© TASS/Zuma/Rmv

Election campaign of 2016 saw former US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s staff fabricate a story about Donald Trump's links to Russia but the FBI opened no investigation, special counsel John Durham says in a report. Based on allegations of the Clinton campaign, FBI agents spied upon the Republican candidate Trump's staff members.

"In this separate matter involving a purported Clinton campaign plan, the FBI never opened any type of inquiry, issued any taskings, employed any analytical personnel, or produced any analytical products in connection with the information," Durham’s 300-page document reads. The American intelligence is also said to have had no information that anyone affiliated with the former president had ever contacted representatives of the Kremlin or Russian intelligence.

Commenting upon the released report acknowledging the lack of evidence of his links to Russia in the 2016 elections, ex-US President Donald Trump wrote on the Truth Social network that Americans were deceived. "After extensive research, Special Counsel John Durham concludes the FBI never should have launched the Trump-Russia Probe! In other words, the American Public was scammed," he said.

Now, if we follow John Durham’s report, the former US leader and his associates were found innocent in this whole matter. The same thing was stated by the country's Attorney General William Barr, who accounted to American lawmakers for the report by the Robert Mueller commission, a special body created to investigate Trump's possible ties with Russia and the 45th US president’s obstruction of justice.

"The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election," Barr wrote in his letter to the Congress. "While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him", he added, providing evidence for each of the dubious episodes, leaving the case to Prosecutor General’s discretion. Having consulted with his deputy, Barr considered it impossible to talk about justice obstruction and judged the president to be innocent.

Notably, former Prosecutor General Mueller’s team has been preparing its report for 675 days, and Barr promised to immediately tell lawmakers about its contents. Still, the entire text is not going to be published because of confidential information it contains. By the way, the text of Prosecutor General's letter with investigation details is publicly available on the internet. William Barr also promised not to send any new indictments to court. This implies that Trump's inner circle — including his son Eric or son-in-law Jared Kushner (ex-adviser) — won’t be accused of cooperating with Russia.

Interestingly, the special commission’s wrapped-up work does not mean Donald Trump and his close associates have nothing to fear anymore. American investigators proceed with their efforts beyond the Mueller commission: in particular, cases of illegal donations to Trump's inaugural campaign (in order to win his favor), fraud in the Trump Organization and financial irregularities during the election campaign are being investigated. Key endeavors along this track belong to the Prosecutor's Office of New York’s Southern District.

Official Moscow has repeatedly rejected unreasonable and uncorroborated allegations regarding its ties with Donald Trump, calling them part of the US domestic struggle. Commenting on John Durham's report, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov noted that the US investigation confirms the incongruity of relevant accusations.

He said the following: "If you remember, back then we most resolutely denied any accusations in this regard. This is the first point. Secondly, this is not the first time that the Americans have launched a very complex and large-scale investigation, and then in the investigation they come to the conclusion that there is no Russian interference [in US affairs]. This is absolutely not for the first time, don’t you forget. Those involved in the probes admit the absurdity of anti-Russian allegations voiced at various government levels in the US."

Conclusions drawn in Durham’s report and by the Mueller commission are indeed vital in establishing truth about Trump's ties with Russia and our country's interference in presidential elections of 2016. But we journalists are more interested in what the American media did in this regard, as they unanimously trumpeted Moscow's interference and Trump's ties with the Kremlin, except for the Fox News alone, perhaps. The New York Times (NYT) and The Washington Post (WP) were particularly zealous in this, having openly supported Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and sought the Republican hopeful’s failure.

And now these outlets turn out to have lied blatantly to the American public. Paradoxically, NYT and WP journalists got the National Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 2018 "for deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the president-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration."

In a series of pieces (some 20 of them) the two papers "made a good case" for Russia’s use of a whole army of trolls and "fake Americans" to affect the minds of US citizens, making them eventually elect Trump president. Moreover, journalists claimed that FBI head James Comey was fired because of attempts to investigate the Russian trace in Trump's victory, with many more conclusions "about Russia's interference in US internal affairs."

Maggie Astor wrote an interesting essay for the NYT about Durham report’s release. It would be better to hear from one of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists but it wasn't meant to be... The outlet seems to be still wet behind the ears when it comes to this kind of matters. And Astor did really play nice, writing that John Durham's report provided little new information or high-profile revelations, with everything known long since. At the same time, she did not say a word about the way NYT was misleading its readers.

Willingness to sweep things under the rug is quite explicable. Having fallen flat on their faces, NYT and WP do need to somehow restore reputation. Now, their "honest" and "independent" reporters only have to forgo the Pulitzer Prize and repent to readers for having carefully prepared materials "in the public interest", which turned out to be a mere hoax. Still, the outlook is pretty dim…