Five years ago, Hillary Clinton joked about Republicans, “It appears they don’t know I’m not president.” It's vastly worse now.<br /><br />In theory, former Attorney General Bill Barr finds himself in a difficult position. The Republican tapped special counsel John Durham to investigate the investigation into the Russia scandal, and the entire three-year effort is proving to be a fiasco. Durham’s failed and misguided prosecution of Michael Sussmann this week was the latest embarrassment, but it doesn’t stand alone.<br /><br />It was against this backdrop that Barr turned to Fox News last night to brag about how “very proud” he is of the prosecutor’s work. The former attorney general added:<br /><br /> “While he did not succeed in getting a conviction from the D.C. jury, I think he accomplished something far more important.... I think he crystallized the central role played by the Hillary campaign in launching as a dirty trick the whole Russiagate collusion narrative and fanning the flames of it.”<br /><br />In all likelihood, Barr knows better. Donald Trump’s Russia scandal wasn’t just some “narrative,” launched as a “dirty trick”; it was a genuine scandal about a Republican presidential candidate whose political operation sought, embraced, capitalized on, and lied about assistance from a foreign adversary — and then took steps to obstruct the investigation into the foreign interference.<br /><br />What’s more, as the former attorney general also probably knows, Hillary Clinton and her campaign didn’t “launch” the scandal; federal law enforcement began scrutinizing the controversy on its own based on ample evidence.<br /><br />But putting these relevant details aside, Barr’s on-air rhetoric last night was jarring for a reason: The Republican effectively made the case that Durham’s pointless prosecution doesn’t matter because the politicized special counsel investigation contributed to a partisan smear of Hillary Clinton.<br /><br />Sure, federal prosecutors obtaining convictions is nice, but for Barr, fueling anti-Clinton theories is “far more important.”<br /><br />The former attorney general isn’t the only one thinking along such ridiculous lines. Two weeks ago, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal published a bizarre piece with an over-the-top headline — “Hillary Clinton Did It” — claiming that the former Democratic candidate “approved a plan to plant a false Russia claim with a reporter.”<br /><br />Predictably, the piece was a hit in Republican circles — despite being filled with painfully obvious falsehoods.<br /><br />It might be tempting to think the humiliating demise of Durham’s case against a former Clinton attorney might lead conservatives to shift their focus, but there’s ample evidence pointing in the opposite direction. On Tuesday night, Sen. Marsha Blackburn published a tweet that read, simply, “Investigate Hillary Clinton.” The Tennessee Republican — a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee — didn’t say why, exactly, Clinton should be investigated, but it’s likely that Blackburn and those who retweeted her missiv
