Morning Joe Mocks Feeble Durham Investigation: Gave Fox News Something To Complain About, But ‘No There There’

Donald Trump and his supporters might’ve hoped John Durham’s special counsel probe would nail the former president’s political enemies for criminal misconduct. Still, Morning Joe snarked that the investigation seems like it’s about to end without unveiling a massive conspiracy of government corruption.

The New York Times reported that Durham is nearing the end of his inquiry into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. The probe recently ran into a stumbling block when Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann was acquitted on charges of lying to the FBI. The Times report indicates that the Durham probe won’t end with the prosecution of officials who were behind the Russia investigation.

From the report:

The grand jury that Mr. Durham has recently used to hear evidence has expired, and while he could convene another, there are currently no plans to do so, three people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Durham and his team are working to complete a final report by the end of the year, they said, and one of the lead prosecutors on his team is leaving for a job with a prominent law firm…

Over the course of his inquiry, Mr. Durham has developed cases against two people accused of lying to the FBI in relation to outside efforts to investigate purported Trump-Russia ties, but he has not charged any conspiracy or put any high-level officials on trial. The recent developments suggest that the chances of any more indictments are remote.

This is a considerable letdown from how Trump recently exclaimed that the Durham probe “should reveal corruption at a level never seen before in our Country.”

“Looks like that’s not gonna happen,” Willie Geist said as Morning Joe broke down the news on Thursday. “It’s falling flat with no indictments.”

Elise Jordan picked up the conversation by predicting “it will be easy” for Trump to spin the Durham probe’s failure as “yet another conspiracy against him.” Charlie Savage, who co-authored the Times report, also joined Morning Joe to explain the lowering of expectations for Durham.

“The conspiracy — or the theme of this — has morphed over time,” he said. “It’s moved from ‘Durham is going to find a high-level, deep state, FBI-CIA White House conspiracy to get Trump,’ to ‘Maybe people who are associated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign…were conspiring to make people think that Trump was colluding with Russia.'”

From there, Savage noted that the Durham probe “created new fodder” for Fox News to constantly complain about the litigation against Trump over the years.

“But it’s not a deep state government conspiracy that discredits the FBI’s investigation in the first place,” Savage said. “So the extent they want something to talk about on Fox News, Durham’s investigation has provided fodder, but to the extent that they were hoping Jim Comey would go to jail, things like that, there’s just no there there.”

Watch above via MSNBC.