Aggressive Attempts To Discredit Durham Investigation May Reflect Something Big Is Co

Aggressive Attempts To Discredit Durham Investigation May Reflect Something Big Is Coming Down
Posted by William A. Jacobson Saturday, September 12, 2020 at 9:00pm

Someone is trying to discredit whatever it is that’s coming down the pike, through shoddy and speculative Hartford Courant story about prosecutor resignation, which suggests that something is about to happen.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/...ect-something-big-is-coming-down/#more-328645

I haven’t had much hope for the investigation being conducted by prosecutor John Durham. Not because of anything particular to the Durham investigation, but we’ve been disappointed too many times before.

The guilty plea of an ex-FBI lawyer for falsifying a FISA document created the possibility that he was cooperating, and that there would be more to come. But still, after that plea:

The usual suspects are declaring the Durham investigation illegitimate and a nothingburger.

I’ve been so dissapointed with Republican-led investigations that I’m not hoping for much more.

But let me be very clear what I want to see: James Comey frog-marched in an orange jumpsuit, legs shackled and hands bound at his waste, leading a chain gang of Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Powers, and John Does Nos. 1-13, into the federal courthouse, with the unsealing of an indictment naming mysterious persons “Renegade” and “Celtic” as unindicted co-conspirators.

You can’t take away my dreams.

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There have been no announcements of more criminal charges. But there is a glimmer of hope. Someone is trying to discredit whatever it is that’s coming down the pike, which suggests that something is about to happen.

The Hartford Courant ran a shoddy piece of gossiping about a lawyer on the Durham team leaving supposedly because she didn’t like the political pressure on the probe. Or at least, that’s what the headline suggests, Nora Dannehy, Connecticut prosecutor who was top aide to John Durham’s Trump-Russia investigation, resigns amid concern about pressure from Attorney General William Barr.

But the actual article doesn’t prove the headline, at best it’s based on anonymous people speculating as to her motives for resigning (emphasis added, with my annotations in brackets):

Federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy, a top aide to U.S. Attorney John H. Durham in his Russia investigation, has quietly resigned — at least partly [so maybe not actually the reason, but a tiny part of the reason?] out of concern that the investigative team is being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done, colleagues said. [Which colleagues? How are they in a position to know?]

Dannehy, a highly regarded prosecutor who has worked with or for Durham for decades, informed colleagues in the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Haven of her resignation from the Department of Justice by email Thursday evening. The short email was a brief farewell message and said nothing about political pressure, her work for Durham or what the Durham team has produced, according to people who received it….

Colleagues [them, again] said Dannehy is not a supporter of President Trump and has been concerned in recent weeks by what she believed was pressure from Barr, who appointed Durham, to produce results before the election. They said she has been considering resigning for weeks, conflicted by loyalty to Durham and concern about politics.

Durham is notoriously circumspect and neither he nor members of his team have revealed anything about the direction of their work. But Durham associates, none of whom have specific knowledge of the investigation [so people who don’t have actual knowledge], have said recently that it is their belief [so people who don’t have actual knowledge believe something, that’s not evidence of anything] he is under pressure to produce something — perhaps [in other words, pure speculation by people who don’t have actual knowledge] some sort of report — before the presidential election in November.

The thinking of the associates [who cares what they think?], all Durham allies, is that the Russia investigation group will be disbanded and its work lost if Trump loses….

Critics of the administration have accused it of trying to manipulate the Durham investigation to shore up the President’s poll numbers. [Just a nice wrap up political spin, in case you didn’t get the point of the article.]

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Notice the wording I’ve highlighted. There is nothing to this report. Maybe Dannehy was concerned about political pressure, but the reporting doesn’t come anywhere close to proving that.

But it doesn’t matter, the headline was all Democrats and their media helpers needed to claim that anything that comes down from Durham is the result of political pressure.

Visit the link for Democrat tweets. https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/...ect-something-big-is-coming-down/#more-328645

Again, this is all based on rank speculation by people who don’t have direct knowledge of anything.

So what’s going on? Who is whispering in the Hartford Courant’s ear?

Someone or people who know something big is coming down, and want to discredit it in advance.

You can’t take away my dreams.

