Talk:Durham special counsel investigation

Partisan and misleading actions by Barr and Durham

Soibangla, I wonder if a section devoted to this topic would be informative? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 13:31, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

yeah, I've been keeping that in the back of my mind but it hasn't yet gelled. It's scattered in bits and pieces across multiple sources. Chait and others have written a bit about it since the NYT story. Maybe reporting on Durham's report will help. soibangla (talk) 14:23, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

here comes the Senate Judiciary Committee

Durbin Statement On Reported Abuses By Special Counsel Durham[1] soibangla (talk) 22:46, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

That's interesting, assuming it follows the recent reporting about Durham and Barr Andre🚐 23:20, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Independent analysis

Technology expert Brian Krebs (a reliable source under WP:EXPERTSPS) provided some analytical commentary, saying the inquiry could lead to a chilling effect disincentivizing experts from sharing information with the FBI in the future. DFlhb (talk) 16:27, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

There are still unanswered questions about the weird contacts between Trump-, Mercer- and Devos-associated servers and Alfa Bank. These were not routine contacts. More should be added to the article. The suspicion remains that there was more to Manafort sharing polling data. More data packets and coordination had to have happened in both directions. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:27, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

This seems like WP:OR, and unrelated to my post. Keep in mind that DNS lookups are data packets transmitted between the origin server (Alfa bank) and a DNS server. DNS lookups don't involve packets being exchanged between Alfa server and the Trump server; they are merely a prerequisite for such a transfer, but don't indicate such a transfer took place. (I say "WP:OR", because that's exactly the kind of material I spent half an hour looking for sources for, and haven't yet; if I'd found it, I'd have posted that, rather than the Krebs link) DFlhb (talk) 18:37, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Caution

We need to exercise caution when applying the new Durham conclusions to this article. His report is still new, shows lots of partisan bias (just like any statements from Trump and Barr), and contradicts many findings by Mueller and Horowitz. We need to be patient and then use secondary reliable sources that have analyzed and digested Durham's conclusions as our sources, not depending on the primary source. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:03, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

restoration of challenged content

Seveneleven19 I reverted your edit, you are obliged to follow BRD rather than restore. Please self-revert and bring the matter here. Your assertion the original content is incorrect is false.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durham_special_counsel_investigation&diff=prev&oldid=1155184935 soibangla (talk) 03:32, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

I went ahead and enforced BRD, leaving a good edit summary. Now Seveneleven19 can discuss here and seek a consensus for their change. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:39, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

POV article

This article is very poorly written and non-neutral. While mainstream sources call the final report "devastating to the FBI" (CNN) and say it "sharply criticizes FBI’s 2016 Trump campaign probe" (Wash. Post) , this article goes to extreme lengths to minimize the criticism, downplay the findings, insinuate the investigation was politically motivated, etc... Red Slapper (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 17:08, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree to the extent that the article casts some doubt as to the validity of the report in the lede, i.e. "Although the report alleged FBI confirmation bias and a "lack of analytical rigor", it did not allege political motivation and Durham failed to find what Trump alleged to be a "deep state" plot against him." It ought to say what the report did say, rather than emphasize what it did not, per MOS:DOUBT. Doubt as to the report's findings should be directly attributed to sources (i.e. Washington Post reporter John Q. Public stated that the report "failed to find..." GuardianH (talk) 19:43, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Reference #1:

Mr. Durham delivered a report that scolded the F.B.I. but failed to live up to the expectations of supporters of Donald J. Trump that he would uncover a politically motivated "deep state" conspiracy...it accused the F.B.I. of "confirmation bias" rather than making a more explosive conclusion of political bias."

Reference #16:

Special counsel John Durham found no evidence that the US justice department and the FBI conspired in a deep-state plot...Durham’s inquiry failed to uncover any blockbuster revelations suggesting the bureau targeted Trump out of political motivations

(emphasis mine) These are statements of what the report did not say. Oftentimes what people don't say is more important than what they do say, and not reporting what wasn't said can enable lies of omission, but it can be hard to find journalists who have such a mastery of the topic that they know how to spot them. These references were written by Charlie Savage and Hugo Lowell, respectively, two guys who have been all over this and related stories better than just about anyone else one can name. They know everything that was alleged before and during the investigation, including by Fox News hosts and guests, so now they look to see if the final report actually alleges it. And it didn't allege a politically motivated deep state plot, and these reporters state as such. soibangla (talk) 22:47, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

