The Trump-Russia scandal denialists are at it again.

In a rational world, no one would argue that Vladimir Putin did not successfully attack the 2016 election to help Trump and that Trump and his campaign did not aid and abet that assault. Just read the massive report issued last year by the GOP-led Senate intelligence committee and the earlier (and more limited) reports from special counsel Robert Mueller or the US intelligence community. The evidence is overwhelming. Yet Trump truthers continue to gaslight the public by insisting that any discussion of this attack perpetrates a grand and nefarious hoax. And in their effort to defend Trump against the charge that he betrayed the United States, they are getting more desperate. Just look at their latest exertion.

It’s focused on John Durham. Remember him? In the spring of 2019, then–Attorney General Bill Barr, acting as Trump’s consigliere, appointed Durham, a US attorney in Connecticut, to investigate the origins of the FBI’s investigation of the Kremlin’s clandestine operation against the 2016 election and the interactions between the Trump campaign and Russia. Then, in October 2020, Barr secretly named him special counsel. Throughout this time, Trumpworld counted on Durham to prove Trump’s phony contention that the Russia scandal was a fraud concocted by his political foes and the Deep State. And they had reason to believe Barr’s handpicked investigator was going to come through. When the Justice Department inspector general released a report in late 2019 concluding that the FBI’s Trump-Russia inquiry had been appropriately initiated, Durham put out an extraordinary statement saying, “We do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the F.B.I. case was opened.” As the New York Times noted then, “The statement seemed to support comments made half an hour earlier by Mr. Barr, who assailed what he called ‘an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign,’ based ‘on the thinnest of suspicions.’”

It appeared the fix was in. Trump and his cult saw Durham as the guy who would prove Russiagate was the witch hunt Trump always insisted it was. They eagerly awaited his bombshells...which never came. In a tweet last December—when Trump was still allowed to tweet—he declared, “Where the hell is the Durham report?”

Last Thursday, Durham finally made his long-awaited move—and it was a dud. He indicted Washington lawyer Michael Sussmann, an expert on cybersecurity, for allegedly making a false statement to James Baker, then a top FBI lawyer, during a meeting in 2016. In that meeting Sussmann shared with Baker information indicating a possible computer link between servers registered to Alfa Bank, a large private Russian bank, and Trump’s company. (A group of cyber-researchers had analyzed technical data that suggested to them that the bank and Trump’s company might have a secret communication channel.) Durham charges that in this conversation Sussmann lied to Baker by stating he was not working for a client related to this issue, though Sussmann was at the time representing a tech executive involved in the Alfa Bank–Trump research effort and billing his time on this matter to the Clinton campaign. Sussmann’s lawyers insist he never told Baker he was not representing a client and that the billing records are wrong.

Durham’s case is sketchy, and the evidence is paper-thin, as former US attorney Barbara McQuade has noted. Still, proponents of the Russia hoax-hoax embraced the extremely limited Sussmann indictment as slam-dunk proof the Russia scandal was a Deep State and media con. In a statement, Trump crowed that the indictment “revealed” the “years of Fake Russia, Russia, Russia stories.” On Twitter, Emerald Robinson, a MAGA-journalist who used to work for OAN and is now a White House correspondent for Newsmax, snarkily declared that reporters who had covered the Russia scandal—including yours truly—had “gone missing” following the Sussmann indictment. (On Friday, as some of you might know, I was busy writing about nuclear weapons and the terrifying notion that an unhinged president could launch a nuclear attack on his own.) On Fox News, commentator Dan Bongino exclaimed that the indictment showed the Russia "collusion hoax" was "larger than we thought." And in his newsletter, Glenn Greenwald, a longtime purveyor of the witch-hunt conspiracy theory, brayed that the Sussmann charges were an “indictment of the Russiagate wing of the U.S. media” and “the second allegation of criminal impropriety regarding Russiagate's origins.” (Two such allegations? Stay tuned.)

Sorry to break it to the left-right duo of Robinson and Greenwald (and others), but the Sussmann indictment has nothing to do with the origins of the FBI investigation. As has been well-documented—and substantiated by that Justice Department IG report—the FBI’s Russia inquiry was launched on July 31, 2016. Sussmann, according to Durham, met with Baker on September 19, 2016, when the FBI’s probe was already underway. (The second allegation that Greenwald mentioned refers to the case of FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted to doctoring an email in June 2017 to justify a secret surveillance warrant in the case—an illegal and troubling act but one that had nothing to do with kick-starting the investigation. It occurred almost a year into the investigation.)

Whatever Sussmann said to Baker, it was unrelated to the initiation of the probe. And the discussion about a suspected cyber-link between Trump’s business and a Russian bank was a sideshow to the scandal. The FBI eventually concluded there was nothing to this data. The Mueller report did not even address the topic. The Senate intelligence committee report stated, “Based on the FBI's assessment, the Committee did not find that the [cyber] activity reflected the existence of substantive or covert communications between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization personnel. However, the Committee also could not positively determine an intent or purpose that would explain the unusual activity.”

