Counsel Durham Will Cause Heartburn for Biden DOJ and the Senate
By Shipwreckedcrew | Dec 07, 2020 5:30 PM ET
Last week Benjamin Wittes published a very long story at Lawfareblog concerning what he described as the “problem†represented by the now “Special Counsel†status of John Durham.
Among the issues highlighted by Wittes in his piece was the fact that the Order by Attorney General appointing Durham was drafted in a way to be nearly identical to the Order that appointed Robert Mueller, so any calls now by the Democrats to end the Durham investigation would directly contradict the demands made by many of those Democrats that the Mueller investigation be allowed to reach its own conclusion without interference from Barr as Attorney General.
In addition, Wittes calls “clever†the fact that Barr’s Order directs Durham to prepare a report to the Attorney General on his investigation, either final or interim, in such a format that it can be released to the public. Such a public report is not called for under the Special Counsel regulations — which actually call for a “confidential†report to be prepared for the Attorney General. But it was the Democrats who demanded that the Mueller Report be published. It was the partisan Democrats in Mueller’s SCO who — without being asked to do so — wrote “Executive Summaries†at the start of each chapter of the Report which they expected would be released to the public while the balance of the report underwent review for purposes of redacting classified and other confidential material used in the Report. Those summaries were intended to set the press “narrative†and become the “talking points†for everyone claiming Pres. Trump conspired with the Russians or obstructed the investigation. AG Barr opted to not release the summaries until the entire Report was released.
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https://redstate.com/shipwreckedcrew/2020/12/07/an-interim-report-from-special-counsel-durham-will-cause-heartburn-for-biden-doj-and-the-senate-n290668
