THE "DURHAM SCANDAL" (AND ACTUAL FACTS)

Last Friday night, John H. Durham, the former US Attorney in Connecticut who was appointed a Special Counsel in the waning days of William P. Barr’s sojourn in Washington, with the assignement to investigate the investigators who had been dealing with the inquiry into Russia’s 2016 election interference, filed a pretrial motion, in which he slid in a couple extra sentences that saw Conservatism Inc. Explode with charges about the Clinton campaign spying on the campaign of former President Trump.

It turns out that the latest alarmist claims about spying on Trump are flawed, and the explanation underlines the challenge journalists face when they decide what deserves coverage.

In fact, the entire narrative is mostly wrong or old news; in other words, the latest example of the barrage of similar conspiracy theories from TrumpWorld.

The conspiracy theories work because they are based on either a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation. Or both. They involve dense and obscure issues that require the expenditure of significant mental energy and thought to understand. The question is whether news media should even cover them. But if they don’t, the Trump allies will portray the news media as engaged in a cover-up. So, they do.

This latest example begins with Durham accusing Michael A. Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer with links to the Democratic Party, of lying during a September 2016 meeting with an F.B.I. official about possible Trump links to the Russians.

This meeting was followed in February 2017 by one where Sussmann had presented information about odd internet data that suggested someone using a Russian-made smartphone might have been connecting to networks at Trump Tower and the White House This information came from a client of Sussman, Rodney Joffe, a tech executive, whose company, Neustar, had helped maintain internet-related servers for the White House. Durham said that Joffe and his associates “exploited this arrangement” by mining certain records to gather derogatory information about Trump.

Fox News immediately (and inaccurately - surprise, surprise, not) declared that Durham had said he had evidence Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid a technology company to “infiltrate” a White House server. And when mainstream media held back reporting on this, Trump and his allies began their campaign to shame the news media, with starements like this from Trump on Monday: “The press refuses to even mention the major crime that took place. This in itself is a scandal, the fact that a story so big, so powerful and so important for the future of our nation is getting zero coverage from LameStream, is being talked about all over the world.” This followed what Trump said on Saturday, when he went so far as to say that “back when things were stronger” in the country, people who did such things were executed. And of course Jim “I cover up for pedophile coaches” Jordan went on Fox and Friends to say it was “incredible” that death penalty charges hadn’t already been sworn out against te “spies.”

There were, as the NYT put it, “ many problems with all this.” For starters, the Times itself had reported in October that Mr. Sussmann had told the C.I.A. about data suggesting Russian-made smartphones, called “YotaPhones,” had been connecting to computer networks at Trump Tower and the White House, among other places.

The Conservative Entertainment Complex also misquoted what the filing did say. Durham’s filing never used the word “infiltrate.” And it never claimed that Joffe’s company was paid by the Clinton campaign.

But even more important, the filing never said that the White House data was from the TrumpAdministration. Lawyers for David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who worked on the Yota analysis, stated that the data - DNS logs, the records of when computers or smartphones prepare to communicate with servers over the internet - came from the Obama Administration.

Dagon’s lawyers stated: “What Trump and some news outlets are saying is wrong. The cybersecurity researchers were investigating malware in the White House, not spying on the Trump campaign, and to our knowledge all of the data they used was non-private DNS data from before Trump took office.”

A spokesperson for Joffe said that he was apolitical, did no work for any political party, and had been contracted to work with others analyzing the DNS data for the purpose of hunting for security breaches or threats. These researchers found evidence that Russians had hacked networks for the White House and Democrats in 2015 and 2016, and that the Russian-made YotaPhones were in proximity to the Trump campaign and the White House, which was why they prepared a report of their findings that was subsequently shared with the C.I.A.

A spokesman for Mr. Durham declined to comment.

Conservatism Inc. is so desperate to find “shiny objects” to distract the public from the facts of Trump’s criminality, which yesterday led his accounting firm to tell him in so many words “Good-bye - we’re on team Manhattan DA and New York AG now.” that they are taking anything they can find and twisting it. The other “shiny object” is a request for propoals for treatment programs put out by HHS that the hackwits have twisted into “proof” the Biden Administration is planning to provide addicts with “crack pipes.”

And, in a perfect example of the conspiracy theories being based on either a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation, “Senator” Marsha Blackburn, who when she was merely a Congressperson conspired to prevent a congressional investigation into the origins of the opioid crisis lest it reveal the Republican roots of the perpetrators, now has a “hold” on the legislation keeping the United States from financial disaster, until this “crime” by the Biden Administration is “dealt with” by Congress.

UPDATE TONIGHT (via Axios):

Senator Marsha blackburn said she won't block legislation to temporarily fund the government, after Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra pledged not to use federal funding for drug pipes.

“No federal funding will be used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in safe-smoking kits," Becerra reportedly wrote. He had previously issued a similar statement through a press release but not a letter to Congress.

Charles P. Pierce is STILL right. “They really are the mole people.”

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