“A Sean Hannity monologue wrapped around a parking ticket”
By 
Remember when beloved LGM commenter “Alfredo Garcia” asserted that the Sussman indictment was a YOOOOOOGE deal?
Thank you for your very interesting feedback, Mr. Garcia pic.twitter.com/STj3WaWWND— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) September 17, 2021
Glenn Greenwald, the blogger who shares the same specific obsessions as Mr. Garcia and expresses them in the same prose style, had an extended meltdown at his ShakeShack about this epochal, five-alarm blockbuster, as did fellow Trump sycophant Matt Taibbi.
Anyway, funny thing about this — not only was the indictment itself a popcorn fart that provided little evidence for a trivial crime, but CNN and the New York Times are reporting that the conspiracy Durham wrapped around it is also complete bullshit:
The perjury charge is merely the window dressing in the indictment. The meat of it — the part that has Trump defenders excited — is a narrative laid out by Durham attempting to paint Sussmann and the experts he worked with as liars who smeared Trump. That narrative part does not describe actual crimes, of course. Prosecutors can write whatever they want in their indictment. This one is like a Sean Hannity monologue wrapped around a parking ticket.
And even the “speaking indictment” portion of Durham’s charge is falling apart now. Today, both CNN and the New York Times reported that Durham selectively quoted from emails in order to furnish a completely misleading impression that Sussmann’s researchers lied.
The story here is that a group of computer scientists discovered evidence of communication between a Russian bank server and a Trump property. The computer scientists suspected, but weren’t certain, the server might be used for some form of communication between Trump’s campaign and Russia. (The reason they suspected this, of course, was the broad swath of shady behavior Trump exhibited toward Russia.)
Durham’s indictment asserts that the computer scientists knew the data was innocent but sent it to the FBI anyway. What the Times and CNN reported today is that Durham supported this charge by clipping misleading segments of emails by the scientists when other emails undermined his accusation.
[…]
Whatever the truth is of the Alfa Bank matter — the Times reports that the computer scientists still don’t feel satisfied they know the answer — Durham’s case that the scientists knew they were lying is simply a preposterous smear.
Durham’s indictment of Sussmann seems extremely unlikely to result in a prosecution. The rest of it is a story about dishonesty. But the dishonesty lies on the part of Durham himself. His indictment proves only the willingness of many members of the right-wing legal Establishment to corruptly put their powers at the disposal of a liar.
Well, this is the problem with uncritically trusting Deep State operatives like Bill Barr and John Durham. Anyway, Russian ratfucking in 2016 was very real; Spygate, conversely, is 100% a hoax.