349 The Barr-Durham Fiasco: The Return of Comey’s Fake Russian Document

🧱 Sidebar: Was Barr Corrupted by Trump? The Myth of Institutional Decay

Recently, Andrew Weissmann lamented on MSNBC that Bill Barr had been “corrupted” by Trump.

This is the conventional wisdom. It’s also wrong.

🧠 Philosophical Insert: Barr Wasn’t Corrupted—He Was Selected

• Barr’s record as a partisan fixer dates back to the Bush 41 years.
• He helped midwife the Iran-Contra pardons, including Casper Weinberger, who was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice3.
• He played a central role in the Whitewater scandal’s weaponization, intervening in 1992 to accelerate a criminal referral against Clinton during the election.

Cᴏᴅᴀ: Trump didn’t corrupt Barr. He hired him because he was already corrupt.

🧨 Modular Insert: The Savvy Take vs. The Historical Record

• James Comey initially praised Barr’s summary of the Mueller Report—then reversed course.
• Weissmann still claims Barr was “fine” until Trump got to him.
• Ben Wittes offered petulant apologetics, lamenting Barr’s fall from grace rather than acknowledging his long history.

 FN: Wittes’s defense of Barr often hinged on tone and decorum—ignoring the substance of Barr’s sabotage.

FN: Glenn Greenwald, in a bizarre inversion, downplayed Barr’s role in pardoning Roger Stone by comparing it to his role in pardoning Weinberger—suggesting Democrats were hypocrites for caring now. The Savvy take: Trump corrupted Barr. Greenwald’s take: Trump uncorrupted Barr?

🧠 Philosophical Insert: The Danger of “Trustable” Myths

The idea that Barr was “trustable”—to borrow Kevin McCarthy’s neologism—was always a fantasy.

Even I briefly entertained it, based on a tweet from Emptywheel expressing cautious optimism based on some of her media contacts.. Spoiler: Their institutionalist optimism was wrong. My instincts towards cynicism were all too accurate.

FN: See Chapter The Real Whitewater for Barr’s role in accelerating the 1992 referral against Clinton. See Chapter A for my early skepticism of Barr’s institutionalist reputation.

🧠 Philosophical Insert: The Comfort of Corruption Narratives

The “Trump-corrupted Barr” myth comforts the institutionalists. It allows them to preserve the illusion that the system was sound—until Trump broke it.

But Barr’s record shows the opposite: The system was already compromised. Trump simply exploited it.

Cᴏᴅᴀ: Corruption isn’t a contagion. It’s a selection criterion.

🔍 Modular Insert: Barr’s 1992 October Surprise

• In Chapter: The Real Whitewater, we saw Barr’s DOJ scramble to accelerate a criminal referral against Clinton.
• Barr contacted DOJ and FBI officials to “make sure” the case was moving quickly—despite no evidence of mishandling.
• The OIC Report documents a Kafkaesque series of interventions masked as “neutral oversight.”

FN: Edie Holiday and C. Boyden Gray coordinated with Barr to weaponize the referral. Barr’s actions belie his claims of neutrality.

📎 FN Cascade

• Edie Holiday, Cabinet Secretary under Bush Sr., contacted Barr to inquire about a referral targeting a presidential candidate.
• C. Boyden Gray, White House Counsel, pressured the RTC to confirm the referral’s existence.
• William Barr instructed DOJ and FBI officials to engage with Little Rock prosecutors, despite no procedural irregularities.
• See OIC Final Report on Whitewater, Vol. II, pp. 112–119.

🧨 Modular Insert: October Surprises and the Clinton Brand Sabotage

What Barr and friends failed to pull off in 1992, they succeeded in replicating in 2016. The GOP’s post-Nixon playbook is simple: weaponize disinformation, time it for maximum electoral damage, and call it justice.

• 1980: Delayed hostage release = Ayatollah Collusion2
• 1992: Barr’s DOJ tried to accelerate Whitewater referral = failed October Surprise4
• 2016: Comey’s July 5 presser + October Letter = successful October Surprise

Cᴏᴅᴀ: Even when the sabotage fails electorally, it succeeds narratively. Whitewater didn’t stop Clinton in ’92. But it dirtied the brand for decades.

🧠 Philosophical Insert: The Long Tail of Disinformation

The Clinton impeachment wasn’t just a culmination of Whitewater—it was the weaponization of a phony scandal that metastasized over seven years.

The “untrustable” narrative that haunted Hillary Clinton in 2016 was born in 1992, midwifed by Barr.

