Peter Strzok, the man of a thousand sneers, reacted to the release of the Durham report by screenshotting the report’s footnote of his own book and recommending people buy it.
Despite being fired from the FBI, the disgraced former agent got a book deal, “Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump” as well as co-hosting a podcast with ‘Mueller, She Wrote’s Allison Gill and scoring an adjunct professorship at Georgetown University.
The Russiagate investigation has been discredited, but the Russiagate grift is alive and well. And none of the participants have any regrets or expect there to be any consequences.
Strzok and fellow agent Lisa Page, with whom he had an affair, are suing for wrongful termination from the FBI, and they’ve been fighting to depose former President Trump.
Their former boss, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe secured a settlement for his benefits including back pay from the Biden Justice Department. There’s little doubt that Attorney General Merrick Garland will eventually arrange for a settlement as a reward for Strzok and Page.
McCabe, who received a gig as a CNN analyst, went on his own news network to dismiss the Durham report. Even though the report clearly demonstrated that the FBI had violated its own rules in opening the investigation, the former FBI boss bragged that “I stand by the investigative decisions that we made to open the investigation first on the Trump campaign “ and insisted that, “the Russians did, in fact, influence the campaign”.
The disgraced FBI bigwig shows up all the time on CNN to bash Trump and to claim that this time the walls are closing in. Like Strzok, his former boss also has an academic gig as a distinguished visiting professor at George Mason University.
If Strzok works hard enough, maybe Georgetown will make him a “distinguished” academic too.
Lisa Page appears to have taught a class at Yale on Cybersecurity Law and Policy and was hired by NBC News and MSNBC as a legal analyst, but hasn’t been all that visible otherwise.
Bruce Ohr, a DOJ official whose wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS, left a day before he was fired. The Durham report reveals that Nellie Ohr may have produced some of the key Russiagate material even before Steele. Bruce Ohr aggressively pitched his wife’s Fusion GPS smears and promoted an investigation.
Like McCabe, Ohr is also teaching at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. His class is on “transnational crime and corruption”. Nellie Ohr works as an intelligence analyst dealing with Russia for Accenture: the world’s largest consulting firm.
Strzok, Page, McCabe and Ohr are “academics” now and the consequences are academic.
The parallel career tracks, media contracts, book deals and academic gigs, are no coincidence. Some of the key FBI figures in Russiagate are being rewarded and financed by the same media and academic government establishment that fed this monster. Strzok, Page and McCabe have lucrative careers doing what they were doing at the FBI: attacking political opponents. They’ll just be doing it outside the anonymity and without the power of their government positions.
But there will be plenty of others to take their place. And for any FBI or DOJ personnel worried about breaking the rules to go after Republicans, the book deals, academic gigs, podcasts and general celebrity for Strzok, McCabe and Page reassure them that they don’t have to worry.
Justice will not be served.
Kevin E. Clinesmith, the former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to faking an email used for a FISA warrant, was the only figure in the Durham investigation to face any criminal consequences. He got probation and served no time. His license was only suspended and afterward he can go on practicing law.
Durham’s charges against Michael Sussmann and Igor Danchenko never got past a D.C. jury.
After his acquittal, Sussmann became a partner at Fenwick & West focusing on “privacy and cybersecurity”. Fenwick & West may need some help in that area considering its FTX role.
Sussmann’s new firm has been hit with a class action lawsuit accusing it of covering up Sam Bankman-Fried’s abuses. One lawsuit alleges that, “Fenwick & West created fake entities that Bankman-Fried and FTX employed as fronts through which to launder customer funds and helped FTX to dodge regulatory scrutiny while maintaining a veneer of full compliance.”
Clearly the right place for a former Clinton campaign lawyer.
Igor Danchenko, perhaps not being quite as much of an inside man, hasn’t been as lucky and posted a message, “I am looking for a new role and would appreciate your support. Thank you in advance for any connections, advice, or opportunities you can offer.”
He does not seem to have found any takers.