MOS:DOUBT has to do with the specific words used to introduce claims, not the actual content of the claims themselves. If reliable sources report on the significance of the report not finding some things, then the article should mention that. Shells-shells (talk) 23:08, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, though, the conclusions of the report should not be described using the words 'alleged', 'asserted', etc., unless there is a good reason to cast doubt on them. As of now, reliable sources do not seem to have significantly criticized the accuracy of the report's conclusions—in fact, they seem to generally report that the report mostly retreads old ground and repeats already-established findings. Shells-shells (talk) 23:22, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for changing that, I was soon to. soibangla (talk) 23:27, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Since the Durham's conclusions and statements are often at odds with Mueller and Horowitz, and are largely his very partisan and Trumpian opinions, not real "findings", we should attribute them as we would any other partisan source. Done properly, it shouldn't look like a deprecation. Whenever such conclusions are widely criticized in RS, that's what we usually do. If RS were peacefully just accepting his conclusions, we would just state them, but that's not the case. He's getting shredded and trashed for a report described as what amounts to an op-ed.

When one reads his failed prosecution of Danchenko, one sees how Durham pressed forward with false accusations and misunderstandings, which ended up not getting traction, so he lost the case. Reading the report, we find him repeating the same errors and false and unproven charges. He didn't even change the report to reflect the fact his arguments didn't hold up in court. In the report, he is still prosecuting a failed case. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:27, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

We need a Reactions section soibangla (talk) 23:33, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Bingo! -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:36, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I would like to see specific examples of how this article goes to extreme lengths to minimize the criticism, downplay the findings, insinuate the investigation was politically motivated, etc so the POV template can be removed as soon as possible. soibangla (talk) 22:52, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

One example is the repeated removal of the main finding of the report (as noted by mainstream sources like CNN and the WSJ), that the FBI investigation should never have been opened, because there was no evidentiary basis for that. There are many others, but we'll start with that one. Red Slapper (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 00:19, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

"Main finding of the report"? No, that's not a "finding" but Durham's fringe, Trumpian, opinion, and it runs contrary to many RS and other investigations, such as Mueller's and Inspector General Horowitz's. His statement that an investigation should not have been opened on Trump campaigners, who were doing very suspicious things with Russians and in Russia, reads like a literal Russian asset speaking. It makes no sense to drop the ball with such stuff going on. The things they were doing definitely justified a full investigation, as other investigations and sources make plain. Be careful, because it seems like you're pushing a fringe opinion. Our articles, based on many RS, make plain the investigations were proper and fully predicated on good evidence. That Durham takes another tack and echoes Trump's deceptive narrative just shows how partisan he is. His report should not be taken at face value, and many RS are tearing it apart. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 00:57, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

You may think it is fringe, but that is the conclusion of the report, and we are hiding it (unlike mainstream sources which highlight it), which is why I placed that tag on it. Red Slapper (talk) 01:08, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

As I explained above, it's Durham's opinion, one not backed by other, much better, investigations and reports. Seriously, Durham is fringe. In his report, he's prosecuting a case he lost in court. His arguments and conclusions don't hold water. You can't trust him. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:17, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

"the FBI investigation should never have been opened, because there was no evidentiary basis for that."

Durham muddies the water by implying the Steele dossier was the trigger for the opening of the Trump-Russia/Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Right there he's wrong. The FBI didn't even have the first reports when they opened their investigation. They had loads of suspicious information to justify opening the investigation into Trump and his campaign. They just needed proof that Trump knew, and they got it. They had evidence of hacking, already back from 2014 and 2015, evidence that Trump talked with Russians at the Miss Universe contest in 2013 about running for president (long before making Americans aware of his plans), myriad suspicious and secretive meetings all over Europe between Trump's people and actual Russian spies, and finally they got evidence that Trump knew and didn't report the Russian offer of stolen emails to help his campaign.

That was plenty of probable cause to open a full investigation. They already had been collecting evidence, but were targeting Russia. Now they just needed to change the target to include Trump's campaign. The "Russian interference" investigation turned into the "Trump-Russia" investigation of how much Trump and his people were helping the Russians. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:26, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Also, Durham's personal opinions and interpretation haven't really been given the sort of coverage that would justify putting them in the lead. The lead's purpose is to summarize the overarching impact, not to quote-farm every person involved; and the overarching summary in mainstream WP:RS coverage is that the report found nothing. --Aquillion (talk) 08:05, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

This is nonsense. Durham is not some random "person involved" , and the report is not just "his personal opinions" - it's the result of a years' long investigation. You may think he got it all wrong, you may question his methodology, but we are not here to report on your views, but on the report itself,

