I'm not here to protect the media. They do have their fair share of problems (a lot of them). However, the idea of attacking them simply because they don't tell the stories you like is reminiscent of Trump's approach, which is shared by much of the right and some of the left. The Durham investigation, spanning over 5-6 years, was quite obvious. Initially, its scope was to determine whether there was illegal spying on the Trump campaign. After Barr suggested there was more to uncover, the focus shifted to identifying and prosecuting criminal activities. Now, it seems to primarily center around a report on the FBI's behavior, which was already known, and there are even claims of media involvement (which, as far as I know, is not part of his official report but rather an invention of the media itself).
I know old school New York republiboomers like the @Os Trigonum their paesanos like basso, Rudy, DeVolder, and D'Amato love them some Marc Theissen, but the "It's the media's fault that we're all a bunch of white supremos and that Trump is giant putinist b****" is literally the weakest pepperoni ever on the Scoville scale.
By that part, do you mean the part where Durham is trying to make excuses for losing the only two court cases he brought to trial? The actual post itself does show Durham quoting the Mueller report. Then all it is, is Durham trying to make excuses for his failures in court. That isn't evidence of anything. The part quoted by Mueller is simply stating how his office went about doing their job. Durham claims his office did the same. Yet Mueller got more than 30 guilty pleas and convictions. He didn't lose any of the cases he brought to court. Durham got one guilty plea, and lost the only two cases he chose to prosecute. Sure, he makes excuses for himself in his report, but it doesn't help make a case or provide extra proof. It is telling that Durham's report tries to cite and stick by the claims that his office lost when it came time for trial.
no, this is Durham explaining the prosecutorial discretion he had to employ throughout, just as Mueller had to employ the same discretion. Each major section of the report includes a section titled "Prosecution decisions" where the specifics are summarized and reasons given for action/non-action. To say this is "Durham trying to make excuses for his failures in court" pretty much misconstrues the content, purpose, and findings of the report
not at all… it was to support my point that major newspaper has an OP section with contributions from a wide spectrum of political views, which counter your point that the NYT acts as a ‘state media’
But all he's doing is whining about why it's just too damn hard to get a conviction. He is disguising it as prosecutorial discretion explanation. He's whining about how juries can bring strongly held opinions about political figures to the courtroom and how that can change the likelihood of a conviction. Those are his words in the actual report. Yet, both sides face that problem. People don't only have political opinions in one direction. He can challenge any jury members if he feels they are going to be biased. He can strike them during jury selection. To me, it reads like he's making excuses, especially given the results his investigation brought.
your statement was "The Post: 'Marc Thiessen writes a column for The Post on foreign and domestic policy. He is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He is a Fox News contributor.' "
Its not my statement. It’s literally at the end of the OP piece you posted. It support my main point I made earlier about newspaper.
Hillary's campaign absolutely tried to vilify Trump. There was also foreign adversaries trying to interfere in the election in the favor of Trump. The FBI and DOJ was also warranted in opening the investigation.
Lol… Late edit…. The Mueller Report showed a link between Trump campaign and Kremlin backed associates and produced convictions. Your Durham report is just a wet fart that didn’t show anything new.
Lol…. Another opinion piece….. You sure do love you opinion pieces instead of actual news. So is WAPO not a state media actor now?
Okay @basso I read the executive summary of the Durham Report. The full thing is 300+ pages so I'm not reading all that, but the Exec Summary seems to do a good enough job for what I was wondering about -- what does Durham think he accomplished? -- and in 12 pages. I've seen posters quote various tweets or refer to some 'expert's analysis and I haven't read anything really beyond what displayed in this thread (and nothing that Os might have posted). So my lens is mostly just this exec summary. One thing I'd point out is that the summary outlines the questions Durham sets out to answer: Durham seems to conclude that the FBI should have shown more restraint in determining they had probable cause to launch an investigation. I'm not in law enforcement at all, but my perception and the reputation of law enforcement is that they are always happy to find some pretext to justify investigating persons of interest. Maybe pull you over because you don't have a front license plate (happened to me). Maybe search your car because they think they smell mar1juana. Maybe detain a man for questioning because he doesn't look like he could be related to the minor he's traveling with. I assume the FBI's psychology is the same -- maybe there's something going on here and here is a convenient pretext to justify nosing around. And asking that law enforcement first rule out every innocent explanation before investigating possible criminality also doesn't seem to jibe with our main street experience with police. Maybe that's not a studious observance of our civil liberties, but I'd rather these sudden pangs of conscience would come up when the everyman is persecuted by law enforcement instead of when some crooked elite is. He names some areas in which the FBI should have showed more restraint or more analytical rigor, but he doesn't allege any FBI corruption. He doesn't say anything about the legitimacy of the superseding Mueller investigation. He doesn't recommend that any of the convictions that ultimately resulted be overturned. As has been repeated over and over, he didn't get convictions. He doesn't recommend changes to FBI rules, saying, "As such, the answer is not the creation of new rules but a renewed fidelity to the old." Maybe this report has some relevance within the FBI (though I'm not sure even of that), but I don't think it's meaningful to the voting public. The report does make the Clinton campaign look bad for its effort to make Trump look like he was working for Putin. But I think we did learn to concede that bit already. Which is not to say Trump was clean. Mueller's report lays out several relationships between Russia and Trump's campaign and Trump was happy to benefit from Russian meddling. And it'd be justifiable if the Clinton campaign seized upon actual relationships between Russia and Trump and leveraged them for political gain. But instead of the ones that were there (and weren't yet known), they fabricated some (like the Alpha Bank communications). 2016 seems to have been an especially effed-up dirty election -- or at least I hope it was compared to the future.
