Now Durham has detailed how the dossier was the product of the Clinton campaign, which long denied that it funded the dossier and only admitted the truth long after the election.
The response of Maddow was to invite one of the most biased and discredited figures in the scandal to cover the indictment.
Strzok’s bias and violation of FBI rules led to career Justice Department investigators referring his case to prosecutors and led to his firing from the FBI. His emails showed intense bias against Donald Trump and highly concerning statements about having an “insurance policy” in place if Trump were to win the election.
On January 4, 2017, the FBI’s Washington Field Office issued a “Closing Communication” indicating that the bureau was terminating “CROSSFIRE RAZOR” — the newly disclosed codename for the investigation of Michael Flynn. Strzok intervened.
Now that same fired official is holding forth on Durham, a prosecutor who has been widely praised as an apolitical and unbiased investigator. Strzok declared “I’m certainly concerned when I read these indictments, both Mr. Sussmann’s and Mr. Danchenko’s… They have subtle dog-whistles to these kinds of pro-Trump conspiracy theories.”
Here is my favorite line: “The indictment makes a point to note that the FBI was unable to corroborate Steele’s reporting, but at the same time, it neglects to mention that we weren’t able to disprove it either.”
No line better sums up Strzok’s approach to his work.
First, Durham details how, in 2017, the FBI was informed that the main source for the dossier (and the Page secret warrant) told them that they were “unsubstantiated” and misrepresented. The FBI was also informed that American intelligence believed that Steele relied on a known Russian agent and that the dossier may have been the vehicle for Russian disinformation. The FBI also knew that that then-President Obama was briefed by his CIA director, John Brennan on an intelligence report that Clinton planned to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” That was on July 28, 2016 — three days before the Russia investigation was initiated.
Second, it is bizarre to note that allegations have yet to be clearly disproven. The allegations have been debunked to the extent that the key source has called them unreliable and little more than bar gossip. More importantly, the issue is whether there was sufficient evidence to launch (and continue) the investigation.
