"The aim was to assassinate any chance for peace"

For days now I've wanted to write something about the events in Israel. But I knew that the first thing I needed to do was listen and learn. As I did so, I got mired in the complexities of the situation and fearful about the consequences. Nevertheless, I'd like to share a few thoughts.

More than anything else, the image above captured my sentiments. That is because my sympathies lie with the people of Israel and Gaza, not their leaders - both of whom have shared a similar goal. Let's start with Hamas.

I encourage you to take a few minutes to listen to the interview Christiane Amanpour conducted with Yuval Noah Harari.

To discuss the atrocities committed by Hamas, the long-term implications, and lessons from history, I spoke with author and historian Yuval Noah Harari @harari_yuval, who offered some powerful reflections. Watch our conversation here. pic.twitter.com/qxH9B53hTy

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) October 12, 2023

At about the 2:00 mark, he begins to explain why this attack from Hamas is different. He noted that they targeted civilians and wanted people to see the atrocities. Why? "It was psychological warfare not only to spread terror, but to sow seeds of hatred that will ensure this terrible conflict will go on for generations...Hamas, since its foundation, never accepted the existence of Israel and never accepted any attempt at peace. The aim was not just to destroy Jewish communities, but to assassinate any chance for peace."

Negotiations towards some kind of peace between Israel and the Palestinians have always been premised on the idea of a "two-state solution" - something that Netanyahu rejected. That led him to align himself with Hamas.

For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.

The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

I highly recommend reading a piece by Zach Beauchamp titled "Benjamin Netanyahu Failed Israel" that outlines the Prime Minister's approach. 

...Netanyahu has intentionally propped up Hamas rule in Gaza — seeing Palestinian extremism as a bulwark against a two-state solution to the conflict.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” the prime minister reportedly said at a 2019 meeting of his Likud party. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

For those skeptical that this was actually Netanyahu's plan, at least one of his confidants said it publicly. 

2/

There has been some questions re this Tweet.

That Netanyahu was soft on Hamas and did everything to undermine the PA has been common knowledge for years.

Hacohen just said the quiet part out loud. Knowing him for 40 years. Many dispute his ideas, but not his honesty

— Daniel Seidemann (@DanielSeidemann) October 8, 2023

Because qualifiers in these kinds complex situations are important, I agree with how Beauchamp ended his piece.

To be clear: I am not...saying that Netanyahu, in place of Hamas, bears moral responsibility for Hamas’s horrifying atrocities against civilians.

What I am saying is that Netanyahu’s policy...is a terrible one. It is both morally indefensible and strategically counterproductive. It is no concession to Hamas, nor legitimation of its violence, to recognize this reality.

What we CAN say is that Hamas and Netanyahu shared a similar goal: to assassinate any chance for peace. Now we seem headed for war, with neither side having an actual end-game in sight. 

God help us!

Newsweek says Biden is to blame for rise in violent extremism

Less that two weeks after Donald Trump suggested that General Mark Milley (former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) should be executed, Newsweek published an article titled "Donald Trump Followers Targeted by FBI as 2024 Election Nears." Here's the point they're trying to make:

The revelations that some Trump supporters are being specifically targeted by the FBI fits with accusations from among them that the Bureau has them in its sights and is the political tool of a repressive deep state in Washington, D.C., bent on preserving the hold of the political establishment at the cost of democracy.

In the end, they suggest that President Biden into blame for the rise in violent extremism.

The senior intelligence official who works at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Biden's rhetoric on domestic terrorism could goad his opponents into taking more extreme action—particularly those who have now lost their faith in elections or believe the system is rigged against them.

"So we have the president increasing his own inflammatory rhetoric which leads Donald Trump and the Republicans to do the same, which influences the news media, which influences the rhetoric," he said.

Just in case you haven't heard, in the run-up to the 2020 election, Newsweek took "a marked radical right turn" and is now dedicated to supporting so-called "National Conservatives." As such, they've become part of the right wing news echo chamber. So it's no surprise that the piece cited above has been picked up by The Federalist, Red State, Laura Ingraham, and many other right wing publications.

Weeding through the entire Newsweek article it becomes clear that the data they are reporting doesn't support the narrative they're trying to sell (ie, "the FBI's data shows a dip in the number of investigations since the slew of January 6 cases ended"). 

