It’s been a week since the Durham report’s astounding disclosures of the dishonesty and misdeeds of the FBI and the press has been filled with all kinds of reactions save for one — not the slightest sense of contrition from the Democrats who colluded in the effort to frame President Trump. Not from the pols, nor from the Democratic press. Not from the FBI itself. The silence is deafening, which is the biggest story of all.We can understand why Democrats are trying to brush Mr. Durham’s findings under the rug. The more than 300 pages of the special counsel’s report show that “There was no collusion between Mr. Trump or the Trump campaign and Russia,” Michael Barone notes in our columns. “There was no valid basis for the FBI investigation.” The Steele dossier, he adds, “was a figment of the imagination of a dodgy Washington-based apparatchik.”Yet information derived from this groundless investigation was passed on, by the ex-director of the CIA, John Brennan, to the highest levels of our government, including President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Attorney General Lynch. “Perhaps someone in the press might want to ask one or two of them about it,” Mr. Barone writes, “and whether they still believe the Russia collusion story.” Based on the remarks of top Democrats so far, we’re not likely to get a substantive response. A “huge nothingburger” and “flat-out wrong” are the words Capitol Hill Democrats used to describe the Durham report to the Washington Examiner. “Much ado about nothing,” is how the former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and one of the lead inquisitors of Mr. Trump, Jerrold Nadler, summed up the findings.“He’s giving a lot of his own opinions,” Mr. Nadler said, “and I disagree with him saying there was no evidence of collusion.” Congressman Jamie Raskin, who worked on Trump’s second impeachment trial, doubles down on the view that Mr. Trump is a pawn of President Putin. “Donald Trump acts like his intern,” he quipped. A “huge mega-flop” and a “wild goose chase” are how Mr. Raskin appraises Mr. Durham’s investigation. Speaker Pelosi has fallen silent on Mr. Durham’s report, while the Inspector Javert of Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, Adam Schiff, calls it “flawed” and a “wasted effort.” Yet Mr. Schiff, who is looking to replace Senator Feinstein in the upper chamber, will have to explain to Golden State voters why in 2017 he saw “more than circumstantial evidence” of collusion between Russia and Mr. Trump in the 2016 election. It’s hard to say which is more objectionable, the silence of the Democrats — or the denial. In that respect, there was a preview of this “move along, folks, nothing to see here” mentality back in February when a pillar of the liberal establishment, the Columbia Journalism Review, published an extensive account by Jeff Gerth of how the press mishandled the Trump-Russia collusion story by “going all in on efforts to catalogue Trump as a threat to the country.” At the time, we noted the eerie silence and lack of reflection in the press, which had taken upon itself to sabotage Mr. Trump’s campaign — and presidency — with crusading zeal. It was the Times that in 2016 endorsed jettisoning the sine qua non of journalism, objectivity, to cover Mr. Trump. Forget “fairness,” the Times’ press columnist, Jim Rutenberg, argued, when covering this “abnormal and potentially dangerous candidate.”Far from rebuking Mr. Rutenberg, the Times’ managing editor, Dean Baquet, said he’d “nailed it.” Mr. Gerth concluded that this failure to cover Mr. Trump fairly spurred a collapse in the press’ credibility, borne out by polls like Gallup’s showing just seven percent of Americans trust the press “a great deal.” So it’s no surprise that, in the aftermath of the damning Durham report, the press is as eager as the Democrats to maintain a code of silence.________To include Congressman Schiff’s comment this editorial was updated from the bulldog.
