by GAGE KLIPPER at dailycaller.com
The Left’s original conspiracy theory finally came crashing down Monday night with the release of special counsel John Durham’s report on the FBI’s handling of Trump-Russia collusion allegations. The GOP electorate, however, was vindicated.
The report comes after a nearly four year probe into how the FBI initiated and executed its investigation of the Trump administration, known internally as operation Crossfire Hurricane. The probe has been exhaustively reported on over these past four years, with revelations about the sourcing of the infamous Steele dossier and how it was used to justify surveillance of the Trump campaign slowly dripping out in increments. Throughout this time, the Left has derided any allegation of wrong-doing on the part of intelligence agencies as a rabid, conservative fever dream. However, Durham’s final report shows that all of the individual developments coalesce into a larger picture: this so-called conservative fever dream is in fact a reality.
Ultimately, the core finding of the report confirms what conservatives have suspected all along—that “neither U.S. nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement” of the investigation; that “certain personnel” (i.e. Peter Strzok and Lisa Page) investigating Trump had a “predisposition” to do so; and that the standard used to open an investigation into Trump was a “noticeable departure” from the standard used against Hillary Clinton.
Durham did not mince words in the report. “The objective facts show that the FBI’s handling of important aspects of the Crossfire Hurricane matter were seriously deficient,” he firmly stated, explaining that the FBI used “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” as a basis of the Trump investigation.
He continued by placing the blame for the loss of confidence in the FBI squarely at the agency’s own feet: “As the more complete record now shows, there are specific areas of Crossfire Hurricane activity in which the FBI badly underperformed and failed, not only in its duties to the public, but also in preventing the severe reputational harm that has befallen the FBI as a consequence of Crossfire Hurricane.”
Even the corporate press, which for years covered for the intelligence agencies, had to admit the gravity of the situation. The Hill reported that Durham’s report issued a “scathing assessment of the FBI’s process,” while CNN issued an uncharacteristically spin-free headline on Durham’s core finding that the “FBI never should have launched” the full collusion investigation. Unfortunately, the press will never admit a complete failure on their part, but will continue to uphold the narrative where they can. Much of the reporting emphasized that Durham recommended no new criminal charges be filed and that his findings were at odds with previous investigations, before getting into the meat of the damning, core conclusion.