The Epstein distraction files continue, with a purported whistleblower report (which Tulsi Gabbard now seems to claim was the entire source of her past discredited propaganda) and the Classified Annex to the Durham Appendix.

I’ll return to the substance of the Durham Appendix.

The Tl;dr is that Durham made false claims in the appendix contradicted in the unclassified version, and ignored totally basic details about the 2016 election as well as evidence in his own possession to sustain his Clinton Conspiracy Theory, which I addressed at length here.

But the short version of the story is that in addition to the two SVR documents involving Loretta Lynch I described here, Durham reviewed two more SVR documents. So in sum total, this scandal is about:

• A January 2016 intelligence memo purporting to describe what Debbie Wasserman-Schultz said about the Clinton email investigation and also stating that Jim Comey intended to keep the scandal running “to jeopardize the chance of the DP to win the presidential race.”
• A March 2016 intelligence memo claiming that the Hillary’s political director, Amanda Renteria, regularly receives updates from Loretta Lynch and that Hillary was reviewing Trump’s ties with Russian oligarchs (including Aras Agalarov), “with support from special services.”
• A July 2016 “draft memo” relaying that the Soros Foundation had evidence that on July 26, Hillary approved a plan from her policy advisor, Juliane Smith, “to smear Donald Trump by magnifying the scandal tied to the intrusion by the Russian special services in the pre-election process to benefit the Republican candidate.” This was, in part, an effort to get the White House to be more confrontational with Russia. (There’s a reference to “PC” that Durham takes to be “Political Convention” and not “Principals Committee”). It claimed (remember, this purports to be what Smith said) that the FBI lacked irrefutable evidence of Russia’s involvement in the scandal. The July 2016 memo then says that the campaign Hillary purportedly approved on July 26 was launched in June 2016, and also claimed that Hillary lacked direct evidence (which they of course did have). The appendix cites five more somethings of emails (the report redacts the description) purportedly from Leonard Bernardo, dated July 25 to July 27, that say “the FBI will put more oil into the fire,” most of which are in Russian.

Durham obtained records from many of the think tanks involved and he “was unable to locate in the records from the Think Tanks any exact versions of the Bernardo emails obtained” from their source. Instead, he found some real emails, “contain language and references with the exact same verbiage to the materials.” One was a discussion about Thomas Rid’s analysis of the DNC hack. Another was an email Smith actually sent soliciting bipartisan experts to condemn Trump’s attacks on NATO. As noted in my earlier post, Durham focused on Smith’s efforts to get a public statement about the actual hack released, which had no tie to Trump (as also noted, Durham omits a great deal of context to make that look damning).

None of the people involved in the purported emails said they sent them. None of Hillary’s staffers said there was a plan. Durham ultimately concludes that the emails on which he predicated a five year investigation were merely “a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking.” The rest of his opinion is stupid for the reasons I laid out in my earlier post, but will return to.

From that, the right wing is treating the things in the Russian intelligence reports as true. And treating the desire to make political hay of an election year hack as a criminal conspiracy.

Curiously, though, none of them are treating as true that Jim Comey would draw out the investigation into Hillary until the end of the election to help Trump win, even though that is what happened.

And none of them are accusing Jim Jordan (or anyone else) of trying to make political hay about the Iran hack of Donald Trump last year — the exact equivalent of the worst insinuations about what Smith did.

Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray requesting an unclassified briefing on the Iranian hack of President Trump’s campaign. According to reporting, Iran emailed the illegally obtained information to at least three advisers on the Democratic presidential campaign and emailed stolen information, including at least three major media outlets—Politico, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

The Committee is requesting the briefing to address questions including:

• What material did Iran obtain from President Trump’s campaign?
• To whom at the Biden for President or the Harris for President campaigns did the hackers send information and materials?
• On what date did the FBI learn there had been a hack and exfiltration of nonpublic information from President Trump’s campaign?
• On what date(s) did Iran provide the stolen documents to the Biden for President campaign or the Harris for President campaign?
• On what date did the FBI first inform President Trump’s campaign it had been hacked?
• Did the FBI use any Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorities to surveil President Trump’s campaign?

Excerpts of the letter to Director Wray: 

“On September 18, 2024, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced that in ‘late June and early July,’ the Islamic Republic of Iran attempted to interfere with the upcoming presidential election by ‘sen[ding] unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with the Biden-Harris campaign that contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign . . . .’  Since then, Iran has continued ‘to send stolen, non-public material’ from President Trump’s campaign to the media.  Iran’s actions raise serious concerns about foreign election interference targeting President Trump’s campaign to support President Biden’s and Vice President Harris’s campaigns. We write to request information about this serious matter.

Look, if you really believe that these documents represent the transparent truth, then you believe that Jim Comey threw the election to Donald Trump and Jim Jordan must go to prison.

But if you’re ignoring those bits (as well as John Durham’s silence that the DOJ IG report quoted FBI as saying some of the SVR memos were “objectively false”), then you’re simply chasing conspiracy theories to drown out the Epstein scandal.

Pick. Either send Jim Jordan to prison or shut your yap.