I don’t buy Durham’s excusing FBI agents as good people

I have not spent any time today listening to John Durham’s testimony, which I find fundamentally uninteresting. He managed to craft a report that, even as it hinted at a damning coup attempt within the government against the duly elected president, nevertheless gave everyone involved what amounted to a pass. Maybe it’s that jaundiced attitude that leaves me unimpressed with the fact that Durham claims that most FBI agents are really good people.

As I often do, I turned to the Daily Mail, which is more honest than the American news outlets:

Former special counsel John Durham revealed that FBI agents have apologized to him for their handling of the Trump-Russia probe as he confirmed he saw bias among key officials in charge of the investigation like Peter Strzok.

‘I have had any number of FBI agents who I’ve worked with over the years, some are retired, some are still in place, who have come to me and apologized for the manner in which that investigation was undertaken,’ Durham revealed at the top of the high-profile Judiciary hearing.

To him, that proved that a majority of the FBI are ‘good, hard-working people’ who ‘swear under their oaths to abide by the law.’

‘Our findings are sobering,’ said Durham. ‘Having spent 40 years plus as a federal prosecutor, they are particularly sobering to me.’

First of all, “any number” is a meaningless statement. That could be three. Second, their secretive little apologies to Durham mean nothing. What we’re learning is that, from the top down, the DOJ and the FBI are corrupt. And we’re also learning that the men and women who work for it, or who retired during this corrupt era, are either complicit in the corruption or too afraid to do or say anything.

If the DOJ/FBI were the law firm I once worked for, where a corrupt partner bilked clients, and everyone stayed silent, it’s easy enough to give a pass to the ones who stayed silent. After all, this was one law firm, which wasn’t going to change the world, and the employees who knew what was going on had families that relied on them, student loans (which, in those days, had to be paid off), mortgages, health problems, etc. The downside risk of squealing on one attorney just didn’t seem worth it.

However, the DOJ and FBI are not one little law firm, one school, or one corporation. They are at the very heart of the federal criminal justice system; they sit on more secrets than we can imagine (Jeffrey Epstein’s little black book and, theoretically, whatever is making Chief Justice John Roberts jump when required, etc.); and they used their massive, unfettered authority to try to take down the president of the United States.

Under those circumstances, when we’re staring at a festering carbuncle at the very heart of the American government, it’s not okay to stay silent. This is bigger than an individual’s needs. This requires moral courage, patriotism, and decency—and not a single one of those agents who quietly whispered into Durham’s ear did a damn thing. They didn’t blow the whistle when these historic crimes were being committed, and they haven’t come forward since then to say, “Yeah, it’s true. Something really is rotten in the State of Denmark.”

So, no, Mr. Durham, I’m not impressed. Those agents who apologized to you may be hard-working but, given the corruption lying at the center of our constitutional republic, they are not good.

UPDATE: Within a short time of publishing the above, I was strongly reminded of DOJ/FBI issues when I listened to the opening monologue in Matt Walsh’s video podcast which reminded me, in turn, of Tucker’s podcast about the DOJ’s and FBI’s treatment of Hunter Biden.