The Deep State stabbed Donald Trump in the back during the 2016 election

You don’t have to read all of special counsel John Durham’s report to get to the heart of the matter: On the third page of the executive summary, he writes: “The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign.” 

There you have it, the final verdict on the 2016 presidential election: A corrupt FBI tried to rig the outcome by favoring one candidate over the other.

Thank God it failed, but not before Republican Donald Trump and others on his team got smeared in a vicious probe while Democrat Hillary Clinton and her team got free passes on several issues that potentially involved criminal conduct.

That’s the bottom line and everything else is detail.

Damning report

Durham’s damning conclusion must never be forgotten.

We now know, without doubt, that Barack Obama’s Justice Department and officials from other parts of the government meddled in the election and tried to pick the president regardless of the wishes of 130 million voters. 

Obama knew what was going on and so did his vice president, Joe Biden.

That, too, is now settled forever.

It is to Durham’s credit that he lays all this out without emotion.

In a Joe Friday tone of “Just-the-facts, Ma’am,” he delivers breathtaking statements, writing that the FBI and Department of Justice “failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law.”

On another issue, he says that, despite worrisome reports about improper use of the Clinton Foundation, “both senior FBI and Department officials placed restrictions on how those matters were to be handled such that essentially no investigative activities occurred for months leading up to the election.”

The 306-page report would make for satisfying reading if it were a matter of long-ago history. But it’s too fresh and relevant to gather dust. 

Consider all that followed: a blood-lust to get Trump’s head on a platter from the left-wing media, which, feasting on FBI leaks, led to Robert Mueller’s two-year, $40 million probe. 

Despite finding no clear evidence that Trump or anyone in his campaign colluded with Russia, Mueller held his report until after Democrats won the House in the 2018 midterms, which begat a Democrat victory, which led to the phony Trump impeachment over the Ukraine phone call.

And even that list of disgraceful events doesn’t capture the complete catastrophe dirty cops James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and others at the FBI created. 

The agency is no longer trusted by tens of millions of Americans, and with good reason: the attempt to throw the election wasn’t a one-off. 

Instead, it now looks like the opening act of an era where government power is routinely used to comfort the incumbent party and afflict the opposition party.

This is the poison still circulating through the political bloodstream. 

Until it’s cleansed, there is little incentive for others not to abuse their power. After all, Clinton never paid a penalty for funding and spreading the Steele dossier, a farrago of fiction that the FBI willingly swallowed and used to spy on Trump associates. 

As Durham shows, and as Obama knew, Clinton pushed it to draw attention away from her wrongdoing of having classified documents on a private server. 

She carried out the dirtiest dirty trick in American politics, and still has the gall to claim Trump stole the election! America is lucky her deviousness was superseded by her incompetence.

The Comey crowd got fat book and TV contracts instead of prison. Crime — or at least corrupting justice — pays well if you’re of the right political persuasion. 

DOJ still politicized

Sadly, a new generation of power-hungry bureaucrats has picked up where they left off. On the day Durham’s report was made public, we learned the Justice Department allegedly ordered that the entire IRS team probing Hunter Biden be ­removed. 

The move smells like retaliation for one member of the team becoming a whistleblower and telling Congress that the president’s son was getting favored treatment. 

The timing of the removal is either tone-deaf clumsy — or a brazen declaration of war from Attorney General Merrick Garland, who apparently believes he is above the law and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, including the Republicans who control the House.

Consider also that the FBI has had Hunter’s laptop for more than four years and still hasn’t cleared him or filed charges. Nor have they followed the money and the evidence showing Joe Biden was part of the family racket. 

Trump’s feeble and foolish efforts to politicize the DOJ are child’s play next to what Biden, Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray are doing. 

Both the former president and current one were sloppy with classified documents, but only one of them has an aggressive prosecutor, his home raided and his case before a grand jury. Naturally, leaks to favored media flow like water down a hill.

Meanwhile, the current president is blessed with a prosecutor who is as sleepy as he is. Not a peep of activity about his case is heard.

There’s another trickle-down effect of 2016, too, with state prosecutors, especially in New York, turning Trump’s life and business into a morality play and giving themselves the role of avengers. State Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg both made campaign promises to prosecute Trump, and they have kept those promises.

Never mind that violent criminals run amok. Trump is their white whale.

Of all the divisions and polarization in American life, this is the one that worries me most. The unscrupulous use of law enforcement to win and keep power can destroy the system of checks and balances the Founders built into our grand experiment in self-government.

In that sense, the downplaying of Durham’s findings by the left, especially in the media, is dispiriting. They’ve been exposed, but not deterred. They twisted the truth to push their agenda yesterday and today and they’ll do it tomorrow.

How do we stop them without becoming like them?

NY Times a lyin’ king

Reader Jack Weinberg is puzzled that so many people are so easily fooled, writing: “I don’t understand how The New York Times, with its history of egregiously false reporting about many national and international figures and events, is still able to maintain an aura of truthful reporting.

“Times reporters lied to cover up atrocities by Hitler, Stalin, Castro and others, and now are covering up for Joe Biden, one of the most brazenly dishonest politicians in modern times.”

Eric, stop playing the racism card

Reader Lydia DiBello offers free advice to Mayor Adams, writing: “Please stop calling people you barely know racists because you can’t understand a different point of view, and please stop using racism as an excuse when your job becomes too hard.”