But the focus has been on the fact that in October 2022, the FBI created a new sub-category of "anti-government, anti-authority violent extremists," which they defined as: "individuals motivated by a desire to commit violence against those with a real or perceived association with a specific political party or faction of a specific political party."

So the FBI included violent extremists who target people because of their political party. But Newsweek and the other right wing publications turned that into the FBI is targeting Trump supporters for their politics. Do you see what they did there? 

The truth is that we have a Republican presidential candidate who in recent months has suggested that the Chair of the Joint Chiefs should be executed, warned of death and destruction if he's charged with a crime, declared that the FBI, Department of Justice, and Democratic Party collectively comprised a “cancer” that was killing the country, suggested that shoplifters should be shot, and promised to investigate news organizations for their "country threatening treason." 

As a result of this kind of rhetoric, the New York Times reported that since the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago for classified documents last August, threats against federal law-enforcement employees and their families have increased by 300 percent. And let's not forget that it was Trump supporters who, at his direction, stormed the Capitol on January 6th amid cries of "Hang Mike Pence."

But according to Newsweek, it is Biden's warning about the danger of violent extremism that is to blame and the FBI is "weaponizing" the government by targeting Trump supporters merely for their politics. 

I remember the days when I'd see these kinds of lies and assumed that eventually the truth would become clear - proving that the purveyors of propaganda were wrong. But the gulf between right wingers and reality is so enormous now that I've had to accept that a day of reckoning isn't going to come. All I can do is hold fast to the truth and work to ensure that enough of us are doing so to defeat the liars in the long run.

What members of the Trump administration are saying about their former boss

John Kelly, who was Donald Trump's chief of staff, recently weighed in on his former boss with what might be the most damning statement a member of a former administration has ever issued about a president. I'm going to quote the whole thing because it covers a lot of bases.

A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.

A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women. A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.

Of course, as a former General in the Marine Corps, Kelly is particularly disgusted with Trump's contempt for the military. In expressing that, he confirmed several reports that had been dismissed by the former guy and right wing media. So yes, a President of the United States called fallen soldiers "suckers" and "losers" - refusing to visit their graves in France.

But even more damning is that Kelly described Trump as someone who "has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about." He concluded his remarks by saying that the former president "has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law."

Coming from Trump's former chief of staff, these are not partisan critiques. They're from someone who spent countless hours with the president and obviously has nothing but contempt for the man. 

Kelly isn't the first member of the Trump administration to criticize his former boss in this manner. Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an aide to former chief of staff Mark Meadows, recently said, "I think Donald Trump is the most grave threat that we will face…to our democracy in our lifetime and potentially in American history."

Former secretary of defense, Mark Esper, said that Trump is “unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.”

Another former secretary of defense, James Mattis, wrote in 2020 that "Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership."

John Bolton, who served as National Security Advisor, called Trump a "danger for the Republic," and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson referred to him as a "f*cking moron."

It might be possible to dismiss one or even two of these critiques as having something to do with sour grapes. But the chorus from former members of the Trump administration is pretty resounding. These people spent a lot of time "up close and personal" with the president and they're warning the American public about the danger their former boss poses to the country. 

Many of us have known this about Trump since he first announced his run for the presidency years ago. But this is the guy a majority of Republicans still support as their nominee for 2024. Frankly, that boggles my mind when the sirens warning us about him aren't simply blaring loudly. They're coming from inside the previous administration. 

Jim Jordan Earns a Bottomless Pinocchio

You might have heard that Thursday's House GOP impeachment inquiry hearing was a bit of a disaster for Republicans. I'm sorry to say that I watched the entire thing because launching something like that is - indeed - a serious matter. But in the end, it was a colossal waste of time because Republicans have NOTHING.

As an example of that, take a look at Rep. Jim Jordan's closing statement.

He repeated a lie that has been thoroughly debunked for years now - claiming that then-Vice President Biden had Viktor Shokin -the Ukrainian prosecutor - fired to protect Hunter Biden's involvement in Burisma.

