Special Counsel John Durham Stumbled into a Criminal Probe of Shady Trump Deals

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

The probe of the hoax was a hoax of a probe, but then the Italians raised some questions.

By Charles P. Pierce Published: Jan 26, 2023 Consolidated News Pictures//Getty Images

Remember the Durham Investigation? It was going to prove to the world that the former president* was more lied against than lying, more abused than abuser. It was the Grail Quest for Trumplings, large and small. It was going to be an icepick to the eye of the Deep State. It was going to make the crooked places straight, break in pieces the gates of brass, and sunder the bars of iron.

It was going to be Big Casino, is what it was going to be.

It has turned out to be a striptease by a phantasm. In the end, there seems to have been nothing there. However! We now learn that the investigation contains an episode that found Durham comically on the verge of turning his mandate on its head. From The New York Times:

Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it[...]On one of Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham's trips to Europe, according to people familiar with the matter, Italian officials — while denying any role in setting off the Russia investigation — unexpectedly offered a potentially explosive tip linking Mr. Trump to certain suspected financial crimes. Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham decided that the tip was too serious and credible to ignore. But rather than assign it to another prosecutor, Mr. Barr had Mr. Durham investigate the matter himself — giving him criminal prosecution powers for the first time — even though the possible wrongdoing by Mr. Trump did not fall squarely within Mr. Durham's assignment to scrutinize the origins of the Russia inquiry, the people said.

Now if this doesn't indicate how baroquely conflicted the previous administration* actually was, I don't know what will. The kabuki investigation called by the former president*'s lickspittle AG and conducted by the lickspittle's handpicked special counsel at one point stumbled across yet more potential crimes by the president* who was its primary patron. You couldn't swing a dead cat in that White House without hitting an accessory after the fact.

Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America , and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.