New York Post, May 16, 2023

Durham proves that Hillary and the FBI tried to rig the 2016 election

by James Bovard

Special counsel John Durham exposed Monday how the FBI and Justice Department plotted to rig the 2016 presidential election. His 316-page report proves federal law enforcement was weaponized by shielding the Hillary Clinton campaign and persecuting the Donald Trump campaign. Yet despite the damning evidence, most of the media are treating the Durham report as a “nothingburger.”

FBI racketeering repeatedly rescued Hillary Clinton. The Clinton Foundation raked in hundreds of million dollars of squirrely foreign contributions while she was secretary of state and revving up her presidential campaign. The Durham report found that “senior FBI and Department officials placed restrictions on how [the Clinton Foundation investigation was] handled such that essentially no investigative activities occurred for months leading up to the election.”

On top of that dereliction, “the FBI appears to have made no effort to investigate . . . the Clinton campaign’s purported acceptance of a [illegal] campaign contribution that was made by the FBI’s own long-term [confidential human source] on behalf of Insider-I and, ultimately, Foreign Government.”

Top FBI officials also saved Hillary Clinton by scorning the federal statute book and treating her pervasive, perpetual violations of federal laws on classified documents as a harmless, unintentional error. Shortly after FBI chief James Comey announced no charges against Hillary, “Clinton allegedly approved a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to tie Trump to Russia as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server,” according to the Durham report. CIA chief John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama and other top officials on “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal . . . to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”

The Clinton campaign helped bankroll the notorious Steele dossier, which made sweeping, unsubstantiated and salacious accusations against Trump. “The FBI discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia,” the report noted.

As FBI analysts began to recognize that the Steele dossier was a hoax, FBI bosses ordered “no more memorandums were to be written” analyzing its claims. The FBI subsequently used the unverified Steele dossier to snare a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, paving the way to special counsel Robert Mueller and his two years’ antics.

The FBI’s profound bias in the 2016 presidential election has been undeniable for almost five years. A June 2018 inspector general report exposed top FBI agents’ venomously anti-Trump messages and machinations. But that report did nothing to curb the FBI’s power to meddle in the 2020 presidential election by playing “hide and seek” with the Hunter Biden laptop that could have demolished Joe Biden’s presidential chances.

Nothing has been done by Congress or federal courts to revoke the FBI’s prerogative to fix the 2024 election. Perhaps the only thing that would awaken the American media is if the next president’s inaugural address invokes “the will of the FBI” instead of “the will of the people.”

But considering the slavishness of the Washington press corps, maybe they would stand up and cheer for the FBI.

James Bovard is the author of 10 books and a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors.