The Durham Split Screen

AI will fill this for us.

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The Durham report finds serious problems in the FBI’s investigation of Trump, but finds no criminal wrongdoing and recommends no systemic changes. Sarah, who worked in the White House during the Mueller investigation, gives an insider’s perspective, as Steve and Mike try to make sense of the fallout. Also:
-Biden and McCarthy inch towards a debt ceiling compromise
-Congress mulls AI regulations… But is the future already sealed?

Show Notes:

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Comments (108)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Reed Benet

    I guess I can ask this at Dispatch Live, but if Sarah would be kind enough to it would be twice Bucket List me by answering a question I put in comments.

    I think I paraphrase correctly that Sarah challenges anyone to show her in the Mueller Report where the Trump Campaign colluded with Russia?

    Perhaps we're talking semantics, albeit important semantics even in their explanation and articulation, but in the context of Trump inviting Russia to hack, in the context of all the intelligence agencies saying Russia interfered in the US election, in the context of the Republican Senate committee led by Rubio confirming that same, the Mueller Report points to a number of at the least questionable contacts between Trump Campaign members and known Russian intelligence operatives, and courtesy of Mueller Trump's National Security Advisor Flynn got fired and convicted for lying about Russian contacts, ditto Roger Stone got convicted for a related five counts of lying, one count of witness tampering, and one count of obstruction of a proceeding, etc.?

    BTW, as part of a short long story, I've got Roger Stone's cell phone, and we text back and forth every once in a while. Would you like me to ask him for an interview?

    What am I not understanding or getting wrong about Sarah's oft repeated position?

    Thanks! Love The Dispatch! And particularly platonically LOVE Sarah and The Brisket.

    Reed

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  2. Echack

    The film A.I. Artificial Intelligence was a Spielberg-directed film, but the original concept was done at the direction of Stanley Kubrick. He handed off the first screenplay (by Ian Watson), his notes, concept art, etc. to Spielberg.

    Technology that has been "paused"? To some degree Nuclear Fission powerplants have been paused. In addition, genetically modified crops have been put on hold in much of the world.

    As for AI for cleaning up speeches (i.e. Deepfakes for Pols), fine if it just removes the "ums" and "ahs". But it will be used to youthen candidates - make Biden not look like an old man; Trump with a full head of hair and not a bad comb over. And the reverse will be true - ads that make opponents look worse. And the 1st amendment may shield them.

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  3. Avatar photo
    Mick.Staton

    There is one question that has bothered me for this whole affair that the right-wing media has never been able to answer. First and foremost in my mind is this:

    If the purpose of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was to stop Donald Trump from getting elected, why didn't a single word of its existence leak out during the campaign? Reporting years ago revealed that they even kept the investigation out of the normal internal update sheets in order to prevent any unauthorized information from leaking out. News of the existence of this investigation did not reach the public until James Comey met with soon-to-be-inaugurated President-Elect Trump and HE was the one that announced it to the world.

    If the investigation was staffed with so many rabid left wing partisans (as we have been told) and their sole purpose was to prevent Trump's election, then an anonymous tip released here or there in October of 2016 that the FBI was actively investigating the Trump campaign for collusion with a foreign entity in criminal activity would have gone off like a nuclear bomb. Democrats would certainly not have sat at home on election day in the numbers that they did. They could have elected Hillary Clinton with a leak like that.

    But that's not what happened. There were no leaks. In fact, there is no real allegation that anyone in the FBI other than the lawyer who edited the Carter Page information did anything but act in a professional manner. Even Lisa Page and Peter Strozk, the boogeyman and woman of the investigation, were not fired based on any official actions they took, and they were not charged with any crimes. They were fired for an affair and for personal texts that displayed their left leaning bias. Andrew McCabe was not fired for anything having to do with Crossfire Hurricane, either. He was fired for leaking a story about how the Obama Justice Department was stonewalling the FBI on the Clinton email scandal.

    These three individuals have been used to tar the entire investigation as a partisan witch hunt even though their firings were not tied to any official misconduct in the handling of the investigation.

    There is also a distortion about the findings of the Mueller report. Sarah claims accurately that there was no evidence that anybody on the Trump campaign committed a crime in the Trump/Russia collusion scheme, but what she leaves out is that the reason there was no evidence of conspiracy is because Mueller's team could not prove anyone at the campaign knew about the Russians hack of the DNC and John Podesta's emails before it happened.

    The Mueller report concluded that the Russian intelligence services hacked the DNC and John Podesta and then shared that information with Wikileaks. It also confirmed that, not only was the Trump campaign approached with this information, but that the Trump campaign eagerly jumped at the chance to collude with Russia. All of the activities that were alleged in the Trump/Russia collusion story (except for the farcical claims that Trump was a Russian agent) were essentially proven correct.

    As for the FBI's investigation, you have to look at their actions not using a partisan lens, but with a "CYA" lens instead. In 2016 the FBI had been rather publicly investigating Hillary Clinton, a candidate for President, for mishandling classified documents. The story is in the news all of the time and they are getting beat up by the Democrats for supposedly hamstringing her campaign.

    Suddenly word comes in from the Australians that a low-level Trump campaign staff member bragged about the Russians offering assistance to the Trump campaign in the form of hacked information. They didn't think much of this bragging at the time, until a few weeks later the DNC emails and John Podesta's emails start showing up on Wikileaks. That's when they decided to contact the American authorities.

