Conservative media joined a certain former president last week whipping up the political right over what they claimed was a smoking gun: proof from an ongoing investigation by special counsel John Durham that Hillary Clinton and other Democrats "spied" on Donald Trump while he was president. Trump called it worse than Watergate! He suggested someone should be executed.
Small problem: The filings by Durham that sparked it all don't say what Fox News and others claim they do - which Durham himself has now clarified. Since our colleagues on the right are unlikely to correct the record for their readers and viewers, we will.
Durham is the former assistant U.S. attorney who then-Attorney General William Barr appointed as special prosecutor in 2019 in accordance with Trump's vindictive order that his administration "investigate the investigators" - that is, probe the origins of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Trump's ties to Russia. Contrary to MAGA mythology, the Russia investigation was clearly justified by Trump's repeated and bizarre acquiescence toward a dangerous U.S. adversary. Though Mueller's probe didn't prove collusion, it revealed Trump's corrupt attempts to thwart the investigation itself. Vengefully unleashing Durham on those involved in the Mueller probe was Trump at his Trumpiest.
Durham, still at it three years later, recently filed documents that Fox News and others interpreted as containing explosive allegations: that the Clinton campaign paid a company to spy on the Trump Organization, and that the spying included mining internet data from the White House while Trump was in office.
But in fact, Durham hasn't said that. He hasn't alleged Clinton's campaign paid anyone to spy on Trump, and he didn't allege there was a crime committed related to internet data-mining. The implication is that, if anyone did carry out such mining, it was legal.
Most crucially, though, Fox and the rest claimed Durham's filing alleged that mining of White House data happened while Trump was president. This is the crux of the whole right-wing "spying" trope. But in fact, Durham's filings don't say when it happened. Subsequent information, as reported in The New York Times on Thursday, indicates it actually happened in 2016. Meaning the real victim of this supposedly execution-worthy crime (which, again, even the prosecutor isn't calling a crime) wasn't Trump at all - but Barack Obama.
Will Fox News still be outraged?
At this point, readers can be forgiven for confusion about what, if anything, this all means. That has yet to be determined. But what it doesn't mean was made clear in still another filing late last week by Durham - Trump's designated attack dog, remember - who told the court that some in the media may have "overstated" or "misinterpreted facts" of his case.
Not all the media, of course. Just those outlets that, even now, can't stop carrying Trump's water.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch