Legendary Reporter Claims Durham’s Reluctance To Probe Clinton-FBI Alliance Irked Team

Seasoned prosecutor John Durham‘s restrained approach to investigating how top FBI brass may have cozied up to Hillary Clinton‘s 2016 campaign vexed members of his special counsel team, journalist Seymour Hersh reported on Thursday.

Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner who recently faced controversy by alleging that the United States blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, wrote in his latest Substack article how the “real story” of Russiagate involves FBI officials who “chose to look the other way” when the Clinton team cooked up ways to link then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia that culminated in British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s now-discredited dossier and unfounded allegations of an Alfa Bank backchannel.

“It became evident to some members of Durham’s staff that the real story was not about whether or not Trump had pee parties in a Moscow hotel room — one of the headline-producing allegations in the Steele Dossier that consumed the Washington press corps in the aftermath of Trump’s victory in the 2016 election,” Hersh wrote. “The issue was whether the Clinton campaign, in its constant leaking of false accusations and false data, had crossed a line.”

“I was told that there was tension and frustration over Durham’s initial lack of interest, or reluctance, to go beyond his investigative mandate and look closely at the possibility that some senior FBI officials had openly joined ranks with the Clinton campaign, with its drumbeat of spurious allegations, because, in some cases, of a shared belief in the importance of a Clinton victory in the fall election,” Hersh said. “Another factor, I was told, was the possibility of promotions — even to high-level Justice Department offices — in a potential Clinton administration.”

There has already been some reporting on consternation within the Durham team’s ranks. Durham’s No. 2 prosecutor, Nora Dannehy, resigned in 2020 in what The New York Times described as a “culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics.” The newspaper also reported that two other prosecutors objected to indicting former Clinton campaign Michael Sussmann, who was acquitted last year by a D.C. jury on a charge of lying to the FBI.

The full extent of what Durham ultimately discovered about “Clinton Plan intelligence” during his years-long inquiry remains shrouded, but the Department of Justice last month released his 306-page report. It made headlines for how it heavily criticized the FBI’s investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“Durham, to his credit, did follow the leads that came to his office, but he left them in secrecy—perhaps in the Classified Appendix or perhaps completely off the record,” Hersh wrote. “He was seen by some as being mandated only to investigate FBI management shortcomings and believed the public needed a full accounting of the FBI bungling.”

“It was not clear whether Durham, had he decided to expand the parameters of his inquiry to include the implications of the intelligence about the Clinton campaign, would have been allowed to do so,” Hersh said. “As Durham himself writes, ‘any attempted prosecution premised on the Clinton Plan intelligence would face what in all likelihood would be insurmountable classification issues given the highly sensitive nature of the information itself.'”

Durham is scheduled to testify about his investigation before two committees next month. The special counsel is set to speak with the House Intelligence Committee in a closed session on June 20 and appear before the House Judiciary Committee in a public setting on June 21, according to The Washington Examiner.

IMDb Changes Rating Scale For ‘The Little Mermaid’ Following Suspected ‘Review Bombing’

IMDb changed the way it reports audience scores for the new live-action version of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” according to its website. 

The film currently has a 7.0/10 rating out of 43,000 votes on the popular movie database. This rating comes with a small disclaimer that says, “Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied.”

The note appeared on the US, Canadian, U.K., Brazilian, and Mexican “Little Mermaid” pages.

“Although we accept and consider all votes received by users, not all votes have the same impact (or ‘weight’) on the final rating,” it says on the IMDb FAQ page. “When unusual voting activity is detected, an alternate weighting calculation may be applied in order to preserve the reliability of our system. To ensure that our rating mechanism remains effective, we do not disclose the exact method used to generate the rating.”

Despite mixed reviews from critics, some industry insiders believe “The Little Mermaid” is being “review bombed,” which happens when a large number of people or a few people with multiple accounts post negative user reviews online even if they haven’t seen the work in question.

Even with negative reviews, “The Little Mermaid” cleared more than $117 million at the box office over Memorial Day weekend. Viewers praised lead actress Halle Bailey’s performance but said several parts of the film felt unnecessary, especially the unsettling live-action versions of Ariel’s sidekicks Scuttle, Sebastian, and Flounder.

The film has a 68% critic score and a 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

“Halle Bailey and Melissa McCarthy save an otherwise BLAND Disney retread,” one reviewer wrote.

“Meh. I was SO looking forward to this and while it brought moments of laughter and joy, it fell a little flat. Loved Ursula though, thought she was awesome!” another person wrote.

“Overall it didn’t stray from the original story line, but there were moments I would’ve savored more and others that felt too slow for what was going on. I’m glad I saw it, but won’t care to own it or probably ever watch it again.”

(Disclosure: The Daily Wire has announced plans for kids entertainment content.)

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