Thread by @SethAbramson

(THREAD) Trump and his insurrectionists are buzzing about the latest nothing-burger in John Durham’s failed revenge plot against the heroes who investigated Trump’s crimes. I’ll summarize the latest farce in this thread. Prepare to be *dramatically* underwhelmed.

Please RETWEET.

1/ First, remember that Durham was handpicked by Trump attack dog Bill Barr—widely considered among the most corrupt Attorneys General in history. Durham’s brief was to try to destroy any law enforcement official who tried to hold Trump accountable for the first time in his life.

2/ Second, understand that though it’s now gone on for *years* and wasted *millions* of dollars, Durham’s embarrassing, politically-motivated-from-the-jump charade has failed: you can count its indictments on one hand, and they’re for what *Trumpists* call “minor process crimes.”

3/ Just as Benghazi was a GOP-led witch-hunt that went on far longer and found exponentially less wrongdoing by *anyone* than Mueller’s report, the congressional committee investigating the Trump-Ukraine scandal or the House January 6 Committee, the Durham probe is pure politics.

4/ Despite this, the insurrectionists now say a minor filing in Durham’s interminably embarrassing farce is “bigger than Watergate,” and Trump has publicly called for people to be *executed*—I’m not kidding—over a single sentence in the largely irrelevant Durham filing. It’s sad.

5/ The filing at issue isn’t even substantive—it’s Durham alerting the court to *an issue that’s already been resolved*. Indeed, the fact that Durham made the filing at all confirms he wanted to use it to get the audience for his farce (Trump fans) briefly riled up over nothing.

6/ To understand the filing, you must first understand one of the most well-documented components of Donald Trump’s modus operandi, and that is to *ensure* that every co-conspirator in his criminal schemes is represented by someone with whom *he* enjoys attorney-client privilege.

7/ In the Mueller Report, Mueller found Trump used his attorneys—in some cases shared with co-conspirators, in other cases simply with special access to them—to issue threats, dangle pardons, make promises, ensure continued good feeling, and even *doctor* congressional testimony.

8/ While the Mueller probe led to *scores* of indictments and was *exponentially* more successful at finding wrongdoing than Durham’s probe has been, Mueller conceded in Vol. 1 of his report that Team Trump had used various means to hide evidence—and that these efforts *worked*.

9/ What we never saw in Mueller’s probe—to my recollection—was even *one* attempt to keep Trump’s attorneys from engaging in joint defense agreements with men whose legal interests *clearly* diverged from Trump’s. This reluctance by Mueller let Trump tamper freely with witnesses.

10/ As a former criminal defense attorney, I long wondered why, why Robert Mueller *knew* that Trump was tampering with witnesses like Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen—and *knew* this tampering was both a federal felony and harming his investigation—he never did anything about it.

11/ A *likely* explanation would be that defendants have wide latitude to choose their attorneys; courts can’t breach attorney-client discussions; Mueller wasn’t tasked with investigating witness tampering; and prosecutors don’t normally get involved in choice-of-attorney issues.

12/ That said, had Mueller ever involved the courts in the unethical conduct nearly every attorney associated with Trump engaged in from 2016 to 2020—had he ever investigated *why* he couldn’t get evidence he thought he’d have access to—Trump would have faced new felony charges.

13/ On *occasion* we see in-trouble Democrats do what Trump does habitually: ensure that witnesses in their case are also represented by *their* attorneys. I should say that, as an attorney, I have no respect whatsoever for attorneys who do this. I think they should be disbarred.

14/ Enter Durham, a once-respected lawyer whose pursuit of the heroes who probed Trump’s crimes is profoundly unethical. *He’s* decided that *he* doesn’t want witnesses in *his* case doing what the man he’s protecting—Trump—does in literally every case he’s ever been involved in.

15/ Unlike Mueller—who never pursued such conflicts of interest—not only did Durham *go* to the lawyers in question to confront them; not only did these attorneys *agree* to get formal conflict-of-interest waivers as necessary from clients; Durham *chose* to make all this public.

16/ Durham filed a notice that was unnecessary, as he and the lawyers could’ve merely jointly or separately filed the waivers in question under seal—or even without a separate notice.

