Someone is finally crying foul over an evidence-free fake-news effort pushed by the same people who have promoted the Steele dossier for over a year. This time, the targets are the NRA and President Trump’s 2016 victorious presidential campaign. In a Thursday Wall Street Journal column and a Friday Fox News appearance, Kimberley Strassel decried how the press has turned “the most outlandish accusation into ‘news'” based only on “the whispers of a couple of Democratic lawmakers” and “an anonymous reference to the FBI.”
Here are key passages from Strassel’s column:
… This January, the House Intelligence Committee released its transcript of Mr. (Glenn) Simpson’s November testimony, in which he regaled incredulous committee Republicans with a wild new tale—of how the Russians had “infiltrated the NRA.” Fusion GPS had “spent a lot of time investigating” a “Mafia leader named Alexander Torshin” and a “suspicious” and “big Trump fan,” Maria Butina. Mr. Simpson provided zero detail to back up this claim—no names, dates, money transfers or specific actions.
But never mind. The day Mr. Simpson’s conspiracy-laden transcript was due to go public, McClatchy ran this headline: “FBI investigating whether Russian money went to NRA to help Trump.” The story cited only two unnamed “sources familiar with the matter.” The article admitted it “could not be learned” whether the FBI had any evidence involving the NRA, but it nonetheless went on at length about the group. A flurry of articles from other news organizations followed … All still based on nothing but Mr. Simpson’s infiltration claim.
… The NRA flatly denied the accusation. … It also reported it had had no contact with the FBI. House Intelligence Committee Democrats nonetheless last week issued a document demanding they get to continue investigating the “NRA’s relationship” with Mr. Torshin and Ms. Butina as well as … Washington lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who hasn’t done legal work for the NRA in a decade.
A few days later, the same two McClatchy reporters … again cited two anonymous sources claiming Congress was investigating Ms. Mitchell’s worries … Ms. Mitchell tells me she told McClatchy before publication that this was false … Ms. Mitchell calls it “the quintessential definition of fake news.”
McClatchy’s story found at Archive.org has a slightly different headline from the one Strassel cited:
Despite Mitchell’s clear denial, the news service appears to have used the headline Strassel cited, which communicates an unjustified degree of certainty, in very early versions of its report.
Simpson is just another crazy wacko nutcase the news media scum suckers are always listening to the media is always barking up the wrong tree its no wonder the American Public no longer trusts them
Seems like I remember some regimes in the past that could arbitrarily “investigate” their political enemies to eliminate them.