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Even CNN’s Tapper admits Durham report is ‘pretty damning’ for the FBI. Don’t forget what you did, Jake!

May 16, 2023 | | Print Article

Suddenly leftists and the media are now throwing the FBI under the bus over the Durham report which even CNN anchor Jake Tapper called “pretty damning,” while at the same time, they are blaming “confirmation bias” in the witch hunt against former President Trump.

(Video Credit: CNN)

Tapper ran a segment on Special Counsel John Durham releasing his report on Monday. While he called the report “pretty damning,” he also had former Rep. Adam Kinzinger on who blathered about “confirmation bias” as did Tapper and CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez.

He said during his show, “Regardless, the report is now here, it has dropped, and it might not have produced everything of what some Republicans hoped for … it is, regardless, devastating to the FBI, and to a degree it does exonerate Donald Trump.”

Tapper then reported something that millions of Americans have known from the beginning of this mess just before he introduced Perez, “Durham finally released his report, finding that the FBI in his view should have never launched a full investigation into possible connections between Donald Trump, his campaign, his advisers and allies, and Russia during the 2016 election.”

“And, Evan, this report, it’s more than 300 pages long. He spent about four years on it. What else did he have to find?” Tapper asked Perez, likely already knowing the answer to his scripted question.

“Well, Jake, the bottom line that John Durham finds is that you know, there was reason for the FBI to at least do some preliminary investigation, some lower-level types of investigations. But he repeatedly says that he doesn’t believe that the FBI took into account a lot of information that was, that they had in their possession,” Perez responded, laying the groundwork for more justification and blame.

“That was exculpatory?” Tapper asked him.

“That would have been exculpatory, that would have explained some of their suspicions that they have had about Donald Trump, about some of the people surrounding his campaign,” Perez replied.

Perez then stated that they had good reason to suspect Trump even though they had no evidence of wrongdoing.

“Of course, we know that you know, there was plenty of suspicions, in part because the former president brought on a person in Paul Manafort as his campaign chairman, who was deeply indebted to a Russian oligarch, somebody who was very close to the Kremlin. That is just one of the many points of data points that the FBI was following up on in why they did this investigation,” he contended.

“And the bottom line, he says, is that you know, ‘the evidence gathered in the multiple, exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the instant investigation, neither US law enforcement nor the intelligence community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencements of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.’ He’s saying, look, he spent four years looking at this. He investigated a lot of different things. The FBI made a lot of mistakes,” Perez said, neatly blaming the FBI for the political persecution of a former president.

Perez read a statement from FBI Director Chris Wray which basically claimed that the agency has already “made a lot of reforms” relevant to Durham’s criticism. In other words, we’re sorry… my bad… and it won’t happen again.

“A lot of people who follow law enforcement might not be surprised that in general, sometimes there is an overzealousness and an effort to,” Tapper stated as Perez interjected, “Confirmation bias is what Durham calls it.”

“Yeah, confirmation bias,” Tapper agreed, as if that explained everything and made it okay suddenly.

“Not political bias,” Perez falsely emphasized.

“It doesn’t only happen with presidential candidates and presidents, though. It happens with, you know,” Tapper stated as Perez added, “To the little guy.”

“To the little guys on the street. And they don’t get four-year multimillion-dollar investigations to exonerate them,” Tapper noted, further making excuses for the politicized witchhunt. “But, you know, it’s good to have accountability.”

He then turned to Kinzinger, who claimed it didn’t quite rise to the level of a witch hunt against Trump but that Republicans were right in claiming he was persecuted. Then he justified it by claiming Trump has had and still has sympathies toward Russian President Vladimir Putin. After that, he pivoted and said that his and the left’s bias against Trump should not have kept the FBI from doing its job. It was a smorgasbord of backpedaling, justification, and blame.

“Let’s start with your reaction to the Durham report. And on first blush, I mean, there’s nothing, no criminality that he found but pretty damning for the FBI,” Tapper told Kinzinger.

“Yeah, it is,” Kinzger agreed.

“I mean, I think you guys hit it on the head when you talked about confirmation bias. I mean, we went into 2016. This is the first presidential candidate, at least in my lifetime, that had expressed sympathy for Vladimir Putin. You had the Paul Manafort issues,” he stated, retreading what had previously been said.

“You remember, at the Republican convention, they pulled support for Ukraine out of the platform there. So I think a lot of people are looking going what’s going on here? And including myself, we had some real concerns with, you know, the sympathy that the former president, frankly, still has for Vladimir Putin,” Kinzinger said jabbing at Trump.

“But that shouldn’t govern what the FBI does. The FBI should not allow their, either bias on that or whatever to come to fruition. And hopefully, this report by the independent counsel will change things at the FBI. Hopefully, some stuff has already been implemented,” he concluded, attempting to deflect all the blame onto the FBI.

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