Charles Dolan Jr, Durham’s likely next target, had the Sussman and Danchenko cases succeeded, no longer seems to be listed with any of the firms he was working for, but apparently still sits on the board of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and on the advisory board of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Christopher Steele, of the infamous eponymous dossier, continues to head up Orbis Business Intelligence and another consultancy calling itself Magic Strand. In his interviews, he has expressed no regret over his actions.
Michael Isikoff, who used Yahoo News to launder the Steele dossier’s smears and whose reports were abused as a basis for FISA warrants, continues in his role as Chief Investigative Correspondent. David Corn, the Washington D.C. bureau chief for Mother Jones, who played a similar role, only briefly got in trouble over reports of rape jokes and inappropriately touching female staffers, before going back to work.
Ben Smith, BuzzFeed News‘ former editor-in-chief, has written pieces titled, “I’m Proud We Published the Trump-Russia Dossier” and “I Would Publish the Steele Dossier Again”. While BuzzFeed News was shut down due to unprofitability, Smith got a job at the New York Times and became the co-founder of a new media site: Semafor.
The New York Times and the Washington Post received Pulitzers for pushing the Russiagate hoax. Last year, the Pulitzers insisted that, “The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.”
The Pulitzers have also refused to revoke the 1932 award of New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty for serving as a Stalinist propagandist and lying about genocide in the Soviet Union. The leftist organization falsely claimed that “there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception”. If mass murder can’t get the Pultizers to revoke a lefty media liar’s award, the Durham report certainly won’t.
And so they got away with it.
The media made hundreds of millions of dollars pushing Russiagate. Publishers, editors and journalists made names for themselves, won awards and got book contracts for their lies. Lawyers, experts and consultants faced some discomfort, but emerged on the other side. Some FBI and DOJ officials lost their jobs, but are likely to come away with full benefits and are building careers as media analysts and Beltway law school academics. The only Russiagate figure who still doesn’t have a job is Igor Danchenko.
The Durham report’s account of abuses is devastating, but has been brushed aside by the media, former government officials and the rest of the Russiagate network. Unable to get D.C. juries to convict the accused, the investigation stalled and has dissolved into little more than an accounting on the various players but without the connective tissue of the network behind them.
Nobody went to jail, hardly anyone even suffered lasting career consequences and the Washington D.C. network they were part of stepped in to protect and reward the Russiagaters.
The lack of any meaningful consequences means that Russiagate will happen again.
Thank you for reading.
The Russiagate investigation has been discredited, but the Russiagate grift is alive and well. And none of the participants have any regrets or expect there to be any consequences.
Strzok and fellow agent Lisa Page, with whom he had an affair, are suing for wrongful termination from the FBI, and they’ve been fighting to depose former President Trump.
Their former boss, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe secured a settlement for his benefits including back pay from the Biden Justice Department. There’s little doubt that Attorney General Merrick Garland will eventually arrange for a settlement as a reward for Strzok and Page.
The disgraced FBI bigwig shows up all the time on CNN to bash Trump and to claim that this time the walls are closing in. Like Strzok, his former boss also has an academic gig as a distinguished visiting professor at George Mason University.
If Strzok works hard enough, maybe Georgetown will make him a “distinguished” academic too.
Bruce Ohr, a DOJ official whose wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS, left a day before he was fired. The Durham report reveals that Nellie Ohr may have produced some of the key Russiagate material even before Steele. Bruce Ohr aggressively pitched his wife’s Fusion GPS smears and promoted an investigation.
Like McCabe, Ohr is also teaching at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. His class is on “transnational crime and corruption”. Nellie Ohr works as an intelligence analyst dealing with Russia for Accenture: the world’s largest consulting firm.
Strzok, Page, McCabe and Ohr are “academics” now and the consequences are academic.
The parallel career tracks, media contracts, book deals and academic gigs, are no coincidence. Some of the key FBI figures in Russiagate are being rewarded and financed by the same media and academic government establishment that fed this monster. Strzok, Page and McCabe have lucrative careers doing what they were doing at the FBI: attacking political opponents. They’ll just be doing it outside the anonymity and without the power of their government positions.
