WELL, HE DOES GET A LIFETIME SUPPLY OF TRUMP STEAKS...:

The moment he let Barr recruit him, Durham, a former U.S. attorney in Connecticut, risked ruining his once-strong professional reputation. That reputation is now in tatters. Durham first knifed it in December 2019, when he joined Barr in an unprecedented attack on the department's own nonpartisan inspector general. The IG had just issued a 478-page report concluding that the Trump-Russia investigation began properly. Barr and Durham's actions were widely criticized as inappropriate. William Webster, the revered former Republican director of the FBI and CIA, lambasted Barr's conduct, saying it risked "inflicting enduring damage" on the FBI. Durham should have known better than to be used in that attack.

Then, in September 2020, Nora Dannehy, Durham's respected and loyal aide, resigned from his team. She expressed concern about, in the words of the Hartford Courant, "pressure from Barr . . . to produce results before the election."

Durham could have departed then, too, and saved himself further embarrassment. After all, the month before, Durham had obtained his one and only conviction, a guilty plea from then-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith for lying to investigators in June 2017.

Still, a low-level FBI agent's lie, nearly a year after the Trump-Russia investigation began, did nothing to prove that the FBI had launched the investigation illegitimately.

Fast-forward to September 16, 2021, when Durham indicted Sussmann, days before the five-year statute of limitations ran out. As some commentators noted, the indictment reeked of non-prosecutorial goals: It seemed that Durham was trying to justify the public money he'd wasted boosting Trump's false narrative that it was the big, bad Clinton campaign behind the Trump-Russia investigation.

The supposed lie for which Durham indicted Sussmann occurred in mid-September 2016--again, after the Trump-Russia investigation started on July 31. Sussmann went to a friend in the FBI--the bureau's general counsel, James Baker--with a tip, allegedly saying that he was not offering the information "on behalf of any client."

The tip was that a secret communication channel appeared to exist between the Trump Organization and a server of Russia's Alfa Bank. (Whether such a back channel actually existed is in doubt, though it has never been definitively disproven.) In charging Sussmann under 18 U.S.C. §1001, Durham's team alleged that Sussmann lied to Baker--not about the substance of the tip but because Sussmann was working for the Clinton campaign.

He was. But as Sussmann's lawyer argued, "There is a difference between having a client, and doing something on their behalf."

Per Sussmann's defense, he approached the FBI purely at his own behest to help keep Baker and the FBI from being caught unawares when the story imminently appeared in the press.

It's tough to disprove a private motivation. To do so "beyond a reasonable doubt," you'd better have airtight evidence.

Durham didn't.

In fact, Baker, the prosecution's own witness, bolstered the defense. He testified that Sussmann helped him identify the reporter working on the Alfa Bank story so that the FBI could try to stop it. (Premature publicity jeopardizes investigations.)

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