Jordan got an assist in resurrecting that lie by the notorious John Solomon - who has been spreading these kinds of lies for years now. According to a recent column by Solomon, he got some new information on all of this from the State Department as the result of a FOIA request. Included was a letter Victoria Nuland sent to Shokin.

Nuland sent a letter to Shokin in June 2015 on behalf of then-Secretary of State John Kerry congratulating Shokin and suggesting they were “impressed” about the job he was doing on corruption reforms.

The date of that letter is important, so let's look at a timeline for the events in question.

February 2015 - Shokin became prosecutor general just one year after the Euromaiden protests in Ukraine, which ousted Putin's puppet, President Yanukovych. Here's what Nuland said about the State Department's first priorities with Shokin:

The initial expectation, when we began talking about the third loan guarantee, which I believe was in the summer of 2015, was that Prosecutor General Shokin make more progress than we had seen to clean up corruption inside the Prosecutor General's Office itself...and that he make more progress in mounting big corruption cases, including against Yanukovych cronies, that he make more progress in investigating the hundred dead on the Maidan by snipers during 2013-2014.

June 2015 - Nuland sent a letter to Shokin, which is more aspirational than congratulatory (emphasis mine).

We have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of your government. The challenges you face are difficult, but not insurmountable. You have an historic opportunity to address the injustices of the past by vigorously investigating and prosecuting corruption cases and recovering assets stolen from the Ukrainian people.

July 2015 - Key prosecutors under Shokin, including his former driver, were caught with stashes of diamonds and incriminating documents in their homes, causing an uproar in Ukraine. Documents seized at the time indicated the men appeared to have a connection to Shokin. Police found copies of his passports, property registration certificates and even his license to carry firearms. Shokin's response was to sack the deputies who sought to investigate the subordinates who came to be known as the “diamond prosecutors.”

September 2015 - U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt gave a speech in Odessa calling out the corruption in Shokin's office and specifically mentioned Burisma Holdings owner Mykola Zlochevsky.

We have learned that there have been times that the PGO [Prosecutor General's Office] not only did not support investigations into corruption, but rather undermined prosecutors working on legitimate corruption cases.

For example, in the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the U.K. authorities had seized 23 million dollars in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian people. Officials at the PGO’s office were asked by the U.K to send documents supporting the seizure.

Instead they sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result the money was freed by the U.K. court and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus.

The misconduct by the PGO officials who wrote those letters should be investigated, and those responsible for subverting the case by authorizing those letters should – at a minimum – be summarily terminated.

October 2015 - Ukrainians wanted Shokin fired.

Huge 100+ column of activists headed to Poroshenko's residence to campaign for dismissal of dodgy Prosecutor Shokhin pic.twitter.com/ZOK9Eqz1rs

— Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) October 31, 2015

Activists demand resignation of gen prosecutor Shokhin, suggest open competition for his replacement pic.twitter.com/NzTOQeUQrE

— Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) October 31, 2015

November 2015 - Then-Vice President Biden had a phone call with Ukrainian President Poroshenko - for the first time linking the loan guarantee to investigating and prosecuting corruption.

[T]he Vice President reiterated the U.S. willingness to provide a third $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine contingent on continued Ukrainian progress to investigate and prosecute corruption.

December 2015 - Biden traveled to Ukraine. 

A key goal for the trip was to urge the government to crack down on corruption, starting with the removal of the powerful prosecutor general, viewed by U.S. and European officials as an impediment to reform...

On the plane, according to a person who participated in the conversation, Biden “called an audible” — he changed the plan. It was time for a bigger punch: The loan guarantee was the main point of leverage with Ukraine, the vice president declared, so he instead should tell Poroshenko the loan would not be forthcoming until Shokin was gone...by the time Biden landed in Kyiv, four people with direct knowledge told The Fact Checker, the Obama White House was firmly on board with the plan.

Notice that by this time, the goal of the trip was to seek the removal of Shokin. To the extent that Biden "called an audible," it was to tie the ouster to the loan guarantee. 

If you've managed to wade through all of that, you'll have some idea of the myriad of lies Jordan told in that clip up above. But what's even more damning is that most of the information in my timeline came from a fact-check article in the Washington Post that Jordan quoted from! So he had as much access to the truth as I did. IOW - he's lying and KNOWS he's lying...repeating the same nonsense that has been debunked over and over again.