But there will be plenty of others to take their place. And for any FBI or DOJ personnel worried about breaking the rules to go after Republicans, the book deals, academic gigs, podcasts and general celebrity for Strzok, McCabe and Page reassure them that they don’t have to worry.
Justice will not be served.
Kevin E. Clinesmith, the former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to faking an email used for a FISA warrant, was the only figure in the Durham investigation to face any criminal consequences. He got probation and served no time. His license was only suspended and afterward he can go on practicing law.
Durham’s charges against Michael Sussmann and Igor Danchenko never got past a D.C. jury.
After his acquittal, Sussmann became a partner at Fenwick & West focusing on “privacy and cybersecurity”. Fenwick & West may need some help in that area considering its FTX role.
Sussmann’s new firm has been hit with a class action lawsuit accusing it of covering up Sam Bankman-Fried’s abuses. One lawsuit alleges that, “Fenwick & West created fake entities that Bankman-Fried and FTX employed as fronts through which to launder customer funds and helped FTX to dodge regulatory scrutiny while maintaining a veneer of full compliance.”
Clearly the right place for a former Clinton campaign lawyer.
Igor Danchenko, perhaps not being quite as much of an inside man, hasn’t been as lucky and posted a message, “I am looking for a new role and would appreciate your support. Thank you in advance for any connections, advice, or opportunities you can offer.”
He does not seem to have found any takers.
Charles Dolan Jr, Durham’s likely next target, had the Sussman and Danchenko cases succeeded, no longer seems to be listed with any of the firms he was working for, but apparently still sits on the board of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and on the advisory board of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Christopher Steele, of the infamous eponymous dossier, continues to head up Orbis Business Intelligence and another consultancy calling itself Magic Strand. In his interviews, he has expressed no regret over his actions.
Michael Isikoff, who used Yahoo News to launder the Steele dossier’s smears and whose reports were abused as a basis for FISA warrants, continues in his role as Chief Investigative Correspondent. David Corn, the Washington D.C. bureau chief for Mother Jones, who played a similar role, only briefly got in trouble over reports of rape jokes and inappropriately touching female staffers, before going back to work.
Ben Smith, BuzzFeed News‘ former editor-in-chief, has written pieces titled, “I’m Proud We Published the Trump-Russia Dossier” and “I Would Publish the Steele Dossier Again”. While BuzzFeed News was shut down due to unprofitability, Smith got a job at the New York Times and became the co-founder of a new media site: Semafor.
The New York Times and the Washington Post received Pulitzers for pushing the Russiagate hoax. Last year, the Pulitzers insisted that, “The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.”
The Pulitzers have also refused to revoke the 1932 award of New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty for serving as a Stalinist propagandist and lying about genocide in the Soviet Union. The leftist organization falsely claimed that “there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception”. If mass murder can’t get the Pultizers to revoke a lefty media liar’s award, the Durham report certainly won’t.
And so they got away with it.
The media made hundreds of millions of dollars pushing Russiagate. Publishers, editors and journalists made names for themselves, won awards and got book contracts for their lies. Lawyers, experts and consultants faced some discomfort, but emerged on the other side. Some FBI and DOJ officials lost their jobs, but are likely to come away with full benefits and are building careers as media analysts and Beltway law school academics. The only Russiagate figure who still doesn’t have a job is Igor Danchenko.
The Durham report’s account of abuses is devastating, but has been brushed aside by the media, former government officials and the rest of the Russiagate network. Unable to get D.C. juries to convict the accused, the investigation stalled and has dissolved into little more than an accounting on the various players but without the connective tissue of the network behind them.
Nobody went to jail, hardly anyone even suffered lasting career consequences and the Washington D.C. network they were part of stepped in to protect and reward the Russiagaters.
The lack of any meaningful consequences means that Russiagate will happen again.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
Thank you for reading.
Comments
Thank you for an honest review of partisan government bias and a new absence of accountability in our government circles that undermines trust both in our “citizen elected” overseers and in our hyper liberal academia & news (propaganda) media. Trust is a fragile evanescence and will be very slow (if ever) to recover. Are we aiming for another extreme “French Revolution”?
