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It’s hard to stress how much effort the pro-Trump media has devoted over the last year-and-half to John Durham. The top federal prosecutor in Connecticut with a bushy, meme-ready goatee, Durham was appointed by Bill Barr in May 2019 to investigate the origins of the 2016 Russia probe. Or, in other words, to try to make something of what the president hears every night on Sean Hannity’s show.

Durham’s much-awaited report was supposed to be some kind of pre-election boost for Trump and his supporters. After revving up their audiences with claims that Trump was the victim of a “silent coup” and convincing them to obsess over people whose names mean next to nothing to the average voter—Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, for example, or Bruce and Nellie Ohr, or George Papadopoulos and Joseph Mifsud—conservative media needed a payoff.