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Durham's investigation was a disaster. Once considered a respectable Republican prosecutor, Durham managed to lose the cases he brought to trial and uncovered nothing of substance that would undercut the original narrative that the FBI was right to investigate Trump's 2016 campaign. Moreover, instead of avoiding politics--which is why special counsels get named in the first place--Durham and Attorney General Bill Barr, who appointed him, traveled together and constantly conferred while administration officials and the president cried that any Russia scrutiny was a witch hunt. 

Dannehy resigned in protest but didn't write a tell-all. Only last month, as her nomination to the state supreme court was being considered, did she speak out, in answer to a direct question about her sudden resignation. "I simply couldn't be part of it. So I resigned," she told Connecticut state legislators during her confirmation hearing. "In the spring and summer of 2020, I had growing concerns that this Russia investigation was not being conducted in [an objective and apolitical] way. Attorney General Barr began to speak more publicly and specifically about the ongoing criminal investigation. I thought these public comments violated DOJ guidelines." All true, and an understatement, given the former attorney general's conduct. [...]

Finding nothing prosecutable in the enhanced interrogation program made Durham the Man to See when Barr, who had served in the CIA for four years, was looking for someone outside Washington to investigate the Robert Mueller investigation. This was an opportunity for Dannehy as well as Durham. He had always given Dannehy an open field, even when she prosecuted Republicans. For Dannehy's part, she was happy to stay in the background and give Durham credit for operations she drove across the finish line. It was a perfect working relationship.

But this was the Trump administration, where reputations went to die. Almost as soon as Durham got to Washington in 2019, the bald-and-bearded prosecutor took off for Europe with the boss, Barr, from whom he was supposed to be independent, in search of anyone who could back up Trump's claim that the FBI's investigation was "the crime of the century."

As weeks passed, the two septuagenarian Republicans found no one fitting that description but persisted as if the FBI, of all places, was brimming with Republican-hating rabble-rousers. Dannehy found herself riding shotgun, if not riding in the back seat, in an Edsel. Durham followed Barr protocols, not the department strictures that she'd observed during her Bush inquiry. Contrary to long-established department conventions, first Trump and then Barr, with Durham's acquiescence, began talking up alleged findings. Dannehy asked Durham nicely to ask Barr to stop going on Fox News and hyping their findings. He didn't. In the months before Election Day 2020, Barr even asked Durham to draft an interim report to be released early, which the team began doing without Dannehy's knowledge. This made her furious and would have violated Justice Department guidelines. 

The two old friends argued, but Durham was her boss, Barr was Durham's, and Trump was Barr's. After detailing her concerns and sending a brief farewell message to staff, Dannehy walked out the door. Three more prosecutors followed. She'd been there 11 months. Durham would stay another two and a half years, a belabored investigation that dwarfed the Watergate prosecutor's tenure.

Dannehy completed both her prosecution of Rowland and her investigation of the Bush White House in under two years. In less than three years, Robert Mueller, who ran the inquiry Durham was seeking to discredit, produced seven guilty pleas, two convictions after trial, and several indictments of Russian nationals. Durham's inquisition lasted nearly four years, during which he secured one guilty plea and lost the two cases that went to trial. 

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