ReplyDelete"The lack of any meaningful consequences means that Russiagate will happen again."
ReplyDeleteAh, a pattern. The lack of any meaningful consequences means that untrustworthy elections will happen again.
Why?
See Conquest 2nd Law, However, strike the secret part as the cadres are brashly open and sneering about their takeover of powerful institutions.
Make that Conquest's 3rd Law. Sorry for the sloppy error.
DeleteAmerica is a lawless terror state run by liars, perverts, crooks, traitors and criminals. Durham proves it by being incapable of bringing indictments. What a total farce. A degenerate disintegrating country. Jews there are next. Jews are always next when law starts being observed only in its breach. When Russia crushes Ukraine the whole box of cards will come down. Good riddance. Nothing can save the US, not Trump, not De Santis, not anyone. Israel go to plan B. America is finished and will openly turn on you. That will be the last nail in the American coffin. European Jewry was the curtain raiser. American 'jews' are next. Death to America !!!
ReplyDeleteJonty D
Lois Lerner interfered with the tax exemption status of conservative groups while she was a director at the IRS and worked with Dennis Miller. The DOJ was unwilling to prosecute and now Lois lives in Greenich Connecticut with her millionaire broker husband, living her best life in one of America's most expensive zip codes. It pays to be political class.
ReplyDeleteWe have clearly left all pretense of Justice.
ReplyDeleteNow, if you were against Orange Man, you'll be
rewarded, otherwise punished.
Thomas
Adam Schiff, a big pusher of lies about seeing substantive evidence of Russian collusion, is being promoted by Nancy Pelosi to replace Dianne Feinstein as Senator of CA.
ReplyDeleteAs a DEA agent (1973-1995), I had a few occasions to deal with the FBI, and when I was an instructor in DEA training, we were co-located at the FBI academy because a move was afoot to merge us into the FBI. Thankfully, that never happened, and now DEA has its own academy at Quantico. Basically, there needs to be a change in culture in the FBI, particularly at the top. I know there are many good rank and file agents who are embarrassed by this corruption and interference in politics by their agency. However, there needs to be more whistleblowers to come forth.
ReplyDeletePeople like Strzok, McCabe and others tarnished the badge and should have been prosecuted. That would have sent a clear message and helped to cleanse the FBI of the rot at the top.
I recall in 1972 when Hoover died. (I was a Customs agent at the time). We all hoped there would be a change from their culture of superiority and the belief they were better than other agencies and could do things other agencies couldn't do. Leaders like Clarence Kelly and Louis Freeh helped, but it seems the FBI would prefer to go back to the days of Hoover.
Generally speaking, the FBI has never been regarded with much respect by other agencies. They have an important role to play in fighting Islamic terrorism, and I support that effort. But what I have seen in recent years is disgusting.
Gary, thank you for sharing your experiences and for your work for our country.
DeleteWhat sorts of structural reforms would you recommend to reform the FBI or federal law enforcement in general?
Daniel, Thank you for your kind words.
DeleteAs I said, the FBI culture needs changing in that they need to stop thinking they are above other agencies. It has caused great resentment over the years.
Secondly, their jurisdictions should be pared down. They investigate such a wide variety of crimes, and in some cases, there are overlapping jurisdictions, such as in Title 21 (federal drug investigations). Drug enforcement is a whole different culture, and your average FBI agent just doesn't fit into that culture.
In that respect, the average FBI agent is not up to par when it comes to working the street. This has not gone unnoticed among other law enforcement agencies.
There is also great resentment over the FBI's insistence in always being in the lead when it comes to joint investigations and taking credit for successful cases that involve multiple agencies.
In that respect, all law enforcement training must stress cooperation rather than competition between agencies. The main reason DEA was formed in the first place in 1973 was because the old Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and US Customs were not cooperating in drug cases to the extent they should have been. Only the bad guys win when that happens.
One of the big problems now is that political corruption is at an all time high, and somebody has to investigate it. That is the FBI. The problem is that they have allowed themselves to be politicized and weaponized. Thus, political corruption is not being handled on an equal basis.
This problem is decades in the making and will not be cured overnight.
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