If only Barack Obama had possessed the cojones to prosecute and convict malefactors from the Bush administration for corruption and war crimes, lawless abuses of the "war on terror" and the CIA's torture regime, the Republican brand might have been so badly damaged that the party would have been unable to regroup and gain power under a Donald Trump. Leading party people would have been unavailable, in jail or tainted by disgrace.
The Obama DoJ's cautious approach was to conduct narrow investigations that declined to hold anyone responsible, and allowed Bush villains to emerge unscathed, claim vindication and hold high office again, along with sundry pardoned criminals from previous Republican administrations, e.g. odious neocons like Eliot Abrams.
The preferred instrument for these cosmetic inquiries has been John Durham, a career US Attorney who conducted superficial reviews of CIA misbehaviour at the behest of both the Bush and Obama attorneys general, each time conveniently absolving those involved.
Durham first considered the CIA's notorious destruction of torture tapes, a violation of various laws and court orders that was carefully carried out by the current CIA director, Gina Haspel. Durham's other absolution was even more shameful, letting the CIA off the hook for torture that led to death. The only CIA-related cover-up Durham didn't manage was the exculpation of the CIA's accomplices, the torture memo hacks in the Bush administration, carried out by a DoJ fixer in-house.
Curiously, John Durham has now been selected by Donald Trump's AG to conduct an investigation where the government desires an incriminatory finding, and it involves both the CIA and FBI. A cynic might say the CIA faces critical examination for - daring to investigate Trump.
If Durham had found wrongdoing in his Bush/Obama investigations, any resulting prosecutions and convictions might have been erased by Trump. Under the uniquely-American practice of a single person setting up the whole government, the president could have proceeded to resolve all staffing problems by pardoning and rehabilitating party operatives that previous governments had convicted and put away.
As it is, Trump continues to pardon undeserving rightwing martyrs, and dodgy businessmen like Conrad Black, who perspicaciously penned an adulatory biography of the president. Having few convicted Republicans left to pardon, the president now seems set on a mischievous course of pardoning accused or convicted US war criminals. More here and here.
He evidently admires their grit and determination, and has, as a model, Richard Nixon's "patriotic" intervention on behalf of William Calley. There's more history here, and a list of Trump's pardons for crimes he evidently finds acceptable or praiseworthy.
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READ THE REST OF FITCH HERE.
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