The Trumpers and anti-Russiagate propagandists keep grasping for straws. They are like QAnoners waiting for Trump’s reinstatement as commander in chief. Perhaps, one day, Durham will issue a report that backs up his critique of the IG report. But even if Durham were to find evidence of inappropriate actions related to the FBI’s decision to investigate Trump associates in connection with Putin’s attack, that would not change the fundamentals: Putin mounted a covert assault on American democracy to assist Trump, and the Trump camp, which falsely denied this attack was happening while it was secretly interacting with Russian operatives, was complicit. And after Trump became president, he continued to cover for Putin by falsely asserting that Moscow had not intervened.

The Russian hoax-hoaxers—and essentially the entire GOP—refuse to acknowledge this reality. Even with Trump out of office, they still just can’t handle the truth of his treachery.

Got any thoughts on why the Trump truthers can’t let go of the witch-hunt conspiracy? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com.

What to Read, Watch, and Listen To

The Chair. It seems like academia can be a tough place these days. There are various reckonings underway regarding race, gender, and class, and all this is occurring in a hothouse environment that traditionally (and supposedly) has valued the free exchange of ideas but now, like the rest of the world, is influenced and shaped by social media and insta-reactions. So I tip my mortarboard to Amanda Peet and Annie Julia Wyman, the co-creators of Netflix’s The Chair, for having the nerve to take all this on in their six-part comedy-drama. (Or is it a drama-comedy?) The series stars Sandra Oh as Professor Ji-Yoon Kim, an English professor at the fictional Ivy-ish Pembroke College, who becomes the first woman to chair the department, which happens to be disintegrating. Enrollment is down, and the dean wants to can the older, higher-salaried but far less popular profs. Meanwhile, those seasoned older faculty members don’t appreciate—and are contemptuous of—the teaching styles and ideas of their younger colleagues, particularly a Black female assistant professor on the cusp of tenure who makes Moby Dick more relatable to the students by having them compose spoken-word poetry about Ahab and the big whale. By the way, Kim is navigating life as a single mother with a hyper-precocious but anxiety-ridden adopted grade-schooler and a judgmental Korean American family. And then there’s this: Her love interest, fellow English professor Bill Dobson, the cool teacher all the students adore but who is unable to get his life together since his wife died, makes a stupid remark in the classroom about Hitler (replete with Heil Hitler salute) that is recorded by his students and goes viral. Kim must also deal with a clueless “David Duchovny”—played by David Duchovny—who is selected to give an important guest lecture. (Duchovny and “Duchovny” both wrote a college thesis titled The Schizophrenic Critique of Pure Reason in Beckett’s Early Novels and earned a master’s of arts in English literature from Yale.) This may sound like too much crazy campus chaos for a mere six half-hour episodes, but the show works as drama, as comedy, and as social satire, deftly juggling various perspectives and hot-button issues without dropping any of the balls. As could be predicted, Oh is a joy to watch, and Jay Duplass aces it as the hapless Dobson. Peet and Wyman nailed the assignment.

Got any recommendations for me? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com.

Read Previous Issues of This Land

September 18, 2021: Hey Marco Rubio and Glenn Greenwald, this is the real problem with Milley, Trump, and nuclear weapons; Dumbass Comment of the Week (did Barack Obama really kill rock ’n’ roll with racial politics?); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™ (a new toy!); and more.

September 14, 2021: Will the new Bill-and-Monica television series spur a reappraisal of the Clinton scandal?; a stunning new Holocaust movie you can’t see—yet; one of the best articles ever about a family and its dog; and more.

September 11, 2021: How Trump’s conspiracy theories are killing people in West Virginia and elsewhere; more 9/11 reflections; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Special Confederacy Edition); a look at HBO’s very odd White Lotus; MoxieCam™; and more.

September 8, 2021: 9/11 plus 20: a remembrance and a thank-you; the chilling climate crisis warning in HBO’s Reminiscence; and more.

September 3, 2021: Texas shows how Trumpism has become fascistic vigilantism; Dumbass Comment of the Week; Rock ’n’ Roll Flashback (how I was popped by Iggy Pop); MoxieCam™; and more.

August 31, 2021: How a 1954 analysis perfectly explains today’s Republican Party; on his new album, James McMurtry captures the spirit of Warren Zevon; and more.

August 20, 2021: Yes, there are laws Trump may have broken while trying to overturn the election; Dumbass Comment of the Week (special Afghanistan edition); Mailbag (should we report on Trump’s inane remarks?); MoxieCam™; and more.

August 16, 2021: The Afghanistan debacle: How Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden bamboozled the American public; the “Banana King” of Wellfleet, Massachusetts; and more.

August 13, 2021: Hey lefties, stop telling me not to report on Trump’s dangerous comments; Dumbass Comment of the Week; Rock ’n’ Roll Flashback: Sting abuse at a Police show; MoxieCam™; and more.

August 10, 2021: Look who’s organizing a pro-January 6 rally at the Capitol; an inspiring tale from the Myanmar jungle; the best album of the year so far; and more.

Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com.