During the Trump presidency, the fact-checkers at the Washington Post attempted to document every lie he told. At one point, they noticed that there were a bunch of these lies that the former guy told over and over again - despite the fact that he knew they were lies. So they came up with a name for that phenomenon - "Bottomless Pinocchios."

For his own mendacity yesterday - I award Jim Jordan with a Bottomless Pinocchio. 

The reason I've taken the time to do that is to make the point that when it comes to MAGA Republicans, it doesn't matter how often their leaders are fact-checked. The lies will be repeated and believed ad nauseam. 

But at least for me, fact-checking is still important. When I feel my sanity holding on by a thread due to the shenanigans from people like Jim Jordan, the facts are what keep me sane.

Are you feeling gaslighted by coverage of the 2024 presidential race? If so, here's why.

Almost two years ago I wrote two pieces about how military leaders were concerned that then-President Trump would instigate a military coup to remain in power.  An article published last week by James Fallows zeroes in on General Mark Milley, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as "The Patriot" who "protected the Constitution from Donald Trump."

Twenty men have served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs since the position was created after World War II. Until Milley, none had been forced to confront the possibility that a president would try to foment or provoke a coup in order to illegally remain in office. A plain reading of the record shows that in the chaotic period before and after the 2020 election, Milley did as much as, or more than, any other American to defend the constitutional order, to prevent the military from being deployed against the American people, and to forestall the eruption of wars with America’s nuclear-armed adversaries. Along the way, Milley deflected Trump’s exhortations to have the U.S. military ignore, and even on occasion commit, war crimes...

Joseph Dunford, the Marine general who preceded Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had also faced onerous and unusual challenges. But during the first two years of the Trump presidency, Dunford had been supported by officials such as Kelly, Mattis, Tillerson, and McMaster. These men attempted, with intermittent success, to keep the president’s most dangerous impulses in check. (According to the Associated Press, Kelly and Mattis made a pact with each other that one of them would remain in the country at all times, so the president would never be left unmonitored.) By the time Milley assumed the chairman’s role, all of those officials were gone—driven out or fired.

In other words, the former president's Chief of Staff and Defense Secretary felt he needed to be monitored at all times - due to his dangerous impulses. Fallows captured the line being walked by these military leaders and Trump.

[I]t is fair to say that Milley came close to red lines that are meant to keep uniformed officers from participating in politics. It is also fair to say that no president has ever challenged the idea of competent civilian control in the manner of Donald Trump, and that no president has ever threatened the constitutional underpinnings of the American project in the manner Trump has. The apportion­ment of responsibility in the American system—presidents give orders; the military carries them out—works best when the president is sane.

It's clear that Trump read the Fallows piece about Milley - or perhaps it's more likely that someone summarized it for him. That's because the day after it was published, Trump floated the idea that Milley should be executed. Let's now add that one to the list.

If we lived in a normal world, someone who:

-Threatened to execute the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

-Led a coup against our democracy

-Called to “Terminate” the constitution

-Repeatedly praised dictators and the brutal way they rule their population

-Threaten to shut down news… pic.twitter.com/9btB09UWSJ

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) September 25, 2023

How has mainstream media reacted to this latest threat? A Washington Post headline referred the guy who protected the Constitution from Trump as "a polarizing figure." But for the most part, they've ignored the whole thing. This meme pretty much captures what happened.

While Trump was suggesting that Milley should be executed, a poll was released by the Washington Post and ABC News claiming that Trump leads Biden by 10 points overall and among young voters by 20 points. So of course the hot topic was the poll, even though the Post itself called it an outlier.

Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier.

Daniel Miller captured the situation perfectly. 

“If Trump wins, he’ll purge the civil service, prosecute his political opponents, normalize political violence like we haven’t seen since the Civil War, and sic agents of the state against his enemies. But we can’t cover this now cus it will seem like we’re biased”—the media https://t.co/9GChXwtTld

— Daniel Miller (@DanielMillerEsq) September 24, 2023

These days we're being inundated with polls that have never been accurate this far away from actual voting. There's also the constant pearl clutching about Biden's age and the supposed unpopularity of VP Harris. But the fact that the other party's likely presidential nominee is busy inciting violence as a natural extension of our political disagreements - which should be setting off alarms bells all over the country - gets pretty much ignored.   

