Former Attorney General Bill Barr is still backing Special Counsel John Durham, despite the jury returning a not guilty verdict in the case against Michael Sussmann for lying to the FBI about not having a client when he brought them the debunked Alfa Bank smear against the Trump team.

Barr praised Durham and the job he did. He also said that while Durham didn’t get a conviction against Sussmann, he brought out some important truths.

Barr: I’m very proud of Durham and I do take responsibility for his appointment. pic.twitter.com/odKy2FaqKG

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 1, 2022

“I’m very proud of John Durham. And I do take responsibility for his appointment,” Barr told Fox News host Jesse Watters. “I think he and his team did an exceptionally able job both digging out very important facts and presenting a compelling case to the jury.” [….]

“First, I think he crystallized the central role played by the Hillary campaign and launching as a dirty trick the whole Russiagate collusion narrative and fanning the flames of it,” he said. “And, second, I think he exposed really dreadful behavior by the supervisors in the FBI, the senior ranks of the FBI, who knowingly used this information to start an investigation of Trump and then duped their own agents by lying to them and refusing to tell them what the real source of that information was. And that was appalling.”

Barr continued.

Pressed by Watters on the frustration of people who “feel like they were cheated out of accountability” by Durham not getting a conviction, Barr stressed that criminal liability isn’t the only factor at play in the special counsel inquiry.

“People have done, I think, a very good job trying to develop this case in the face of very strong headwinds,” Barr said. “And part of this operation is to try to get the real story out. And I have said from the beginning, you know, if we can get convictions, if they are achievable, then John Durham will achieve them. But the other aspect of this is to get the story out. And I think the Danchenko prosecution is going to further amplify these themes and the role that the FBI leadership played in this, which is increasingly looking fishy and explicable.” [….]

“The FBI was aware that the primary source of it — they had suspected of being a Russian intelligence agent,” Barr said. “So the prospect that this was Russian disinformation fed through Hillary’s campaign is very real and was never looked into by Mueller even though he had all the relevant facts.”

Barr had previously also termed “seditious” what was done to the Trump team and the United States on the head of this.

Perhaps cold comfort when we’re looking to hold people accountable and when we wish Barr would have brought all this out when he was in office. But Barr is right that there’s a greater point that was proven here — that the Clinton campaign was behind smearing Trump to the media and Sussmann spread this to the FBI. Mook admitted Clinton authorized the smear to the media. So they can no longer get around it.

The Danchenko indictment is still pending and it has appeared that Durham is trying to lay the groundwork to get the smaller folks first to flip on the bigger fish. Danchenko was the key source behind the Steele dossier and that prosecution is likely to bring out more about the start of the investigation.

Danchenko, a United States-based and Soviet Union-born researcher, allegedly relied on a network of Russian contacts and undermined key Trump-Russia collusion claims when interviewed by the FBI. He was previously investigated as a possible threat to national security due to potential Russian intelligence contacts, per documents declassified by Barr and released in September 2020. Danchenko anonymously sourced a claim about Trump 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort to longtime Clinton ally Chuck Dolan, who spent many years, including 2016, doing work for Russian businesses and the Russian government, according to Durham’s false statements charges.

We also may yet see a “Durham report” that lays it all out because Durham’s appointment laid out that he would submit a final report for “public dissemination.”

But guess who piped up, spreading disinformation about Barr’s remarks? Disgraced, fired former FBI official Peter Strzok.

Bill Barr brazenly saying the quiet part out loud:

Durham using criminal prosecutions to get out a false Russia narrative is “far more important” than actually achieving convictions. https://t.co/yksmxB2IFx

— Peter Strzok (@petestrzok) June 2, 2022

Durham’s charge wasn’t only to get “convictions”; it was also to get to the truth and he’s done that. That’s what the Clinton team and the people on the left are upset about. Strzok claiming that Durham was getting out a “false Russia narrative” after all the evidence presented that showed the Clinton team’s involvement in the smear is laughable and once again, it shows how compromised he was. He can’t handle the truth.

Strzok got leveled by many for his spin, including by Svetlana Lokhova. We’ve written before about Lokhova, here.

.@petestrzok you get your friends to describe you as a top spy catcher.
Documentary evidence shows you could not find your way out of a paper bag, you are just corrupt and incompetent.
You whored yourself to the highest bidder out and are a disgrace to your profession. https://t.co/GhW7IPob5f

— Svetlana Lokhova (@RealSLokhova) June 2, 2022

But his response shows how invested they are in still spreading bull, even after the truth has been exposed.