Mainstream sources put this conclusion front and center. CNN put it on the headline of its coverage. we are hiding it, which is why this article needs to be tagged as violating the neutral point of view. Red Slapper (talk) 11:31, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Red Slapper, I have added Durham found there had been inadequate predication to immediately open a full investigation rather than a preliminary investigation to the lead. Please proceed to specify other POV concerns you have. soibangla (talk) 13:28, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Red Slapper, if you have the time, please would you begin enumerating the many others of POV issues you've identified in the article? I'd like to get busy addressing them to preclude a common occurrence of a POV tag going up but never coming down. soibangla (talk) 17:15, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I don't think your latest edit addressed my first concern. Rather than echoing what mainstream sources like CNN and WSJ wrote (which is that the Durham investigation concluded the Trump investigation should not have been opened), you wrote a mealy-mouthed sentence that implies the issue was with the immediacy or the the scope, rather than the decision to open an investigation based on no evidence.

But if you want to get a head start on a few other issues:

• Durham alleged the defendants had deceived the FBI, rather than alleging the FBI acted improperly toward Trump - we are not in the business of suggesting what he should have charged (certainly not in wikipedia's voice), only report on what he charged. So that needs to be changed to Durham charged the defendants with lying to the FBI
• Although the report alleged FBI confirmation bias and a "lack of analytical rigor", it did not find political motivation or what Trump alleged to be a "deep state" plot against him. - Special Counsel's report are findings or conclusions, not allegations.
• It is undue weight to give the lawyer of one of the main bad actors in this saga, who was fired from the FBI over his actions, a lengthy last word in the lead. I'd recommend we excise it from the lead completely, or at a minimum, balance it with a quote from someone who views the report positively.

These will do far a start, for the lead alone. There are many more. Red Slapper (talk) 18:55, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I do not object to changing "alleged" to "found" in that sentence, nor to removing the McCarthy or Goelman comments. We certainly are not in the business of suggesting what he should have charged, but that's not remotely close to what the sentence does. It's a statement of fact of what he did and did not do.

Maybe I missed it, but please would you provide the WSJ source you reference? Did you also reference a WaPo source earlier? I'd like to see that one, too. I take issue with CNN reporting "Durham concluded that the FBI should never (emphasis mine) have launched a full investigation," as I don't see the report says that nor do I see other RS reporting it. Maybe someone else can. CNN seems to be an outlier here. Durham says the FBI was too hasty to jump straight to full, not that they never should have. Consequently, I did not write a mealy-mouthed sentence.

There are many more I'm ready, please proceed. soibangla (talk) 21:47, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

In the sentence Durham alleged the defendants had deceived the FBI, rather than alleging the FBI acted improperly toward Trump what do you think the second part ("rather than alleging the FBI acted improperly toward Trump") is oding, if not implying that's what he should have charged? Red Slapper (talk) 02:21, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Valjean, the part of the article stating that Durham implies the Steele dossier was the trigger for the opening of the Trump-Russia/Crossfire Hurricane investigation is incorrect. See page 9 of the Durham Report. There, the report states that the impetus for opening the Trump-Russia/Crossfire Hurricane investigation was the "receipt of unevaluated intelligence information from Australia", i.e., the report about two Australian diplomats' meetings with George Papadopoulos in London. The quote about "raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence" from the CNN reported appears in the subsequent paragraph and relates to the information about Papadopoulos. The article currently states that Durham was making an "apparent allusion to the Steele dossier", which is incorrect. I'll make an edit. DrQuinnEskimoWoman (talk) 20:23, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

See the following section. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:33, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

"raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence"

DrQuinnEskimoWoman, regarding your edit

Durham wrote:

Our investigation also revealed that senior F.B.I. personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor toward the information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities. This information in part triggered and sustained Crossfire Hurricane and contributed to the subsequent need for Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation

(emphasis mine)

NYT:

But in using the word "triggered," Mr. Durham’s report echoed a conspiracy theory pushed by supporters of Mr. Trump that the F.B.I. opened the investigation in July 2016 based on the so-called Steele dossier, opposition research indirectly funded by the Clinton campaign that was later discredited[2]

He was alluding to the dossier. He was wink-winking at it because many people continue to believe it. Many have called it words to the effect of "raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated." He was saying "dossier" without saying dossier.

Would Alexander Downer's alert require much "analytical rigor?" No, he's a former foreign minister of a Five Eyes member and he said what he said. The dossier would require a lot of "analytical rigor."

