Well, this is something. Minutes after disappointing Trump supporters – and no doubt President Trump himself – by saying that his do-nothing FBI/DOJ has found no evidence of fraud that would be pervasive enough to tilt the outcome of the presidential election, William Barr announced that he has formally converted U.S. Attorney John Durham to a Special Counsel in his investigation of the origins of Spygate and Obamagate.
This conversion will help to ensure that Durham will be able to continue his work in a new Biden/Harris administration, complicating the hell out of China Joe Potato Head Biden since he is without doubt a key person of interest in Durham’s probe. It will also give Durham access to all the budget, staffing and resource privileges that come along with the Special Counsel designation.
From a report at Fox News:
Attorney General Bill Barr appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham as special counsel to continue investigating the origins of the Russia probe in the next administration, Fox News has confirmed.
Barr appointed Durham as special counsel on Oct. 19—two weeks prior to Election Day.
Barr notified the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, in a letter dated Dec. 1 obtained by Fox News, that Durham would be special counsel.
“On May 13, 2019, I directed John Durham, U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, to investigate certain intelligence and law-enforcement activities surrounding the 2016 presidential election,” Barr wrote. “Although I had expected Mr. Durham to complete his work by the summer of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as additional information he uncovered, prevented him from doing so.”
“In advance of the presidential election, I decided to appoint Mr. Durham as a Special Counsel to provide him and his team with the assurance that they could complete their work, without regard to the outcome of the election,” Barr wrote, adding that he appointed Durham with “the powers and authority of a Special Counsel” on Oct. 19.
[End]
Law Professor Jonathan Turley had this to say about Barr’s action on Twitter this afternoon:
Bill Barr just solved the lame duck problem that I addressed earlier for Durham. He has converted him into a Special Counsel. That does not some like (as reported by the media) an investigation that found nothing. https://t.co/rcnWWzq6j2
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) December 1, 2020
..With a special counsel, Yates would enter office in a position analogous to Jeff Sessions. Like Sessions, Yates would be expected to recuse herself since she featured prominently in signing key surveillance applications and was involved in key decisions.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) December 1, 2020
Thus, as has been the case throughout his term as Attorney General, Barr presents those who support President Trump today with a mixed bag of disappointment about his department’s failure to act on major scandals in real time and hope that the future could still produce some satisfactory results on another front.
The refusal of Barr’s DOJ and the FBI to really get involved in the single largest election fraud in American history will be a stain on Barr’s and Christopher Wray’s reputations for the rest of their days on earth. But his move with Durham today could, if Durham does ultimately produce real prosecutions of the criminals who tried to fix the 2016 elections and execute a coup d’etat on American soil, help to redeem Barr to a large extent.
As always with Barr, you have to take the bad with the good.
That is all.
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