But Durham filed his notice publicly—and made it *long*—so he could get new facts to MAGA fans.

17/ I call the facts new, but they’re not—they’re just facts Durham plans to present at the trial of the *second* man he’s indicted (in *years*) for conduct Trump fans consistently called “minor process crimes” during the Mueller probe. Durham is politicizing his case (further).

18/ What Durham reveals, in a filing that didn’t have to go into *any* of the facts of his case—as he could simply have said that a potential conflict of interest has been found, the parties have agreed to waive it, and waivers are forthcoming to that end—is a big nothing-burger.

19/ So here is Durham’s supposedly big reveal: while we already knew there was an understandable effort to investigate Trump’s illicit ties to Russia—and that the effort included determining if Trump servers were pinging a Russian bank—we didn’t know how this probe was conducted.

20/ What Durham reveals is that one of the witnesses in his case—not someone he charged—may have used his access to non-public info in trying to determine if Trump servers were making contact with Russian entities. The non-public data ranged from 2014 through early February 2017.

21/ The big takeaways from this, however, are the *opposite* of what Trump and his fellow insurrectionists think they are. In fact, it’s laughable how they dig into this unnecessary minor legal filing to look *past* what’s really big about it and focus on certain lesser elements.

22/ So here are the two big takeaways:

1⃣ Contrary to what Team Trump always claimed, Durham confirms that *yes*, they *did* inexplicably ping Russian entities nearly a *thousand* times during the 2016 campaign.

These pings remain unexplained—and *also* inexplicably lied about.

23/

2⃣ The wholly understandable effort to track down Trump’s inexplicably longstanding and illicit ties to Russia resulted in agents of agents of the Clinton campaign—folks *many* steps removed from Clinton herself—getting access to data...

...about Democrat *Barack Obama*.

24/ Durham reveals that of the nearly *1,200* days of non-public data the effort to investigate Trump’s historically unprecedented collusion with a hostile foreign power occasioned—data that *proved* unexplained pinging—around *21 days* covered time Trump was in the White House.

25/ The other nearly 1,150 days of data covered the *Obama* administration.

So Durham has confessed that the pinging occurred; confessed that it remains unexplained; and confessed that in looking for it Democrats got non-public data almost *exclusively* about a leading Democrat.

26/ But the real purpose of Durham’s filing is to *defend* Trump—further proof of why (and how) he was chosen by Trump’s stooge Barr.

Durham hastens to note that there were *other* pings of these Russian entities between 2014 and 2017 that were *not* from Team Trump. Uh... okay?

27/ Durham notes that over a 3+ year period there were 3 million pings similar to the Trump-Russia ones, and during a much shorter period of time Trump’s operations (and those allied with him) were responsible for a *thousand* such pings *all by themselves*.

Without explanation.

28/ If—as Durham implies in his gratuitous attempt to publicly clear Trump and smear Obama—there were *similar* pings coming out of the *White House* in the Obama years (which we might well expect), how does that clear a *private businessman* from *similar* trans-Atlantic pings?

29/ Also, doesn’t the fact that the Trump-Russia pings indeed occurred and—in the scheme of trillions of pings nationwide every year—were relatively *uncommon* (three million is next to nothing in this context!) mean that Democrats’ suspicion and desire for answers was warranted?

30/ But Seth, you might say, are you condoning a man using special access to non-public telecommunications data for political purposes?

No! Not at all. And I expect that if Durham thinks the man committed a crime, he’ll charge him.

But he hasn’t. In fact, he did the *opposite*.

31/ Instead of charging this agent of an agent of the Clinton campaign, John Durham has... made him a witness.

For Durham.

Ironically, if Durham believed this witness had a Fifth Amendment issue, *that* would have triggered a responsibility for him to alert the court forthwith.

32/ The difference between what Durham did and what a normal attorney would’ve done is subtle—so let me explain.

If a prosecutor or defense attorney knows a witness may incriminate themselves on the stand, that officer of the court is supposed to alert the court of this *first*.

33/ The reason for this is that—as we know from Miranda v. Arizona—government agents (that includes judges) are supposed to provide persons who might incriminate themselves with a chance to speak to an attorney first. So officers of the court have to speak up in such situations.

