By Donald J. Trump Independent Special Rapporteur John Durham’s report has made it clear without a doubt that my 2016 campaign’s lie of a “Russia conspiracy” by me and my campaign was the most dangerous instrumentalization of the state apparatus in US history. It was an unprecedented crime. Seven years ago I ran for President and took on the most corrupt bureaucrats and deepest felters in our nation’s capital. My policies were an existential threat to a political establishment bleeding rich and powerful America dry. I have vowed to stop mass illegal immigration, end globalist trade deals, end the sell-out of our country to the communist dictatorship in China, end the entrenched bureaucracy and mainstream media, and end the neoconservatives in Washington’s addiction to endless wars . In response, an unelected cabal at the highest echelons of our government, in conjunction with their preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton, and their media allies, effectively launched an attempted coup known as Russiagate.
Their goal was to prevent my election, and if not, to oust me from office, sabotage my presidency, undermine my agenda in Congress, block my reforms, and torpedo my foreign policy. For almost three years, they conducted a massive disinformation campaign and unlawful persecution based on the monstrous lie that I was an enemy agent. These conspirators in the state apparatus spied on my election campaign. They fabricated evidence to get permission for illegal wiretapping and slandering innocent people through media leaks. They offered a foreign agent (Christopher Steele) $1 million for evidence of his fake dossier to charge me with treason. They have destroyed countless lives and careers in the process.
The Durham Report proves that the masterminds involved knew from the start that the conspiracy theory of any cooperation on my part with Russia was a complete lie. The FBI launched their witch hunt without a single piece of legitimate evidence – and when they kept coming across exculpatory information, they swept it under the rug to perpetuate the hoax.
This sick intrigue came from the top. FBI Director James Comey kept pushing for more surveillance and warrants, repeatedly asking his officers to know, “What about the wiretapping?”
Barack Obama and Joe Biden were both in the know. They were briefed in August 2016 on reports that Clinton planned to “defame Donald Trump by fabricating a scandal over alleged interference by Russian security services,” according to the Durham Report. They all knew the truth, but they drove our country straight to the wall.
As bad and distressing as this Russia conspiracy was for me, my family, my associates and as many innocent people as possible, the real victim was the American people. The damage this swindle has done to America and the world is almost incalculable. It undermined our democracy, threatened our security and jeopardized our freedom. It was a turning point where we could have eased tensions with Russia. Instead, the Russia conspiracy theory fueled mass hysteria that drove Russia into the arms of China.
Instead of having better relations with Russia, as I envisioned, we now have a proxy war, also fueled by the offshoots of the Russiagate fairy tales. Ukraine will be completely destroyed. Countless people are killed. A Third World War is imminent. As the Twitter leaks have proven, the far-left establishment also used the Russia conspiracy theory to attack freedom of expression. They set up a widespread censorship regime in the West under the guise of combating so-called “Russian disinformation” – which they never define – in order to censor any content they did not like.
The intelligence community, the media and internet travel used this very pretext of “Russian disinformation” to censor the revelations of the Biden corruption scandal from his son’s laptop in election year 2020 – a censorship campaign orchestrated by the Biden campaign, like us know now.
In a poll last year, 79% of Americans said truthful reporting of this unfairly censored story would have changed the outcome of the election. Our country is now paying a very high price for this.
Perhaps most dangerous of all is the fact that the Russia conspiracy normalized the instrumentalization of the judiciary against political opponents of the left.
Radical Democrats and their media allies now cheer when Biden’s Justice Department calls for the FBI to investigate parents who complain at parent-teacher meetings against gender activism, send heavily armed SEC squads to arrest anti-abortion activists, and campaign against Joe Bidens most important challenger in the 2024 election campaign. These corrupt authorities have interfered in every election since 2016 – and they are now interfering in the 2024 election campaign before our eyes. They must be held accountable. That accountability is now in the hands of voters. The Durham Report has made it clear how deep the quagmire runs and how much is at stake. We have a choice: either the Deep State will destroy America, or we will destroy the Deep State. Donald J. Trump was the 45th President of the United States. This article first appeared on Newsweek.