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Warning: CNN link, John Durham's investigation into the Trump-Russia investigation has been released.
I think it's clear that the politically motivated investigation found nothing but did a lot of damage. It was an early instance of the two-movies-on-one-screen phenomenon becoming a deep division in our political spheres. If there's one thing I wish I could get my remaining left-aligned friends to understand it's that their reaction to Trump is worse than anything Trump could have said or done.
Even after the Mueller nothingburger they still talk with utter seriousness about Russian interference in our elections and I don't know how this divide in our country can ever be bridged.
I know this is already dead and buried... and that @firmamenti already pretty much explained why... but we have now gotten the NYT response. No surprise, it's "Republicans pounce". They're banking on their readership not actually reading the report. They just refuse to even acknowledge all the stuff in there that demonstrates how differently the FBI treated claims touching the Clinton campaign from those touching the Trump campaign. If they just close their eyes and ignore the screen for half the movie, it's no wonder they see a different movie. They get their zingers in. "In fact, Mr. Durham said he agreed that the F.B.I. should have opened a preliminary investigation." See! It's all bullshit, what these right wing nutjobs are saying! Of course, completely hidden in this sentence is the distinction between types of investigation, one of the major points of the Durham report. If you didn't read the report or you're not otherwise familiar with this, you'll never notice. They're not explicitly lying. They're just totally ignoring the entire discussion about how they shouldn't have immediately opened a full investigation, how a preliminary investigation wouldn't have justified many of the investigatory steps they took, how thinly the whole shebang was predicated, how an unbiased preliminary investigation would have almost certainly quickly noticed, "There's literally nothing here," and then been quickly closed, how a proper response that was trying to protect American elections and elected officials would have been to provide defensive briefings to Trump rather than the obscene exercise of doing everything possible to malign him for possibly being the victim of a foreign influence campaign... or critically, how this all goes down differently when it is blue politicians at risk.
Of course, again, as already said by @firmamenti, everyone on the right already knows all this, so there's not much that needs to be said here. The only culture war things of interest is the response. How partisan actors continue with their tactics of "not lying" and memoryholing "inconvenient truths". I spent a lot of time paying close attention to the developments of this story back when it was happening in real time in 2016. I know specific media people who know this topic in great detail. The real culture war story is seeing their silence. Usual Suspect Numero Uno, Benjamin Wittes; where is his comment on the Durham report? I've been looking, even went to his new Mastodon. Best I can tell, there isn't one. If you can get away with just squeezing your eyes shut and not watching the painful parts of the movie, you're going to.
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Once one side picks up a weapon, the other side HAS to pick up that weapon also; and once everyone has weapons in hand being the first one to put them down is hard.
For every Benghazi there will be a Mueller report.
(although, to be fair, those buttery males were indeed buttery and there were some confessions and arrests connected to the Russia gate investigation; it wasn't all flimflamery)
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The fact that there are still no replies to this major event I think demonstrates how I feel about this: I don't even care anymore. Yes the government is completely corrupt, yes this was a major political scandal beyond anything we've seen in a long time, and no nobody is going to be held accountable for it.
It's just "yeah, the FBI worked to delegitimize the president and used their considerable power to do so. We know."
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