BlindBoo
Diamond Member
- Sep 28, 2010
- 56,638
- 16,608
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Was the Mueller investigation ever necessary? Durham report suggests not
Finding of no evidence of Russia collusion calls into question Rod Rosenstein’s epic decision that changed course of Trump presidency.justthenews.com
Five years later, Rosenstein’s decision to appoint Mueller faces even harsher scrutiny after a new special counsel, John Durham, declared in his final report last week the FBI and DOJ did not have, and never had, evidence that Trump conspired with Russia to hijack the 2016 election.
For Republicans and their allies, the Russia scandal became the “Russia hoax” quite a while ago, but in the wake of the special counsel’s report reaching the public on Monday, the party is acting as if the case is now officially closed — and Donald Trump was right all along.
“The Russian hoax was a figment of Hillary Clinton’s imagination,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee declared on Monday night. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas condemned reality-based observers for “breathlessly spreading these ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ lies.”
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GOP uses Durham report to pretend the Russia scandal wasn’t real
I realize much of the right doesn’t want to hear this, but the Russia scandal was legitimate before the Durham report, and it’s still legitimate now.
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“[T]he Durham Report provides fuel for the false claim that the Russia probe was a hoax. Don’t fall for it.” A Washington Post fact-check report added this morning that, in reality, “Russia sought to change the outcome of the [2016 presidential] election, and the Republican candidate welcomed that help.” The same report concluded that the FBI had good reason to investigate the ties between the Trump campaign and its Russian benefactors.
Circling back to our earlier coverage, I’m mindful of the fact that Republicans have spent years trying to dismiss the Russia scandal, largely out of partisan necessity: The truth was a disaster for Trump and his political operation, so their allies set out to assure Americans that we need not trust our lying eyes.
What’s more, it’s quite possible that for those living in a conservative bubble — folks, for example, who were led to believe former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report "exonerated" Trump, reality be damned — this public-relations strategy will prove wildly effective. I have no doubt that a painfully large chunk of the population is now absolutely certain that the underlying controversy is “fake.”
But the allegations at the heart of the Russia scandal remain fundamentally unchanged. Now seems like a good time to review anew some core truths.