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Claims That DOJ Prosecutors Don’t Normally Resign Are Distortions and Purposefully Dishonest
Posted at 4:00 pm on September 12, 2020 by Shipwreckedcrew

https://www.redstate.com/shipwrecke...n-are-distortions-and-purposefully-dishonest/

I noted several examples on Twitter yesterday of the “Greek Chorus” for “Former Federal Prosecutors” banging cymbals like wind-up monkeys and shrieking “Federal prosecutors don’t normally resign so this is all a protest of the corrupt acts of Attorney General Barr!” Here are a couple of examples:

Daniel Goldman
@danielsgoldman
It is exceedingly rare for DOJ prosecutors to resign in protest, and this is the 2nd one this year to do so bc of improper political influence.

This tells you all that you need to know about the bastardization of the Durham investigation by Bill Barr.

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Andrew Weissmann
@AWeissmann_
Let's not forget that it is just not normal for career prosecutors to resign from the Justice Department or high-profile cases -- but that happened in the Stone and Flynn cases, and the Durham investigation, where the #2 just resigned. Barr is destroying the rule of law for POTUS
6:57 PM · Sep 11, 2020

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Both of these are inaccurate and dishonest.

First, we don’t know why Dannehy chose to resign. I noted in this story earlier that the time she has served with Durham takes her past her 20 year DOJ service time benchmark, given that when she left DOJ in 2010 she had only 19 years of service.

It’s also possible that her role in the Durham investigation had come to an end, and that maybe it was necessary for her to depart to preserve the integrity of the cases that might be coming shortly.

But to say that her departure is in league with the departures of SCO prosecutors from problematic cases they handled is simply duplicitous.

Brandon Van Grack withdrew from the Flynn case — but remained with DOJ so Bill Barr is still his boss — because DOJ elected to move to dismiss the case, and among the justifications for dismissing the case was that it should have never been brought, and because information had not been timely produced to the defense. At the time of the motion, Gen. Flynn had a motion to withdraw his guilty plea pending, with the time for the government’s response fast approaching. The decision had to be made to either 1) oppose the motion to withdraw the guilty plea, or 2) move to dismiss the case.

When the decision was made to dismiss, that is clearly something that Van Grack would not have agreed with — especially since one of the reasons is the failure of the government to turn over records in a timely manner. Although Gen. Flynn’s counsel has alleged misconduct against Van Grack, DOJ has always disputed that. Without overtly pointing a finger of blame, the strong suggestion seems to be that DOJ views the failure to disclose as one that rests with the FBI’s failure to deliver information to Van Grack.

As for the justification that the case should never have been brought, that rests in large part on the idea that the interview on Jan. 24, 2017, was not “material” at that time, which predates the SCO. Van Grack may agree or disagree, but his view is irrelevant because it’s only an opinion, and his opinions do not dictate DOJ policy.

He didn’t “resign” in protest — he quit the case because there was nothing left for him to do, and it’s not a good look to have advocated a prosecution for over two years only to then sign a motion saying “My error. Please dismiss.”

As for the prosecutors on the Stone case, they “quit” — only one actually left DOJ — over an issue where they were wrong. The position they advocated for sentencing Stone was not supported by the case law they cited, and it was contrary to DOJ policy. This point was established WITHOUT CONTRADICTION when the Judge who sentenced Stone said she agreed with the revised Sentencing Statement filed on Barr’s instruction — and explicitly disagreed with the position that had been advocated in the Sentencing Statement filed by the original trial team — finding that 40 months was an appropriate sentencing taking all factors into account, and in light of sentences imposed on defendants in similar circumstances.

And the most outspoken of the four trial team members — FOUR AUSAs to try a case lasting 4 days and having 5 witnesses — Aaron Zelinsky, is still with DOJ, working for Trump-appointed US Attorney Robert Hur, a former law clerk for that diabolical conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

So, I guess Weissman and Goldman are defending the proposition that being idiotic in your sentencing recommendations is “ethical”, but ordering that an inappropriate sentencing statement be withdrawn and an appropriate statement substituted in its place is “corrupt.”

THAT tells you all you need to know about Weissmann and Goldman — two Democrat partisans who are as dishonest as they are liberal.




Attorney General William Barr appears before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee to make his Justice Department budget request, Wednesday, April 10, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)