34/ But Durham didn’t alert the court that one of *his own witnesses* might have a Fifth Amendment issue, presumably because (a) he can’t charge him with anything, (b) he decided any such charge would be too minor to bother with, or (c) he knew *that* filing would be under seal.

35/ Lawyers must be cautious about raising Fifth Amendment issues for those they don’t represent, as you want to alert the court—and witness—that they might want to speak to a lawyer, but don’t want to publish your concerns widely and risk wrongly destroying someone’s reputation.

36/ But *Durham’s* bizarre, unnecessary motion not only takes a different tack (casually implying there could be something suspicious going on with the lawyers in the case, of which he has no evidence) but then going into facts on that score that he needn’t have mentioned at all.

37/ And we *know* Durham didn’t need to go into the facts because he *admits* the parties already *privately resolved the issue* without court involvement, and that notice of the resolution *from the appropriate parties*—the witnesses and their lawyers, not Durham—is forthcoming.

38/ So why make the filing at all? Well, we’re seeing *exactly* why: it allows Trump to claim he was being spied on, demand that people be executed for it, claim again—disgustingly—that the Trump-Russia scandal was a mere hoax, and so on. None of which is warranted by the filing.

39/ What a lawyer would get from the filing is this:

1⃣ Durham can’t/won’t charge the witness in question—so he wants to destroy his reputation instead.
2⃣ Durham wants to publicly defend Trump for inexplicable pinging.
3⃣ Durham wants to try his case in public—because it sucks.

40/ Clearly the Democratic investigation was rather indiscriminately gathering EOP—White House–originating—data if *99% of the data* was about Obama’s White House!

Indeed, there can be no better evidence that Trump *wasn’t* being specifically targeted as to *that* stock of data.

41/ Moreover, if the data-collection effort was illegal, by all means indict, Durham! Indeed, the relevant charge would be *far* more serious—if you actually have any evidence of a crime—than the man you’ve *actually* charged!

So why won’t Durham do it? Because he’s got nothing.

42/ Donald Trump is a career criminal who colluded with Russia in 2016—repeatedly. He has also, *provably*, colluded with China, pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, and far-right elements in Israel. He is the most risible *traitor* in American history.

43/ He’s also, unfortunately, one of the most successful *cult leaders* in American history. Though he believes in absolutely nothing—and isn’t even a Republican—he has convinced about 20% of our fellow citizens that they should strive to commit vile acts of sedition in his name.

44/ Trump is a con man whose catalogue of crimes is almost endless. There’s no law or point of ethics for which he has any regard or which he can be relied upon to respect. Anything he accuses anyone of doing he has done a hundred times over. History shows we can *count* on that.

45/ In the summer of 2016, Trump ordered his team—including Michael Flynn, who Trump would name his first National Security Advisor—to do whatever had to be done to access data stolen from his political opponent, even if it meant paying Russian hackers engaged in war on America.

46/ Again, Trump directly ordered this. Repeatedly. Angrily.

In the present case, we have an agent of an agent of agents of Clinton accessing non-public info in a way even Trump defender Durham apparently can’t find a single crime in.

The Trumpist projection here is...pathetic.

47/ So is this silly, preposterous, almost *juvenile* John Durham filing “bigger than Watergate”?

No.

It’s about a tenth as serious as a food fight at White Castle.

48/ If Durham wants to prove otherwise, he can charge his own witness with Espionage and end whatever deal he agreed to with him. He can investigate the Trump-Russia pinging at issue and prove it was benign. He can demand DOJ pursue *Trump’s* lawyer-related conflicts of interest.

49/ But he won’t do these things because his role is no different than Trey Gowdy’s in the spectacularly failed Benghazi hearings—to cast aspersions on political enemies when he’s got nothing of substance on them. If he weren’t covering for a seditious traitor, it’d be laughable.

50/ Beyond that, I have no opinion on this latest effort by insurrectionist Trumpists to whitewash the sedition of their Dear Leader.

/end

(MORE) Here’s a recent thread on the *technical* side of this... well, non-story.

https://twitter.com/chetramey/status/1492907951820050436