Joe Scarborough Goes OFF on 'Dud' John Durham Report
By: colbyhall (Mediaite)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
By Colby HallMay 16th, 2023, 7:18 am Twitter share button
Joe Scarborough had a field day ridiculing the final report of Special Counsel John Durham before reminding viewers of a damning report from a GOP-led Senate Intel Committee published in 2020 that found damning evidence in support of the investigation into Russian interference and coordination with the Trump campaign.
The 300-page plus report was released on Monday and found nothing worth pursuing with criminal charges. However, it did find that the FBI relied on "raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence," and should the law enforcement agency should not have launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump's campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.
Former President Trump and his media surrogates have taken several victory laps, suggesting that this proves that the entire investigation was some sort of "deep state" hoax designed to put the thumbs on the electoral scales and that the FBI and the mainstream media were somehow complicit in coordinating this conspiracy.
However, that overlooks the findings of a bipartisan and GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee; the last volume was published in 2020.
Tuesday's Morning Joe opened on the Durham report and quickly pivoted to the ridicule of the very same Republican senators, namely Marco Rubio, whose comments from yesterday seem diametrically opposed to what they were saying just three years ago.
Ken Dilanian was teed up by Willie Geist and relitigated the findings that seem at odds with what Durham found.
"There were a number, dozens and dozens of contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russians that the Senate, the bipartisan Senate report said posed a counterintelligence threat to the United States," Dilanian offered. "That Senate report essentially said the Trump campaign left itself wide open to manipulation by a Russian rogue regime that was interfering in the election and that was trying to help Trump win."
You can read the first two paragraphs of the findings of that report below:
I. (U) FINDINGS (U) The Committee found that the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Parts of this effort are outlined in the Committee's earlier volumes on election security, social media, the Obama Administration's rcsponse to the threat, and the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). (U) The fifth and final volume focuses on the counterintelligence threat, outlining a wide range of Russian efforts to influence the Trump Campaign and the 2016 election. In this volume the Committee lays out its findings in detail by looking at many aspects of the counterintelligence threat posed by the Russian influence operation. For example, the Committee examined Paul Manafort's connections to Russian influence actors and the FBI's treatment of reporting produced by Christopher Steele. While the Committee does not describe the final result as a complete picture, this volume provides the most comprehensive description to date of Russia's activities and the threat they posed. This volume presents this information in topical sections in order to address coherently and in detail the wide variety of Russian actions. The evernts explained in these sections in many cases overlap, and references in each section will direct the reader to those overlapping parts of the volume. Immediately below is a swum, of key findings from several sections.
The report goes on to list how Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort was directly working with known Russian intel assets, and "sought to secretly share internal Campaign information."
Prior to joining the Trump Campaign in March 2016 and continuing throughout his time on the Campaign, Manafort directly and indirectly communicated with Kilimnik, Deripaska, and the pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine. On numerous occasions, Manafort sought to secretly share internal Campaign information with Kilimnik. The Committee was unable to reliably determine why Manafort shared sensitive internal polling data or Campaign strategy with Kilimnik or with whom Kilimnik further shared that information. The Committee had limited insight into Kilimnik's communications with Manafort and into Kilimnik's communications with other individuals connected to Russian influence operations, all of whom used communications security practices. The Committee obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the GRU's hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election.
Coming out of Dilanian's refresher of the Senate Intell findings, Scarborough returned to mock GOP Senators who appear to have forgotten their previous findings.
"These are the same Republicans that that dutifully went along with it when the Republican Senate Intel Committee issued a report saying, everybody listen, because this is what Marco Rubio's Senate Intel Committee stated," the Morning Joe host went off.
"The Republicans [found] that Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign caused a direct counterintelligence threat to the United States of America," Scarborough said.
"Let me say it again. Marco Rubio and the Senate Intel Committee concluded, first of all, that the FBI had ample cause for concern in 2016 and also said, I will say it again; these are the words of Marco Rubio and Republicans on the Senate Intel Committee," he reiterated. "They said that Donald Trump's 2016 campaign caused a direct counterintelligence threat to the United States of America."
Watch above via MSNBC.
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Filed Under: Donald TrumpJoe ScarboroughJohn DurhamKen DilanianRussiaRussian interference Previous PostNext Post Previous PostNext Post Colby Hall - Founding Editor
Colby Hall is the Founding Editor of Mediaite.com. He is also a Peabody Award-winning television producer of non-fiction narrative programming as well as a terrific dancer and preparer of grilled meats.
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They fucking lied and he bought it FFS. The FBI was supposedly the gold standard for "intelligence". It was the FBI after all who will now never be viewed in the same light.
Morning Jim,
I do believe this is the same FBI that brought down Hillary 10 or so days before the 2016 election.
They didn't bring her down. I think she was down going into the election anyway. Hard telling from here but I just don't think that the states/localities that Trump won was due only to the fact that she wasn't liked for PotUS by anyone except the coasts and a few others.
Perhaps not all by themselves, but they were the final proverbial straw.
The same Marco Rubio that trump referred to as little Marco? and then completely humiliated in the primaries? that Marco Rubio? Desperation is beginning to show in the democrat Klan.
So Rubio, who has been a Trump bootlicker for years , got a Republican led committee to reach these conclusions because he wanted revenge for Trump naming him "little Marco" ? lol.
Your comments are becoming more unhinged.
You have a lot of experience with unhinged comments so I will take your analysis under consideration.
Reading your comments gives one that experience.
I'll trust the Durham report. The whole collusion hoax was a fabricated mess by leftist scum inspired by HRC
Really? It was basically ordering an all-dressed hamburger and only getting the bun.
Yeah, but the meat was well cooked and the taste of truth was savory.
A better title for this would be mindless partisan who publicly embarrassed himself carrying water for liars tries to avoid culpability for his lies.
Here's my question.
Does Durham feel that the FBI should not investigate "raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence" (which we will refer to as "tips" from now on)? Or is he saying that the FBI should not investigate any "tips" in regards to Trump?
It seems that "tips" are what causes an investigation to take place, in order to analyze and corroborate those "tips".
Sounds to me, according to the Durham report, as though they took the tips and did very little investigating and deemed them gospel and ran with it.
Saw nothing even resembling that in his "report".
Try and read it. It's literally the entire point.
So it is an implication subsisting on your personal interpretation, not an objective statement.
Intentional fabrications and lies are not legitimate "tips"
Please explain how you determine they are fabrications without investigating them.
It doesn't surprise me that partisan bias will allow each to view this report and determine it's worth or value based on such bias. I said when the investigation began that I would wait for the final report rather than jump on one ship or another. Critics will point to the lack of convictions as proof. I think the report does a good job of showing where the leadership of the FBI and DOJ failed. The FBI has already responded to the report by stating they've already made a lot of the changes to fix what this report found wrong. Time will tell but it's obvious to me that both the FBI and the DOJ need to be more open to Congressional oversight. But with the partisan divide in Congress will anything useful be done?