If Durham is saying there was nothing there, why was a criminal investigation opened in October ?

[OnDoutside]

I'm being obtuse in asking that question, when we all know who got it opened, but this is from the failing NYT

Justice Dept. Is Said to Open Criminal Inquiry Into Its Own Russia Investigation

WASHINGTON — For more than two years, President Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it. Now, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into how it all began.

Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr to a criminal inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter. The move gives the prosecutor running it, John H. Durham, the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to convene a grand jury and to file criminal charges.

The opening of a criminal investigation is likely to raise alarms that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies. Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director under whose watch agents opened the Russia inquiry, and has long assailed other top former law enforcement and intelligence officials as partisans who sought to block his election. Mr. Trump has made clear that he sees the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies. That view factors into the impeachment investigation against him, as does his long obsession with the origins of the Russia inquiry. House Democrats are examining in part whether his pressure on Ukraine to open investigations into theories about the 2016 election constituted an abuse of power.

SNIP

As Mr. Durham’s investigation moves forward, the Justice Department inspector general is wrapping up his own inquiry into aspects of the F.B.I.’s conduct in the early days of the Russia investigation. Among other things, the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, is scrutinizing the application for a warrant to wiretap Mr. Page. Mr. Barr has not said whether Mr. Durham’s investigation grew out of the inspector general’s findings or something that prosecutors unearthed while doing interviews or reviewing documents. But the inspector general’s findings, which are expected to be made public in coming weeks, could contribute to the public’s understanding of why Mr. Durham might want to investigate national security officials’ activities in 2016. Though the inspector general’s report deals with sensitive information, Mr. Horowitz anticipates that little of it will be blacked out when he releases the document publicly, he wrote in a letter sent to lawmakers on Thursday and obtained by The New York Times.

More at

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/politics/john-durham-criminal-investigation.html

[kentuck]

1. It was all political and for Donald Trump.

There was no reason to open an investigation.

[OnDoutside]

4. Yes, more flim-flam by Barr.

[Midnight Writer]

2. The same reason we had a Special Task Force to investigate immigrant voting.

[Sneederbunk]

3. It is the announcement that matters.

[NewJeffCT]

6. agreed

they probably sent fundraising emails pointing that out

[maxrandb]

11. Ding-Ding-Ding

The announcement is all that is needed for Russian and Retrumplican Bots to spread it around Facebook.

[democratisphere]

5. The criminals are investigating the investigators and the innocent.

Only in America!

[Imperialism Inc.]

7. Mostly optics? But also maybe the guy that altered a document?

The IG report is supposed to identify a document that was altered in the Carter Page FISA application. Apparently the person who did so admitted to it. Of course we have no idea if this is actually a big deal or something minor, but it could serve as a pretext.

[Wellstone ruled]

8. Wasn't the change made a

grammatical one? Something about meaning of a phrase or sentence.

[Imperialism Inc.]

9. I hadn't read any more details past the day the story broke on CNN.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/21/politics/fbi-fisa-russia-investigation/index.html

A former FBI lawyer is under criminal investigation after allegedly altering a document related to 2016 surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser, several people briefed on the matter told CNN.

...
Horowitz turned over evidence on the allegedly altered document to John Durham, the federal prosecutor appointed early this year by Attorney General William Barr to conduct a broad investigation of intelligence gathered for the Russia probe by the CIA and other agencies, including the FBI. The altered document is also at least one focus of Durham's criminal probe.

It's unknown how significant a role the altered document played in the FBI's investigation of Page. The alterations were significant enough to have shifted the document's meaning and came up during a part of Horowitz's FISA review where details were classified, according to the sources. It did not change Horowitz's finding that the FISA application had a legal basis, The Washington Post first reported.

[wiggs]

10. all this is designed to give gop senators some reason to vote no. 'there's an open

investigation on the whole Russia investigation....how can I POSSIBLY vote to convict while there's an ongoing criminal matter???'

[pnwmom]

12. Because there was that lower level guy who altered an email. And they had to have someone

they could point to, so they could order a criminal investigation.