Looking Back on the Media’s Bogus Russia Narrative

I wanted to keep highlighting this 24,000-word Columbia Journalism Review piece about how the collusion story was constructed by media and outside actors. The piece itself is divided into 4 parts so I’m going to cover it the same way.

Part 1 dealt with the The early days of collusion stories The involvement of Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, and the Clinton campaign in getting things started. Part 2 continues from that point and examines the many stories which followed, which led to the notion of collusion between Russia & the Trump camp in 2017.

This is too much to summarize, but the following section explains the unusual circumstances that led to publication of the dossier. Fusion GPS allowed the dossier to circulate at many news outlets. But because it was unverified, news outlets wouldn’t publish it. The FBI Director Comey informed the president about it. CNN was informed by Comey that Comey had briefed President. CNN then had a news hook and could write a story stating that the briefing took place and describing the experience. The document itself.

On Sunday, January 8, McCabe, the FBI’s deputy director, sent a memo to the bureau’s leadership headlined “the flood is coming.” He pointed out that CNN was “close to” Publishing a piece on the dossier with the “trigger” being Comey’s brief and the dossier’s attachment to the ICA.

Two days later, the dam burst when CNN revealed the Comey briefing. Hours later, BuzzFeed News You can find the entire dossier here, together with a warning that it was not official. “unverified and potentially unverifiable.” Both outlets cited the government use of the dossier to justify their going ahead…

It turns out that a few weeks after the FBI began checking out the dossier, in the fall of 2016, it offered Steele as much as $1 million if he could offer corroboration and he didn’t, according to court testimony by an FBI official in October.

A series of NY Times stories continued the story of collusion. The newsroom discussions for one of these stories were filmed, and later aired in a Showtime series. The Fourth Estate. This show featured reporter Mark Mazzetti and Editor Dean Baquet discussing Trump-Russia collusion in a story published in February 2017:

Mark Mazzetti is an investigative reporter at the Washington bureau, who was also editing some Trump-Russia coverage. He is shown telling senior editors that he is “fairly sure members of Russian intelligence” were “having conversations with members of Trump’s campaign.” (The story would state that the conversations were founded on). “phone records and intercepted calls” Get involved “senior Russian intelligence officials.” ) He asks Baquet, “Are we feeding into a conspiracy” With the “recurring themes of contacts?”…

The Disclaimer at the top of this piece noted that they were not their source. “so far,” had seen “no evidence” The Trump campaign is colluding to the Russians.

It reported that anonymous officials were being described in the following paragraph. “alarmed” about the supposed Russian-Trump contacts because they occurred while Trump made his comments in Florida in July 2016 wondering whether Russia could find Hillary’s missing emails.

The story was told “the FBI declined to comment.” The FBI quickly tore the piece apart in a series annotated comments made by Strzok who was the Russia case manager. His analysis was prepared for his bosses and found numerous errors, including a categorical rejection of the headline and lead. “we are unaware,” Strzok wrote, “of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials.” Comey immediately checked with intelligence agencies to find out if there was any evidence. He returned empty and reported his findings to the Senate. This testimony was at a Senate Hearing months later.

When President Trump claimed that the Obama administration had been his, the media launched a new attack. “wires tapped” at Trump Tower based on something he’d seen on Fox News. James Clapper was dispatched to issue a denial The next day.

James Clapper was the former Director for National Intelligence in the Obama administration. He met the Press to share his thoughts. “there was no such wiretap activity.” He also said this during his time as an office holder, which ended on January 20, “we had no evidence of such collusion,” speaking of Trump’s campaign and Russia.

The Times ignored this fact while the Times included the collusion denial in the Post’s story.

The official denials were not taken seriously or ignored. However, FBI Director Comey was on hand to add fuel to the flames of collusion. Comey said that the FBI was investigating the issue during congressional testimony. Schiff then went on MSNBC and claimed that there was. “more than circumstantial evidence” Collaboration

This installment of the report concludes with Trump’s decision to fire James Comey despite a warning from his deputy counsel that firing Comey would only extend the investigation. Trump admitted that there was a possibility, but told Bill Barr. “I’m still going to fire the son of a bitch.”

I’ll take at look at part three of this epic story by Jeff Gerth tomorrow.