{"id":2467795,"date":"2025-07-28T15:38:01","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T19:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/russiagate-shows-how-media-use-fact-checks-to-push-info-ops\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T15:40:30","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T19:40:30","slug":"russiagate-shows-how-media-use-fact-checks-to-push-info-ops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/russiagate-shows-how-media-use-fact-checks-to-push-info-ops\/","title":{"rendered":"Russiagate Shows How Media Use &#8216;Fact Checks&#8217; To Push Info Ops"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Frussiagate-shows-how-media-use-fact-checks-to-push-info-ops%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2467795&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The summary discusses Glenn Kessler&#8217;s departure from The Washington Post after more than a decade as it&#8217;s lead fact-checker, criticizing the role of fact-checkers as politically biased tools rather than neutral arbiters of truth. It highlights how media fact-checkers, including kessler, helped legitimize the false &#8220;Russia collusion&#8221; narrative, which originated from the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded Steele dossier. Newly declassified documents reveal that the Obama administration and intelligence officials included this discredited dossier in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) despite expert warnings about its flaws. The dossier served as the foundation for the Russia inquiry into President Donald trump&#8217;s 2016 campaign, but when trump challenged the narrative, fact-checkers dismissed his claims rather of investigating them. The article argues that fact-checkers repeatedly defended narratives favorable to Democrats, ignoring evidence that undermined claims of collusion. It contends that the Russia collusion story was a manufactured political operation, wiht media and intelligence officials complicit in promoting it and continuing to defend it despite contrary evidence.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The Washington Post&rsquo;s Glenn Kessler recently announced he would be leaving the outlet after more than a decade as its lead &ldquo;fact-checker.&rdquo; The role of &ldquo;fact-checkers&rdquo; &mdash; invented by the left-wing press &mdash; has served not to clarify the facts but rather to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/joe-rogan-says-2020-election-was-for-sure-rigged-by-media\/\" title=\"Joe Rogan ... media rigged 2020 election.\">manipulate public perception<\/a>. And nowhere is this role more apparent than in how the media&rsquo;s &ldquo;fact-checkers&rdquo; &mdash; including Kessler &mdash; covered the Russia collusion hoax, helping legitimize a Hillary Clinton-campaign-funded lie aimed at undermining and sabotaging President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n<p>Newly declassified documents <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/07\/23\/brennan-overruled-cia-experts-objections-to-include-steele-dossier-in-bogus-intel-assessment\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">show<\/a> that then-President Barack Obama and his high-ranking members of the intelligence community included the now-debunked Steele dossier in their 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that attempted to link President Donald Trump and his campaign to Russia. The dossier was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/attorneys-claim-government-manufacturing-evidence-to-charge-incarcerate-jan-6-prisoners\/\" title=\"Attorneys Claim Government Manu...uring ... to Charge, Incarcerate Jan. 6 Prisoners\">opposition research funded<\/a> by the Clinton campaign. Despite warnings from intelligence experts that the dossier was flawed, the dossier was nonetheless included in the ICA and served as the basis for furthering the Russia collusion hoax.<\/p>\n<p>But when Trump began calling out the hoax in real time, the &ldquo;fact-checkers&rdquo; swooped in to dismiss his claims. <\/p>\n<p>Trump posted on Oct. 19, 2017, that &ldquo;workers of firm involved with the discredited and Fake Dossier take the 5th. Who paid for it, Russia, the FBI or the Dems (or all)?&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Rather than investigate the substance of this question, Kessler instead dismissed Trump&rsquo;s concern in a <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/GlennKesslerWP\/status\/920995401632833536\">post<\/a>: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s worth rereading the dossier these days. Some material unverified or salacious. But you can see why the FBI saw it as a Rosetta Stone.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Kessler&rsquo;s post, as The Federalist&rsquo;s Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MZHemingway\/status\/1949844795746042265\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">pointed out<\/a>, &ldquo;is a great example of how &lsquo;fact&rsquo; &lsquo;checking&rsquo; is almost without exception just the laundering of Democrat info ops with another layer of supposed credibility.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>In another instance, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/GlennKesslerWP\/status\/1075028806858092545\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Kessler<\/a> emphatically declared that &ldquo;the Russia investigation did not start with the Steele dossier.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>But as The Federalist&rsquo;s Elle Purnell <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/01\/27\/the-new-york-times-still-refuses-to-admit-kash-patel-was-right-about-russiagate\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">explained<\/a>, three days after the Clinton campaign peddled its bogus Steele dossier to intelligence officials, the FBI began its investigation &mdash; known as Crossfire Hurricane &mdash; into the Trump campaign in hopes of finding &ldquo;collusion between Trump and Russia to steal the 2016 election.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Kessler also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/fact-checker\/wp\/2018\/02\/18\/fact-checking-trumps-error-filled-tweet-storm-about-the-russia-investigation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">wrote<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2023\/05\/17\/truth-about-russia-trump-2016-election\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">multiple<\/a> &ldquo;fact checks&rdquo; asserting that the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) conclusively proved that &ldquo;Russians influenced the election in an effort to help Trump get elected.