Was Downer a "politically affiliated person or entity?" No, but FusionGPS, Perkins Coie, Steele and the HRC campaign were. Wink-wink.

This is consistent with the insinuations about the dossier he tried (but failed) to introduce in the Sussmann trial to implicate the Clinton campaign, and what he continues to insinuate in his report.

soibangla (talk) 21:26, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

The secondary source accurately points out this partisan inconsistency, the type that permeates this so-called "report" (actually a partisan op-ed). Durham started this investigation at the orders of Barr, and both of them were in Trump's pocket and sought to undermine any inference that Trump might in some way be responsible for creating the atmosphere that required the investigations into his suspicious behavior.

Durham never changed gears after misusing his partisan prosecutorial powers, resulting in a big faux pas and losses in court. He just blundered on and wrote his report as if his failed charges were still weighty and true, when in fact they lacked weight and did not convince. They are clearly partisan and worded in an amateurish way that constantly reveals he's writing from his own biases.

You are so right that only the dossier was associated with "politically affiliated person or entity" and required any form of "analytical rigor". The Australian government, OTOH, was a deadly serious source, and combined with what the FBI already knew from their targeted investigation of ONLY Russian actions, this just caused them to change their target from ONLY Russia, to include Trump and his campaign, as it now became obvious, with solid evidence, that Trump knew, was accepting, and was encouraging criminal Russian interference. He was acting as a co-conspirator and accessory to the crime. He has always aided and abetted Russia's undermining of American society and confidence in elections. They, not Americans, are his friends.

The secondary source is correct. We should just point out that, in spite of slyly implying the Steele dossier was the trigger, in his report he still makes clear that it was not the dossier that was the trigger. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:47, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and clarified it and added the source. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:36, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

First sentence

The first sentence of this article is a transplant from the middle of the John Durham article, from which this article was forked. The sentence remains in its original location and its original form, but it is unacceptable as the lead sentence in the lead section of an article, because:

1) As a lead sentence, it is excessively long and unwieldy.

2) It fails to describe the topic of the article. Durham's name is not even mentioned until deep in the second sentence, which is also long. The lead sentence does not comply with Policy and Guideline recommendations. See:

MOS:FIRST (Manual of Style/Lead section): "The first sentence should tell the nonspecialist reader what or who the subject is, and often when or where. It should be in plain English." Also see:

WP:ISAWORDFOR (Wikipedia is not a dictionary): "A good encyclopedia article can and should begin with a relatively short but discrete explanation of the subject of the article (the person, place, concept, event, or 'thing' of the title)."

The lead sentence can be simplified and made to perform its assigned purpose by adapting the second sentence from the lead. The adaptation provides the basis for a new version of the first two sentences, as follows:

"In April 2019 federal attorney John Durham, at the direction of the U.S. Justice Department, began a review of the origins of the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. In December 2020, Attorney General William Barr announced that in October he had appointed Durham as a special counsel, allowing him to continue the investigation after the end of the administration of president Donald Trump."

The existing lead sentence can, in effect, be re-transplanted back into the body of the article, by placing it (with any appropriate edit tweaks) as the first sentence in the section, "Investigation into origins of FBI investigation 'Crossfire Hurricane'". The import of the sentence will not be excluded from the revised lead; the information is already contained at the start of the second paragraph in the sentence that begins, "Durham's investigation was predicated...".

In my text about Durham's appointment as special counsel, I omitted the phrasing "had secretly appointed Durham". I have seen two sources that use the word "secret" or "secretly" in this context: a statement by Rep. Adam Schiff quoted in Politico (and probably elsewhere) and a CNN article using "secret" in its reportage without quoting anyone. Both articles also reported that Barr gave a reason for delaying the announcement: to avoid influencing the upcoming election. So, it was one-sided for this article to use "secretly" without also giving the explicitly stated official reason for withholding the announcement. The information--the "secret" appointment as well as the belated justification--can both be described in the body of the article; I don't think the lead needs that level of detail. The lead certainly does not need the unbalanced description that now exists, which weakens the article's adherence to NPOV. I find other problems in the introductory section--and the article--related to accuracy and neutrality. I will address those in a separate Talk section. In this thread, I'm confining my comments to address revision of the first sentence and the description of the special counsel appointment. DonFB (talk) 10:35, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I agree the lead needs some work; it's been on my to-do list, but you and others can certainly run ahead with that. Regarding "secretly," please see 0:48 here[3]. I look forward to your other comments. soibangla (talk) 13:15, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

 Done. Feel free to tweak. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:06, 24 May 2023 (UTC)