Excerpt of Megyn Kelly's interview of the three hosts of The Fifth Column Podcast (which I follow and recommend). Two topics here: A) The refusal of some key advocates for social justice" to debate their views publicly, and B) Acknowledgment that several of the participants to this discussion initially fell for the Trump-Russia propaganda.
The Confirmation Bias is strong. Almost none of the millions of people who spent years convincing themselves that Donald Trump colluded with Russia is willing to read the 12-page Executive Summary of the Durham Report, which methodically dismantles their cherished world view. They would much rather ingest the soft-pedaled versions of the report offered by corporate media outlets that lavished themselves with awards for for engaging in journalism malpractice. I don't actually know all these millions of people, of course, but based on several conversations I've recently had with "True-Blue" people, they want to continue believing what they believe.
Those of us who have been following independent media (e.g., Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi) are not surprised by the conclusions of the 316-page Durham Report.
One more thing . . . at Racket News, Susan Schmidt summarizes the main points of the Durham Report. Here article is titled: "Eight Takeaways From the Durham Report" Perhaps the overall headline could have been "U.S. Intelligence Agencies Attempt to Tip the Election in Favor of Hillary Clinton, Whose Campaign Paid for and Received False Intelligence to Lead the Way." Something like that. Here are Schmidt's eight takeaways:
1. There was no valid predicate for the investigation, and the FBI knew it.
2. “There’s nothing to this, but we have to run it to ground.”
3. “It’s thin”; “There’s nothing to this.”
4. The Trump campaign investigation was premised on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence,” and U.S. intel agencies possessed no “actual evidence of collusion” when the probe began
5. Sensational stories published in the New York Times in February and March 2017 claiming Trump associates were in contact with Russian intelligence agents were false.
6. FBI Director James Comey pushed heavily for an investigation of Carter Page, starting in April 2016 when Page was a government witness in an espionage investigation of Russian diplomats in New York.
7. At the direction of the FBI, confidential human source Stefan Halper recorded lengthy conversations with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, in which each denied the campaign had any involvement with Russian officials.
8. Durham was highly critical of the FBI’s “startling and inexplicable failure” to investigate the so-called “Clinton Intelligence Plan.”
[More . . . ]
The conclusions of the Durham report are not surprising to those of us who follow independent new media. For years, we've seen shoddy story after shoddy story revealing that the driving motivation of the two dominant flavors of corporate media is to serve as the PR Departments of the two dominant political parties. It has also long been clear (e.g., from the Twitter Files and the coverup regarding Hunter Biden's laptop) that the FBI & CIA are partisan organizations. Many people I know don't mind being played. They would rather think about short-term results than the long term damage that continues to be inflicted on American institutions. No matter who you prefer to be president, these revelations should be immensely disturbing.
From the National Review: "This was one of the dirtiest political tricks in American history. The damage it has done to American trust in the FBI and our intelligence agencies is incalculable."
Here is another straight-forward account from The National Review, a conservative leaning media outlet that vigorously opposed Donald Trump: "FBI Lacked ‘Any Actual Evidence of Collusion’ between Trump Campaign, Russia When Crossfire Hurricane Launched, Durham Finds":
The Department of Justice and the FBI did not have “any actual evidence of collusion” between Russian officials and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and began their Crossfire Hurricane probe of Trump’s campaign based on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” according to a report released on Monday by special prosecutor John Durham.
Durham scolded federal law enforcement and counter-intelligence officials for failing to “uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law” as part of their investigation.
He wrote that at least one FBI agent criminally fabricated language in an email that was used to obtain a FISA surveillance order. And he accused FBI leaders of displaying a “serious lack of analytical rigor” and relying significantly on “investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents,” referring to staffers and allies of Hillary Clinton, then the Democratic presidential nominee, whose campaign funded the Steele dossier through its law firm Perkins Coie.
From the WSJ article, "Biden’s CIA Assist in the 2020 Presidential Election: The agency, not only retirees, turns out to have worked on the Hunter excuse letter."
Even new habits are hard to break, and that’s the case with a federal intelligence apparatus that can’t keep its fingers out of elections. It seems President-elect Biden on Nov. 4, 2020, owed thanks not only to a cabal of former intelligence officials, but to the Central Intelligence Agency.That’s the big takeaway of this week’s interim report from House committees detailing the origins of the October 2020 disinformation letter about Hunter Biden’s laptop. An earlier release revealed that Joe Biden’s campaign helped engineer a statement from 51 former U.S. spies that claimed the laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” That letter provided Democrats, journalists and social-media companies the excuse to dismiss and censor evidence of Hunter’s influence peddling, removing an obstacle from his father’s path to victory.
Now we find out that, according to a written statement supplied to the committee, an active CIA official joined the effort to solicit more signers to the letter. The campaign to elect Joe Biden extended into Langley.
The report (issued jointly by the Judiciary and Intelligence committees and the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government) tells the sordid story of the letter, beginning with a call from Biden campaign official Antony Blinken to former Deputy CIA Director Mike Morell three days after the New York Post published its laptop scoop. Mr. Morell told the committees that Mr. Blinken wanted his “reaction” to the laptop news, but another signer said Mr. Morell put it to him bluntly: the Biden campaign “asked” for the letter.
I propose this as a metaphor for a large country whose institutions are being hollowed out.
