Look carefully at this tweet from Catherine Herridge at CBS. Notice anything?
Emphasis mine:
“#Durham filing reveals his team learned for first time, this month, the Office of the Inspector General had TWO cellphones for former FBI General Counsel who is central witness in Sussmann case, “the Government has been working diligently to review their contents.””
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) has known about the Durham probe of Michael Sussmann for how long? And specifically, the criminal case against Sussmann revolved around the central witness, the point of contact with former FBI General Counsel, Jim Baker. Yet the OIG said nothing to John Durham about their possession of Baker’s phones until this month?
Think about what that tells us?
TechnoFog has more details about the latest court filing SEE HERE. He also notes the issue of the Durham team only recently being notified by the OIG in January:
…”There is also a curious paragraph discussing the fact that Durham, in January 2022 – learned from the DOJ Inspector General that they possessed “two FBI cellphones of the former FBI General Counsel to whom the defendant made his alleged false statement, along with forensic reports analyzing those cellphones.” Durham’s team is going through those cell phones now to analyze their contents.
And there will be more, with Durham stating, “the Government expects to receive additional information and documents in the coming weeks that may be relevant to the charged conduct.” (read more)
Techno has a great perspective and is always a great source for interpretation of the legal filings. However, I would draw attention to the obvious question about the internal policing unit of the DOJ, the Office of Inspector General, not notifying the special counsel of the evidence in their possession.
It’s likely, from the information inside the current and previous filings, that sometime in the interviews with James Baker (a friend of the Lawfare alliance consisting of Ben Wittes, Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe), the former FBI special counsel noted he turned over his phones to the OIG, most likely as an outcome of the previous OIG investigation into the political weaponization of the FBI in the OIG FISA application investigation around Carter Page.
Baker telling Durham he gave his phones to the OIG, likely led to Durham asking DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz about them. The OIG then recently admitting they had them…. as evidence… and so, here they are.
However, on its face the OIG not informing the Durham probe about them previously confirms what we previously outlined about how the information silos are used to contain and control information adverse to the interests of the DC system, writ large. Compartmentalization is how the corrupt enterprises of the Fourth Branch of Government, in this instance the DOJ, can bury information. It’s a feature, not a flaw.
Why didn’t you tell us you had the murder weapon? Well, you didn’t ask… and so it goes.
Keep in mind who is playing this game of hide the pea in the institution of Main Justice we are talking about.
The OIG is the internal watchdog, the internal police of the federal police apparatus. The guys who are supposed to be holding the justice system to account are the same guys who are keeping the justice system from accountability.
Chew on that for a few minutes while you contemplate all the previous OIG reports that resulted in exactly nothing, despite – or actually as a feature of their carefully worded content.
Yes, that would put the main office in charge of official justice obfuscation and damage control squarely in the hands of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Does that make all those OIG reports shade a slightly different, perhaps darker color grey?
Factually, the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was always a complete ruse perpetrated upon the American people, with the intended objective to stop candidate Trump, then hamstring President Trump, then cover up what they were doing to accomplish those goals, and then finally destroy the Trump presidency. Y’all know the story, I am not repeating it.
However, all of these tentacles of intrigue and rabbit hole exploration can get so intentionally complex that people lose sight of the bigger picture. The current question should be ‘why didn’t the DOJ-OIG inform Durham of the evidence they carried’?
Unfortunately, when you start asking those types of questions, you start to get too close to the heart of the issue. The entire apparatus of the U.S. Dept of Justice and the FBI are corrupt. As to the bigger question: will the Durham probe finally outline all the evidence to prove all the years of deception and fraud perpetrated by the massive aligned system of corrupt government? My short and painful answer is, NO.
The longer answer is attached to the one issue that all researched opinions and analytical theories never touch. The 800lb gorilla in the room that no one will put into their accountability prism, because it blocks all other sunlight:
If Durham was going to reveal the scale of corruption within these institutions, ie. what optimistic folks proclaim as possible; how is Durham going to handle the reality that Robert Mueller’s entire existence was in place to hide it?
The DOJ and FBI are corrupt and weaponized divisions of a corrupt system of U.S. government. The OIG providing willfully blind cover for the corruption within the institutions they are supposed to police is simply more evidence of the rot within them.
These institutions are being maintained in their current form by everyone in DC pretending not to know things – including John Durham.
Do we really think the same DOJ that facilitated, then defended, the targeting of parents at school board meetings would allow Durham to exist if he was a risk to their institution?
Or is it more likely that Bill Barr was the Bondo, and John Durham is the spray paint?
You decide.
Centinel2012 