Name: Donald Trump’s 2016 election conspiracy theory just took a big hit
Uploaded: 2022-05-25T16:55:49.000Z
Duration: 4 min 32 s
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Haven't read a word For years, literally years.

Donald Trump has insisted that Hillary Clinton engaged in a purposeful conspiracy designed to keep him out of the White House in 2016, the probe into whether Russia sought to influence the 2016 election, breaking news.

And whether the Russians colluded with the trump campaign to do so was regularly described by the former President as and I quote, the single greatest witch hunt in american history end quote.

They made up a phony collusion with the Russian story, found zero proof.

So now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story.

Nice trump tweeted, I don't think he actually meant Nice.

The investigation which was led by special counsel robert Mueller led to 199 criminal charges of 37 people and entities.

Seven people including former trump, fixer Michael Cohen and former trump campaign chairman paul, Manafort pled guilty to people Manafort and Roger Stone were convicted at trial.

seven people served prison time in connection to the Russia investigation of the trump campaign Mueller wrote this quote.

If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice.

We would so state based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment accordingly.

While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, It also does not exonerate him end quote So Well, yeah, according to trump.

However, none of that was the real story.

The real story was how the counterintelligence investigation into Russia began a story that another special counsel named john Durham was going to get to the bottom of.

So Durham was appointed by then Attorney General Bill Barr in late 2020 to examine the origins of that original Russia investigation trump was supportive of the Durham probe, but began to turn on the special counsel investigation when it became clear that Durham was not going to finish his work before the 2020 election if that's the case, I'm very disappointed.

I think it's a terrible thing and I'll say it to his face.

It's an embarrassment at the heart of what trump called the quote, unquote crime of the century was an allegation by Durham that Michael Sussman, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton's campaign had lied to the FBI about his own interest in passing along a tip about trump and Russia except that earlier in june, Sussman was found not guilty of the lying charged by a federal jury.

As CNN wrote about that quote, the verdict is a major defeat for Durham and his Justice Department prosecutors who have spent three years looking for wrongdoing in the trump Russia probe.

It remains to be seen when Durham will ultimately conclude his investigation and whether he will bring charges against anyone else.

But as CNN's Marshal Cohen noted recently, quote, the verdict is a significant blow to the Durham probe.

Durham has racked up one guilty plea, one acquittal at trial and has one more trial scheduled for this fall.

The guilty plea came from a guy named Kevin Kline smith, a former FBI lawyer who admitted that he had changed an email claiming that former trump foreign policy advisor carter page had not previously been a c a source, Klein smith was sentenced to 12 months of probation for that.

The trial, which is expected to start in october, is of Russian expatriate Igor Dyachenko, who is charged with lying to the FBI as the organization tried to verify claims made in a dossier on trump put together by former british intelligence agent Christopher Steele A.

The Steele dossier Panchenko by the way, has pleaded not guilty.

So, the picture of the Durham probe isn't complete just yet.

But what is clear is that the sussman allegation, which was by far the most high profile output of Durham's probe to date, amounts to a huge swing and miss by the special counsel and that his pending allegations are significantly less likely to draw major headlines.

 It's always been hard to line up trump's wild claims about the seriousness of the Durham investigation with the Durham investigation actual output never has that disparity been more stark then right about now. 