John Durham's admission Republicans are ‘out of their minds’ means he must shut down ‘sham’ investigation: analysis

The special counsel appointed during the Trump administration to investigate GOP complaints about the origins into the investigations into his Russian ties should shut down his probe, Michael Tomasky argued on Monday.

Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, noted Durham issued a walk back after one of his filings was taken out of context by right wing media.

He translated Durham's statement as meaning, "Fox News and the rest of the right wing media, not to mention Trump himself and his Republican cultists, are out of their minds."

"Let me explain. Durham issued a filing earlier this month that seemed to suggest, to people who can’t read, that the Hillary Clinton campaign was spying on the Trump campaign. The New York Post went with 'Hillary the Spy' on its cover. Fox went berserk. Trump suggested some Clinton aides deserved to be executed (no, really). Jim Jordan (R-Berchtesgaden) echoed the sentiment," he wrote. "It’s all fiction, straight out of the Josef Goebbels School of Political Communication. If you are doing X—setting fire to the Reichstag, say, or cooperating with the Kremlin to win a presidential election—you accuse your opponent of doing the thing that you’re doing."

Tomasky praised Durham for the walk back, writing that he "at least this smidgeon of integrity."

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But that was not enough, in Tomasky's mind, for Durham to correct the situation.

"If he had genuine integrity, he’d shut the investigation down, save the taxpayers their money, and settle back into prosecuting mobsters in Connecticut instead of enabling mobsters in Washington. He’s been at this for almost three years now, and he has indicted one person," he explained. "He has the power to shut down a lot of this pernicious madness. If he steps forward this spring or summer to say, You know, I’ve been at this three years now, and I have seen no evidence of any conspiracy against Donald Trump, he’ll be rendering a great service unto this beleaguered nation."

Read the full analysis.