&rdquo; But as the newly declassified documents <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/07\/23\/brennan-overruled-cia-experts-objections-to-include-steele-dossier-in-bogus-intel-assessment\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">show<\/a>, while the ICA found Russian President Vladimir Putin <em>did<\/em> order &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >cyber influence operations&#038;rdquo<\/a>; and tried to &ldquo;undermine faith in the US democratic process,&rdquo; the conclusion that Putin favored Trump over Clinton &ldquo;did not adhere to the tenets of the ICD [Intelligence Community Directive] standards.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Kessler wasn&rsquo;t alone. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politifact.com\/article\/2017\/dec\/12\/2017-lie-year-russian-election-interference-made-s\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">PolitiFact<\/a>&rsquo;s Angie Drobnic Holan named Trump&rsquo;s statement that this &ldquo;Russian election interference is a &lsquo;made-up story&rsquo;&rdquo; as its 2017 &ldquo;Lie of the Year.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>But as it would turn out, the narrative that Trump and Putin colluded and that Putin intervened to help Trump in the 2016 race was completely manufactured. Obama and then-CIA Director John Brennan ignored the advice of intelligence experts who raised red flags about the Steele dossier and included the Clinton-funded opposition research in the ICA in order to legitimize Clinton&rsquo;s election lies. In addition, Obama intelligence officials <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/07\/23\/report-russia-hoax-was-built-on-one-scant-unclear-and-unverifiable-fragment-of-a-sentence\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">based<\/a> the ICA&rsquo;s erroneous finding that Putin wanted Trump to win the 2016 election on &ldquo;one scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from a single HUMINT [human intelligence] report,&rdquo; according to the recently released House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence investigation.<\/p>\n<p>The Associated Press followed the same playbook. Calvin Woodward, Eric Tucker, and Hope Yen <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/politics\/ap-fact-check-trumps-exaggerations-about-the-russia-probe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">fact-checked<\/a> Trump&rsquo;s assertion that he was vindicated by the Mueller report.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Mueller did not vindicate Trump in &lsquo;total&rsquo; in the Russia probe,&rdquo; the authors wrote. But Trump was vindicated; Mueller <em>did<\/em> in fact determine there was <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2019\/03\/24\/attorney-general-confirms-mueller-found-no-evidence-collusion-trump\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">no evidence of collusion<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Later Woodward and Yen <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/173eed4c59dd48a78cfc4376255461d1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">pushed<\/a>  a purported &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/media-pretend-kamala-harris-never-named-border-czar\/\" title=\"Media Pretend Kamala Harris Never Named Border Czar\">fact-check&#038;rdquo<\/a>; asserting that &ldquo;this refrain about the Mueller report stating there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign is wrong&rdquo; before clarifying that Mueller &ldquo;did not assess whether that occurred because it is not a legal term&rdquo; and that &ldquo;the investigation did not collect sufficient evidence to establish criminal charges on that front.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>CNN&rsquo;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2019\/05\/02\/politics\/fact-check-trump-claims-obama-did-nothing-russia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Jeremy Diamond<\/a> &ldquo;fact-check[ed]&rdquo; Trump in May of 2019 for &ldquo;repeatedly undermin[ing] the US <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/russia-and-china-are-trying-to-interfere-in-downballot-races-odni-washington-examiner\/\" title=\"... and China are trying to interfere in downballot races: ODNI - Washington Examiner\">intelligence community&#038;rsquo<\/a>;s findings of Russian interference in 2016.&rdquo; But the newly declassified intelligence report makes clear that the &ldquo;intelligence community&rsquo;s findings&rdquo; that Trump questioned were, in fact, politically manipulated.<\/p>\n<p>The pattern of dismissal, denial, and selective framing from so-called &ldquo;fact checkers&rdquo; wasn&rsquo;t accidental &mdash; it was a coordinated effort to control the narrative and run propaganda for Democrats. The propaganda press was committed to laundering what is now known undeniably as a Democrat-information operation (the Steele dossier) as fact.<\/p>\n<p>And the worst part? Kessler and the media are <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MZHemingway\/status\/1949845021248602546\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">still<\/a> complicit.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Glenn Kessler leaves WP; fact-checkers shape narratives<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":2467796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/32984155372_c5064eb351_k-e1753724960598.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[50577,60108,51122,33386,16740],"class_list":["post-2467795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-disinformation-2","tag-fact-checks-2","tag-information-operations","tag-media-manipulation","tag-russiagate"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/32984155372_c5064eb351_k-e1753724960598.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2467795"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2467799,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467795\/revisions\/2467799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2467796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2467795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2467795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2467795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}