Durham’s report on ‘Russiagate’ is critical of the media.

Special Counsel John Durham Drops Bombshell on Russiagate

On Monday, Special Counsel John Durham released a scathing report revealing that the FBI’s investigation of former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was initiated without sufficient proof of collusion and then ignored mounting contrary evidence. Durham criticized the FBI for relying on the later-debunked Steele dossier to get a warrant to surveil Trump’s campaign, for coziness with Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent, and for repeatedly accepting information from anti-Trump sources, if not showing the same bias itself.

Each of Durham’s findings of FBI misconduct could be—and have been—applied to the corporate press, which breathlessly reported each twist in the FBI’s false narrative and helped to drive American politics off a cliff.

Reliance on the Steele Dossier

Like the FBI, media outlets touted the most salacious allegations compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the Clinton campaign. They did so, to borrow a term of art, “without evidence.”

• In April 2018, Jonathan Chait wrote in NYMag that “I’m a Peeliever and You Should Be, Too.” Chait wrote that “an accumulation of evidence has tipped the balance from unlikely to likely” that Trump “was secretly recorded in Moscow in 2013 paying prostitutes to urinate on a bed.”
• Even after the dossier and Steele himself were discredited, the media insisted the FBI’s investigation of Trump was super serious.
• Prominent journalists earnestly discussed the possibility that Trump was a Manchurian candidate, recruited by Russia three decades earlier.

Coziness with Clinton

While the FBI ignored concerns about alleged election interference regarding Hillary Clinton’s campaign, according to Durham, the media let the Democrat spout off, largely unchallenged, about her supposed certainty that the 2016 election was rigged against her.

Bias against Trump

Agents deemed too biased or unprofessional by the FBI were welcomed on the airways to pontificate on the investigation they had compromised. Peter Strzok and former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, who were both fired for their actions, landed on-air contributor gigs at MSNBC and CNN, respectively.

After seven years of experience, and a pseudo-reckoning, has the corporate press learned anything? Let’s see whom CNN brought on to discuss the Durham report.

In a statement Monday, the FBI said its leadership has “already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time,” in response to the problems highlighted by Durham. “Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented.”

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