continued from page with Russia. ….

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with Russia. (Durham has indicted Sussmann for lying to the FBI to try to hide his connection to the Clinton campaign.)

Durham pointedly refers to what Sussmann was hawking as “purported data.” This operation was of a piece with the spurious Steele dossier that helped launch the FBI probe of the Trump campaign that morphed into the Mueller investigation.

Or, to use Durham’s terms, purported data drove purported investigations and ungodly amounts of purported journalism, all building toward purported collusion that eventually, under the weight of facts and logic, came to absolutely nothing.

If anyone involved in this investigative and journalistic fiasco is embarrassed by it, they haven’t shown it. If any of them thinks it’s bad practice to spy on a campaign and a newly elected president to use the resulting information to try to gull U.S. government agencies, they haven’t said so. If any of them are thinking “never again,” they won’t admit it.

Until they do, maybe they should temper their preachiness about threats to our system and norms.

Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.

(c) 2022 by King Features Synd., Inc.