FN: See Chapter: The Real Whitewater for Barr’s Kafkaesque interventions to accelerate the referral. See Chapter: Leeden Manifesto for Comey’s invocation of the fake Russian document.

🧱 Sidebar: The Return of Comey’s Fake Russian Document

The same fake Russian document Comey used to justify his July 5, 2016 presser was later used by Durham to justify his own baseless probe6.

• Comey claimed it showed Lynch had promised to protect Clinton.
• FBI officials dismissed it as Russian disinformation.
• Comey still cited it in classified testimony.
• Durham used it to pursue Soros aide emails—twice rejected by a judge.

FN: The FBI never verified the document. Wasserman Schultz and the Soros affiliate denied knowing each other. The email in question never surfaced.

🧠 Philosophical Insert: Three Kinds of FBI Officials

1. Those who always knew it was disinformation.
2. Those who eventually admitted it was disinformation.
3. Those—like Comey—who still claim not to know.

Cᴏᴅᴀ: The third group includes not just Mr. 500-Year Flood, but many senior FBI officials whose Clinton hatred remains institutional.

🧱 Sidebar: Durham’s Excellent No Collusion Adventure

Durham’s probe lasted twice as long as Mueller’s—and uncovered nothing.

The New York Times found it was riddled with the same flaws Trump allies claimed plagued the Russia investigation:

• Strained justification
• Partisan conspiracy theories
• No charges that stuck

FN: GOP projection again. The Russia investigation was well predicated. Durham’s wasn’t.

🧠 Philosophical Insert: The Predication Problem

The real difference between Democratic-led investigations (Iran-Contra, Russiagate) and GOP-led ones (Durham, Whitewater) isn’t just outcome. It’s predication.

Durham’s probe was based on a lie. Mueller’s was based on evidence.

Cᴏᴅᴀ: You don’t need a conspiracy when you have a pattern.

🧨 Modular Insert: Durham’s Disinformation Pipeline

The New York Times, ever faithful to false equivalence, writes:

“The Durham investigation did something with parallels to that incident.”

Referring to the Steele Dossier and Durham’s use of Russian intelligence memos doubted by the IC itself.

But this isn’t a parallel. It’s a projection.

🧠 Philosophical Insert: Raw Intelligence vs Weaponized Disinfo

The Steele Dossier was opposition research compiled from raw human sources—never claimed to be verified, and not the basis for opening the Russia investigation.

It was messy, incomplete, and in parts inaccurate—as raw intelligence often is.

But Durham’s memos were something else entirely: Suspected Russian disinformation, flagged by U.S. and Dutch intelligence as exaggerated, inconsistent, and likely seeded to mislead.

Yet Durham used these memos to justify invasive subpoenas, grand jury demands, and a years-long probe into a “Clinton Plan” that never existed.

FN: Dutch intelligence infiltrated Russian servers and provided the memos to the CIA. Analysts warned they were likely contaminated with disinfo.

✴️ CODA

Cᴏᴅᴀ: Raw intelligence is a starting point. Disinformation is a destination.

Durham didn’t just confuse the two—he chose the latter.

This version restores the scaffolding for readers who aren’t dossier-savvy, while preserving your philosophical contrast. Want to riff next on how the “Clinton Plan” memo became the GOP’s Rosetta Stone for projection? Or stylize a Sidebar on Durham’s Disinfo Doctrine?

🧱 Sidebar: The Clinton Plan That Wasn’t

Durham used the memos to pursue emails from Leonard Benardo, EVP of Soros’s Open Society Foundations.

The memos claimed Benardo and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz discussed Loretta Lynch shielding Clinton. Both denied ever meeting.

Judge Beryl Howell rejected Durham’s request—twice. Durham then invoked grand jury powers to demand the emails anyway3.

The emails yielded nothing. Durham cited none of them in any case.

🧨 Modular Insert: Barr’s October Surprise Ambitions

By summer 2020, Barr pressed Durham to draft an interim report targeting the Clinton campaign and FBI “gullibility.”

Nora Dannehy, Durham’s deputy, objected and resigned. She called the draft politically motivated and factually disputed.

FN: Durham’s failure to release a pre-election report is often cited as restraint. In truth, it was in spite of Barr’s pressure, not because of it.

🧠 Philosophical Insert: The Predication Mirage

Durham’s probe lasted twice as long as Mueller’s. It produced no convictions, no revelations, and no predication.

The Steele Dossier wasn’t the basis for the Russia investigation. The Clinton Plan memo wasn’t real.

But Durham pursued both—because the narrative demanded it.

Cᴏᴅᴀ: When the facts don’t fit, the GOP builds a new reality.