Trump officials confess the president's pet Obama conspiracy theory has been a total waste of time: report

According to The Daily Beast, allies of President Donald Trump are admitting that the president's efforts to push the "Russiagate" conspiracy theory have fallen flat.

"Trump and his aides, in recent weeks, have recognized that the public isn’t captivated by the Breitbart-friendly accounts of uncovered notes from former CIA officials four years ago, according to two sources familiar with the private complaints," reported Asawin Suebsang and Spencer Ackerman. "Other political advisers don’t even think it’s worth the bother at this point. Some senior Trump aides have privately insisted that amplifying the inquiry from special prosecutor John Durham is a waste of time, at least electorally. 'It is not going to move any votes that aren’t already in our column,' one said."

All of this adds to Trump's frustration, said the report: "Another source with knowledge of the president’s griping on the matter said that there was at least one instance in the past two months when President Trump had flipped through cable-news channels looking for coverage of the probe one day, only to voice his irritation when he couldn’t find any."

The premise of the conspiracy theory is that officials in the intelligence community teamed up with Hillary Clinton to spy on Trump's campaign and cook up the basis for the Russia investigation. In recent days, Trump's Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has declassified documents purporting to support this narrative, but at least some of it appears to be Russian disinformation.

Some of Trump's allies had been banking on the Durham investigation to provide the smoking gun for the narrative. But Attorney General William Barr has acknowledged this report won't even be available before the election anyway.