BREAKING NEWS: DOJ promises to give Durham Report "exactly the amount of attention it deserves"

Following the release of a report by Special Counsel John Durham into the FBI investigation of Donald Trump’s connections to Russia during the 2016 US Presidential campaign, the Department of Justice vowed to give the report “exactly the amount of attention it so, so justly deserves.”

Durham—who was appointed as Special Counsel during the Trump Administration by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to probe the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s Russia ties in 2016—issued his report on Monday. The report issued harsh criticisms against the FBI’s bases for launching its inquiry against Trump, although it did not make any recommendations for any further criminal indictments of any individuals. Durham did prosecute two individuals during the course of his investigation for process-related offenses; both trials resulted in swift acquittals.

“When we received [the Durham Report], the first thing I heard from my superiors was, ‘This is going straight to the circular file!’” noted one DOJ official.

“Er, um…circulating file,” the official quickly corrected himself with a nervous laugh. “You know, a file that, uh, circulates around the office, so everyone can get a chance to read it and be all like, ‘Oh! Wow! This is such a well-written report!’ I mean…that works, right? Yes? No?”

Critics of the Durham Report have criticized it as a blatant effort to whitewash concerns about the relationship the 2016 Trump campaign appeared to have with numerous individuals and incidents associated with the Russian government, including a campaign meeting with Russian officials offering to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton, Trump’s campaign manager providing Kremlin oligarchs with polling data, and Trump himself on live television appearing to encourage Russian hackers to infiltrate Clinton’s campaign computer data.

Some within the DOJ, however, were slightly more charitable towards Durham’s efforts.

“John’s like one of those terminally ill Make-a-Wish kids whose dream it is to be a major league baseball player,” one source said. “So they give him a uniform, bring him out onto the field, soft toss him a few balls during batting practice, the whole shebang. I mean, no way in hell do they actually bring him into a real game--because that would be absurd--but you do what you have to do to make him feel good about himself in what is otherwise a terrible, terrible situation for him.”

Others angled for more of a constructive criticism type of approach.

“Four years and seven million dollars later, and what did we get?” a DOJ official said. “Well, we got a grand total of two trials where the respective juries took about as much time to decide the cases were nonsense as one would take to watch an episode of HGTV’s House Hunters. So, in other words, you had a grand total of 24 people who were deprived of the opportunity to see if John and Sally from Omaha decide to go with the suburban new build, or that classic craftsman right in the heart of the city. And that’s a shame. But, hey, I guess the man tried. Can’t fault him there, right?”

A few in the DOJ went so far as to compliment Durham’s choice of font for his report, and praised him on his spelling and grammar proofreading abilities.

“306 pages and not once—not once!--does he end a single sentence with a preposition,” one individual remarked. “Sure, the ultimate legacy of Durham’s report may be that it was nothing more than a bald-faced attempt to re-write history and manufacture an alternate narrative that a major party’s presidential campaign wasn’t actually blatantly corrupted by a hostile foreign power. But at least his ninth-grade English teacher has something to be proud of…err, I mean…something of which to be proud.”

At least one high-ranking official within the DOJ went on record finding that the Durham Report could prove very useful in the end.

“I promise you this, I fully intend give the Durham Report the proper weight that it deserves,” the official said. “I mean that literally. It will be a wonderful paper weight for my desk. The stupid thing works absolutely beautifully for that purpose.”

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