UPDATED: Durham At Full Throttle
Fox News has an article this morning about the growing dimensions of the Durham investigation:
Durham moving ‘full-throttle’ on Russia probe review, top federal prosecutors involved: sources
When you put the statements about Durham's investigation together with recent remarks by AG Barr himself you get a very interesting picture. Specifically, the investigation that Barr referred to as "sprawling" has now reached such dimensions that Durham is farming out parts of the investigation to USA Tim Shea in DC, which probably means that most of the FBI's Washington Field Office has dropped what it's been doing and is covering leads. No doubt the FBI's national resources are also being called upon for assistance, especially for the analysis of what must be a mountain of documentation of all sorts. Of course, that was likely close to being the case previously, but the investigation at this point sounds all consuming:
U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham is going “full throttle” with his review into the origins of the investigation into suspected Russia-Trump coordination in the 2016 election, with additional top prosecutors involved in looking at different components of the original probe, sources told Fox News.
Two sources told Fox News that Jeff Jensen , the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri who was tapped by the Justice Department in February to review the case of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, is continuing to help with Durham’s investigation even after the DOJ’s move last week to drop the case against Flynn.
The sources told Fox News that interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Timothy Shea is also assisting with components of the investigation.
“They farmed the investigation out because it is too much for Durham and he didn’t want to be distracted,” one of the sources told Fox News.
"He’s going full throttle, and they’re looking at everything,” the source told Fox News.
Meanwhile Barr, in his understated way, signaled that one reason for the delay in exonerating Flynn was because the larger conspiracy investigation has so many interlocking components:
..., Barr , during an interview with CBS News on Thursday, was asked whether he felt the FBI conspired to get Flynn fired from the Trump administration.
“I think, you know, that's a question that really has to wait [for] an analysis of all the different episodes that occurred through the summer of 2016 and the first several months of President Trump's administration,” Barr told CBS News, while adding that Durham is “still looking at all of this,” in reference to the Flynn case.
“This is one particular episode, but we view it as part of a number of related acts ... and we’re looking at the whole pattern of conduct,” Barr said, noting that they were investigating before “and after ... the election.”
I like the sound of that. Very much.
UPDATE: Here's an article referred to me by emailer Jim that fits well with this post. It's Miranda Devine's Michael Flynn fiasco will reveal Obama’s truth .
Flynn was a marked man from the moment Obama fired him as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, ostensibly for “insubordination.”
Really, it was because Flynn , the most effective intelligence officer of his generation, had embarrassed Obama by refusing to go along with the “big lie” that the Islamist enemy was defeated.
In 2014, after Obama dismissed ISIS as a terrorist “JV team,” Flynn warned the Senate Armed Services Committee that the jihadist group was a growing threat. He was fired soon afterward.
“Frankly, at the White House, it didn’t meet the narrative,” he later told The New York Times.
Obama held onto his grudge against Flynn, ...
...
Clapper said he was “disturbed” about Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak, which had the effect of “essentially neutering — my characterization — the sanctions [against Russia] that had just been imposed [by the Obama administration].”
But that wasn’t true. There was “nothing wrong” with the call, Barr told CBS last week. “In fact, it was laudable.”
Being "disturbed" about a policy change--assuming that that had happened or was about to happen--is not a justification for framing someone with false criminal charges.
As a paid CNN contributor, Clapper repeatedly declared, with all the authority his former job carried, that Trump was a Russian “asset.”
Yet under oath, he told the Intelligence Committee, “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.”
It’s a tawdry story. The Trump presidency was booby-trapped from Day One by the Obama administration’s abuse of the rule of law.