If you're feeling gaslighted by coverage of this presidential race, I can assure you that you're not crazy. Perhaps reporters and pundits should spend more time listening to historians. 

2024 Presidential election could well be a choice between democracy and dictatorship. We have never seen that before among major party candidates in American history.

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) September 25, 2023

Or perhaps they should pay more attention to polls like this:

Latest poll: Trump leads Biden by 91 felonies

— Lalo Alcaraz (@laloalcaraz) September 24, 2023

Nikki Haley proved that racism is alive and well

The field of candidates for the 2024 GOP presidential primary includes a woman of color - Nikki Haley. I suppose that marks some progress. 

However, one of her main messages is that racism in this country is over, which is interesting given that it was only 8 years ago - on Haley's watch as governor of South Carolina - that an avowed white supremacist murdered 9 Black people in church. 

But the problem for Haley goes deeper. Almost every time she opens her mouth about the demise of racism, she proves that it is still alive and well. Here's the latest example:

.@BarackObama set minorities back by singling them out as victims instead of empowering them. In America, hard work & personal responsibility matter. My parents didn’t raise me to think that I would forever be a victim. They raised me to know that I was responsible for my…

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) June 16, 2023

Of course, Haley didn't provide any examples of Barack Obama singling our minorities as victims because there aren't any. I'll grant that, like most Republicans, she probably lives in a bubble of right wing news and wouldn't know that some Black liberals like Ta-Nehisi Coates actually criticized the former president for focusing on personal responsibility when speaking to Black audiences. But perhaps Haley should read the piece Coates wrote after Obama's commencement address at Morehouse. Here is the part of the president's speech that he critiqued:

We know that too many young men in our community continue to make bad choices. Growing up, I made a few myself. And I have to confess, sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. But one of the things you've learned over the last four years is that there's no longer any room for excuses. I understand that there's a common fraternity creed here at Morehouse: "Excuses are tools of the incompetent, used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness."

We've got no time for excuses—not because the bitter legacies of slavery and segregation have vanished entirely; they haven't. Not because racism and discrimination no longer exist; that's still out there. It's just that in today's hyper-connected, hyper-competitive world...nobody is going to give you anything you haven't earned. And whatever hardships you may experience because of your race, they pale in comparison to the hardships previous generations endured—and overcame.

As Coates pointed out, that was pretty standard fare for Obama. 

But it's hard to imagine that Haley completely missed the speech that launched Obama onto the national political stage - the one at the 2004 Democratic convention - where he said this:

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America — there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.

This is the guy Haley said was promoting victimhood instead of empowerment. 

Obama returned to that theme at the end of the most important speech of his presidency - the one he delivered at the 50th anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

Selma shows us that America is not the project of any one person. Because the single-most powerful word in our democracy is the word “We.” “We The People.” “We Shall Overcome.” “Yes We Can.” That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone.

There is a reason why people so often referred to "no drama Obama." It comes down to the fact that the man is actually allergic to the idea of "victimhood" - always has been.

Nikki Haley would know that if she had ever paid attention to what Obama said/did. But instead she ignored the actual person and projected a mythical stereotype onto him. That, my friends, is the definition of racism.

Durham to Right Wingers: "Blame Hillary"

Just before Bill Barr resigned as Trump's attorney general, he was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassell and indicated exactly what he wanted from the Durham report.

The attorney general also hopes people remember that orange jumpsuits aren’t the only measure of misconduct. It frustrates him that the political class these days frequently plays “the criminal card,” obsessively focused on “who is going to jail, who is getting indicted.”…One danger of the focus on criminal charges is that it ends up excusing a vast range of contemptible or abusive behavior that doesn’t reach the bar.

What was the "contemptible or abusive behavior" he wanted Durham to highlight? Last summer Barr told Fox News that he was proud of the work Durham was doing to crystalize "the central role played by the Hillary campaign in launching, as a dirty trick, the whole Russiagate collusion narrative."