    By itself this wouldn't make much of a splash, but there have been contacts from Christopher Steele, a well-respected former British spy who says he has intelligence proving a connection between Trump and Russia. If you are a Justice Department bureaucrat and you think your next boss is going to be the candidate you are currently actively investigating, what do you think is going to happen to you if there is even the smallest chance that there is truth to these Trump/Russia rumors, and it comes out that you knew about it and didn't even bother to investigate it? That, in my opinion, is what really led to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Nothing more than attempts to protect their jobs because everybody thought Hillary was going to win.

    Durham's report does not reveal anything new. The only person to face any punishment was the lawyer who admitted to altering facts in the Carter Page FISA warrant and that was uncovered by the Inspector General, who concluded that Crossfire Hurricane was properly predicated. Durham doesn't even offer any suggestions for implementing any new reforms, nor does he allege any of the investigation decisions made by the FBI were illegal or improper.

    Durham's only real additions to the narrative are two ill-conceived prosecutions whose only real purposes were to give him vehicles to release salacious and damaging allegations against the Clinton campaign they he could not even prove. The timing of those releases were designed to damage Democrats in a midterm election cycle Republicans thought they would do well in.

    In short, Durham was nothing more than a shill. His job was to give the pack of right wing outrage media personalities something to howl about and they are howling away.

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    1. Aaron H Frank

      As Sarah said, this whole investigation brought Trump's team to a halt for the first two years of his administration. We will probably never know why there were no leaks but this did have a dramatic impact on the President and his team.

      What the team neglected (or I missed) was the report found fault with the disparate treatment of investigations into Trump compared to Hilary.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Mick.Staton

        I wholeheartedly disagree. The Crossfire Hurricane investigation did NOT bring Trump's team to a halt for two years. The only things Trump and his team got done at all (which wasn't much) were done in the first two years.

        The major distraction to team Trump was the Mueller investigation, and that would never have happened if a) Trump had not tried to score political capital over the Crossfire Hurricane investigation by screaming about it at the top of his lungs, b) Trump had not had Rod Rosenstein come up with a BS excuse for firing Comey, and c) follow that up by telling NBC Reporters (as well as Russian diplomats) that he fired Comey because of the investigation. Those are the actions that triggered Rosenstein to appoint a Special Counsel, and I will point out again that Mueller essentially confirmed the Trump/Russia collusion story was true. There was just no criminal charges because Trump's team was involved after the fact of the hacking.

        As for the disparate treatment that is pretty weak sauce. When you find out a foreign entity is trying to donate money to a campaign you give that campaign a heads up. When you have reason to believe that members of a campaign are actively working with a foreign entity to commit federal crimes (i.e. hacking of email systems) you do NOT go and tell the campaign that you are investigating them.

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        1. Sunilsaha2

          Great points. I wish The Dispatch had someone on its panel to make these types of counter arguments in real time. They talked about how it's important for the FBI to question its assumptions - I would like The Dispatch to do the same. It would make it even more fun to listen to.

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  4. Avatar photo
    Matt Stokes

    Part of the problem with Sarah's framing is it not only cast aspersions on the crazier wing of Trump-conspiracy Twitter, but also on more reputable sources like the writers at Lawfare or the Atlantic. To be honest, those takes are far more nuanced than what this episode provided.

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  5. Erin C

    For Steve- this is the hotdog reference. Heads-up: explicit language:
    https://youtu.be/WLfAf8oHrMo

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  6. Mark Warren

    I wish the dispatch podcast would have a more consistent schedule again. It feels like we are getting less content from the podcast as they aren’t doing 2 podcasts a week consistently. It also feels like the general quality is slipping a bit. I’ve been around since the beginning (not always as a paying member but have been a paying member for 2 years now) and the commentary and analysis are really just not what they used to be. Am I the only one feeling this way (I admit I may be)? I’m seriously considering not renewing when my annual subscription expires.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Marc Frischhertz

    Sarah engaging in rank speculation as to the motives of the FBI was a low point for the Dispatch. How about they thought Trump was guilty and treated him exactly the way the FBI treats everyone else they think is guilty. You and I can find that reprehensible, but that doesn’t mean Trump was treated differently.

    I think Sarah is way to close to this to be objective.

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    1. Avatar photocircle-angle-nib
      Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

      Apologies if I wasn’t clear. That was from the Durham report based on interviews with the people in charge. Not speculation on my part.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Marc Frischhertz

    For the 16 years GWB and Obama were president, the government (DOJ) sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court’s shadow docket a total of 16 times. During the 4 years of Trump, the government sought emergency relief 42 times. The growing use of the shadow docket was a result of a concerted effort under Trump (and Sarah’s) DOJ. With the SCOTUS acting as a willing accomplice

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    1. Avatar photocircle-angle-nib
      Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

      Wait what? The emergency docket exploded under trump bc nationwide injunctions exploded under Trump. Seeking relief at scotus was the same under every admin—the need to seek relief was the difference maker.

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  9. Avatar photo
    Jmcaughey

    I always enjoy Steve's ignorance of popular culture because I share his attitude towards today's pop culture....but even I know the hotdog meme

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  10. Travis Thorne

    1. I really like the Sarah, Steve, and Sir Michael Caine line up.

    2. I think they were a bit weak on what the Durham Report exposed.

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