Dear Editor,

John Durham, who was appointed approximately three years ago by then-President Donald J. Trump’s attorney general William Barr in an attempt to somehow verify that the F.B.I’s investigation of President Trump and his cohorts regarding their alleged involvement with Russia, respective to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, was nothing more than a “politically-motivated witch hunt,” as per former president Trump, has recently concluded that as a result of his investigation, “no conspiracy was discovered and, therefore, no indictments of any high level official will be pursued,” and that “nothing was found to counter the U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General’s 2019 conclusion that “the F.B.I. had legitimately initiated the Trump-Russia Investigation,” respective to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, and frailed to “uncover any alleged such conspiracies,” as a result of the Durham Investigation.

However, it has been well-documented that then-candidate Trump in his pursuit of the U.S. Presidency in 2016, surrounded himself with numerous professionals, who have enjoyed close ties with Russia, including his campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, who bragged that “Russia had hacked thousands of emails as well as producing politically harmful propaganda throughout social media, that would hurt his Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

In addition, future Trump attorney general Jeff Sessions, son-in-law Jared Kushner, along with Trump attorney Michael Cohen maintained close contact with Russia prior to the election, and future Trump National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign from his position, as a result of his lying to the F.B.I. regarding a clandestine meeting he was discovered to have had with the Russian ambassador.

Conversely, as a result of the initial investigation of the aforementioned issue under the leadership of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, it concluded that “Russia did, indeed interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump and the Trump campaign eagerly welcomed the help.”

It also discovered that more than 100 contacts were made at that critical time between the Trump campaign and the Russians, concluding that “collusion did occur,” which resulted in seven convictions or guilty pleas from Trump associates.

Mr. Trump does this while accusing the Democrats, with absolutely no corroborating evidence whatsoever, of somehow “rigging” the 2020 presidential election against him, but recall also that he made such baseless claims against the Republicans in the primary election, as well as his Democratic opponent in the 2016 presidential election, until he emerged victorious, and more than 2 years later Mr. Trump continues to refuse to concede that he indeed was defeated, quite soundly, in the 2020 presidential election by current President Joe Biden, although it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the election was determined to be perhaps “the fairest and most honest in the history of our great nation,” Mr. Trump’s incredibly massive ego apparently deprives him of the dignity to prioritize what is best for the nation paramount to his ego-driven “alternative reality” and “self-gratification.”

Richard Hord,

Martins Ferry