In other words, the entire investigation was about Durham producing a document that right wingers could use to blame Hilary Clinton for the whole Trump/Russia affair. Never mind that, when Trump sued Clinton and associates for orchestrating the whole thing, a federal judge didn't just throw the case out of court, he ordered the former president to pay the defendants $938,000 for filing a bogus lawsuit.

That didn't stop Durham from doing exactly what Barr wanted. And it worked. Here is the so-called "legal analyst" at Fox News, Gregg Jarrett.

In July 2016, CIA Director John Brennan rushed to the White House to brief then-President Barack Obama and Joe Biden, our current president, about alarming new evidence uncovered by American intelligence. The agency had obtained reliable information that "Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians" (page 81 of the report).

It was an outrageous and wholly invented accusation unsupported by anything except Hillary’s craven imagination. Her shrewd goal was to frame her opponent for unidentified crimes that he never committed and, thereby, damage or sink his candidacy.

Who was the source for that "reliable information?" I'll let Durham answer that question (emphasis mine).

In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking ofthe Democratic National Committee. The IC does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.

Even Durham had to admit that it came from Russian intelligence and was not "reliable information." Yet he devoted much of his report to what he calls the "Clinton plan intelligence." Here's Durham's major claim:

On July 28, 2016, Director Brennan met with President Obama and other White House personnel, during which Brennan and the President discussed intelligence relevant to the 2016 presidential election as well as the potential creation of an inter-agency Fusion Cell to synthesize and analyze intelligence about Russian malign influence on the 2016 presidential election...

Brennan stated that the inter-agency Fusion Cell, a team to synthesize and analyze pertinent intelligence on Russian malign influence activities related to the presidential election, was put in motion after his meeting with President Obama on July 28th. Email traffic and witness interviews conducted by the Office reflect that at least some CIA personnel believed that the Clinton Plan intelligence led to the decision being made to set up the Fusion Cell.

According to Durham, all of that activity was focused on dealing with the Clinton Plan intelligence. But let's keep in mind the context of what was going on at the time. On July 22, nearly 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were dumped online by WikiLeaks. Based on a tip from Australian intelligence, the FBI opened its Crossfire Hurricane investigation on July 31th. 

Meanwhile, CIA Director Brennan was working some late nights.

By early August, the sense of alarm had become so acute that CIA Director John Brennan called White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. “I need to get in to see the president,” Brennan said, with unusual urgency in his voice.

Brennan had just spent two days sequestered in his office reviewing a small mountain of material on Russia…There were piles of finished assessments, but Brennan had also ordered up what agency veterans call the “raw stuff” — unprocessed material from informants, listening devices, computer implants and other sources. Clearing his schedule, Brennan pored over all of it…

Brennan’s review session occurred against the backdrop of these unsettling developments. But his call to the White House was driven by something else — extraordinary intelligence that had surfaced in late July and reached deep inside the Kremlin, showing that Putin was himself directing an “active measures” operation aimed not only at disrupting the U.S. presidential race but electing Trump.

In the midst of the hack and leak, the focus was on what Russia was doing. The big news for Brennan was that they weren't just interfering in the election. They were doing so to elect Trump. 

According to the Washington Post. Brennan wrote up his own dossier and sent it directly to the White House. 

Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.

Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race. 

But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.

The dates are a little off. Durham said that Brennan met with President Obama on July 28th and the Post suggests that it was early August. But the "Fusion Cell" Durham refers to was set up as a result. Here's how the Post reported it:

Brennan convened a secret task force at CIA headquarters composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI...

They worked exclusively for two groups of “customers,” officials said. The first was Obama and fewer than 14 senior officials in government. The second was a team of operations specialists at the CIA, NSA and FBI who took direction from the task force on where to aim their subsequent efforts to collect more intelligence on Russia.

Regardless of what gossip Durham heard, the Fusion Cell was not set up to investigate the Clinton Plan intelligence. It was designed to figure out WTF Russia was up to - with a main concern being the prospect of a cyber-assault on voting systems before and on Election Day.

I'm sure that both Barr and Durham know all of this. They've probably even reviewed Brennan's entire dossier on how Putin himself was directing the "active measures" to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump. But they went into this whole thing with a narrative about blaming Clinton that they wanted to sell to right wingers. Damn the evidence and the truth!