intelligence agency operation to bamboozle voters about his son’s laptop.
That said, Trump's call to Ukrainian president Zelensky was clearly extortion - a conveyance of the message that already-Congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine was contingent upon Zelensky helping to dig up Biden dirt - and it was right for Congress to impeach Trump over it.
The proliferation of special counsels and Congressional investigations over the past few years does not speak well for how we value integrity as a country.
Most Republicans either still drool over Donald Trump, are afraid of him, or are going to be willing to vote for him for president again because they can't see beyond the binary-choice framework.
Democrats show no sign of even easing up on their priorities: climate alarmism, identity politics militancy and wealth redistribution.
Partisans of both the Left and the Trumpist right will get all wonky about particulars of the Durham report's conclusions in order to play gotcha and keep us from seeing the spiritual-level root of our unhealthiness as a nation.
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