from the article.........................Ken Starr, National Pariah

What had begun as a mostly ignored investigation into a series of shady loans in a failed land deal suddenly exploded into a massive scandal involving a married President performing sex acts in the Oval Office with a woman young enough to be his daughter, and then encouraging all his close aides and friends to lie about it under oath.

It was buried at the time, but the President of the United States had opened himself up to blackmail and had ended up trying to buy Lewinsky’s silence with a series of increasingly lucrative job offers, none of which she was qualified for.

The Clintons and their key advisor, James Carville, quickly opted for a Sherman-marching-through-Georgia strategy for dealing with the scandal as a way of keeping attention off of how seriously Clinton has compromised himself.

It was decided that they would ruthlessly pillory Starr and his investigative team looking into Clinton’s perjury as ‘sex obsessed prudes’ and ‘sex inquisitors’. The attacks would be intensely personal.

The Clinton allies would chant it like a mantra that there was no real scandal here because it was all ‘just about sex’.

Whereas before such vicious scorched-earth tactics had been reserved for the multiple women who had dared to come forward and publicly talk about their liaisons with Clinton – or about his attempts to sexually force himself upon them – now they would utilize upon a Special Counsel and his staff.

The results were not pretty.

The press hounded not just Starr but all the top members of his team. And this went on for months.

Because remember, Starr had opted for complete transparency with these people. He had made himself incredibly easy to find.

And question.

And attack.

And mock.

And accuse.

All while he and his team were still in the investigative phase of their probe.

I remember seeing several times in news reports CNN and other news media outlets camped out on the street in front of Starr’s house, just so they could scream questions at the bespectacled prosecutor with his newspaper under his arm and his briefcase in hand as he walked to his car in the driveway. What made that redundant and infuriating is that they knew exactly where he was going and could have done that at his office.

Now despite the tactics the Clinton’s and their media allies used on Ken Starr, Bill Clinton was still impeached for his perjury. He was forced to admit he had lied to the country, boldly and with finger-wagging arrogance about never having had sex with “Ms. Lewinsky”.

But everybody in the DOJ and in the legal profession saw the toll the Clinton tactics exacted on Starr and his team, how ugly and personal it got. It made an already tough job far more difficult than it should have been.

I’m sure I’m not the only person who was around back in the 1990’s who followed the Whitewater Investigation and the absurd over-the-top treatment Starr received from the Democratic establishment in D.C. and from their fellow travelers in the mainstream press.

The “Starr Treatment” Changed How Special Counsel Investigations Are Conducted

It should be commented on more often how the Clinton’s and Carville’s scorched-earth strategy against Ken Starr and federal prosecutors just doing their jobs changed the way Special Counsel investigations are done.

No Special Counsel appointed since then that I am aware of has ever opted for the kind of transparency that Starr did as they performed the investigative phase of their work. Certainly not if they were investigating Democrats in Washington D.C.

Durham Is A Ghost For A Very Good Reason

Now, let me explain why I just took you through that long foray down Memory Lane. Because everything I just told you applies directly to John Durham.

They can’t do to Durham what they did to Starr because they can’t find him. He’s a Washington DC ghost, a phantom, a Godot that everyone is perpetually waiting for, to the point that many are beginning to question if he’s ever arriving at all.

Has anybody besides me noticed that Democrats and the press haven’t even come close to being able to give Durham or his team the ‘Ken Starr Treatment’ for going on almost three now?

And this is despite the fact that Durham’s not only investigating the Clintons, but also what amounts to almost the entire upper echelons of the former Barack Obama presidential administration, including top officials at the DOJ/FBI, the State Department, the CIA? And, highly likely, the current President?

How does the mainstream media question and attack and mock and accuse a prosecutor who’s doing this that they can’t even find?

Given that we have a wholly partisan attack dog press that is only about 100 times more rabid and vicious than we had in the 1990’s, Durham should have been undergoing a massive siege by the news media since June of 2019. Yet there’s practically nothing. A handful of stories in the mainstream press over the past three years with some grousing and complaining about Durham isn’t even within yodeling distance of what Ken Starr got.

You will not see them attempting to surround and pillory John Durham and his prosecution team until he unseals SpyGate and Mueller Special Counsel indictments. That’s when the media starts camping outside of houses and offices again demanding the Special Prosecutor and his team talk to them right now.

That will be when the media and the Democrats will try to besiege the Durham team.

I wish them luck. Because I’m thinking if those in charge of setting this up were determined to avoid a repeat of the ugly media spectacles of the 1990’s while the investigation was ongoing, they’ve given extensive thought to how to handle it once Durham is done and the full import of his investigation becomes public.

NOTE: While this column was in progress, journalist Sara Carter debuted an exclusive podcast with House Representative Devin Nunes [R-CA]. Nunes is not just another member of the House; he was once the chair of the powerful House Select Panel on Intelligence [HSPCI] and is now the minority ranking member. He is also a current member of the Gang of Eight.

In the interview, Nunes says:

“I just have to have faith ultimately, that there’s that, you know, there was a special counsel created, Durham does have the power, we’re fully expecting him to deliver the report,” said Nunes, adding that it may be as early as next week. “It may not be as broad as we want it to be. But look, there are some major perpetrators. I think, as you and everybody else know, we’ve made over 14 criminal referrals. That doesn’t mean 14 individuals, that means 14 different criminal referrals involving multiple individuals… And this is one of the challenges.”

When Nunes says he thinks Durham will be issuing a report along with some indictments, and this could be coming ‘as early as next week’, that’s not some random House member just passing along scuttlebutt.

Up until now Nunes had stayed from any predictions whatsoever about the Durham Special Counsel probe.

Now he’s not only telling Carter he expects some kind of report along with several indictments, he’s also giving a time frame of perhaps in as early as next week.

We’ll see what happens.

Brian Cates entered the political arena in March 2012, following the death of Andrew Breitbart. He is currently a political columnist for The Epoch Times and UncoverDC. Brian is based in South Texas and is the author of: “Nobody Asked For

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