Column: ‘Explainer’ Articles Insist Nobody ‘Spied’ on Trump

There’s a second wave of media reaction to John Durham’s latest filing on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. In the hopes that somehow all of this would disappear, silence was the first wave. Now the second wave is “Explainers,” which attempt to hem and haw defensively through the whole business.

The Associated Press “Explainer” was headlined “How the latest Trump-Russia filing generated buzz.” This article was sent to me on Twitter by a fellow who apparently hates Trump with the energy of a thousand suns, so that will illustrate who eagerly shares these dismissive articles.

Eric Tucker, AP reporter was responsible for this report. Tucker channeled all of the responses to Michael Sussman (the Hillary-connected lawyer Durham indicted for lying), but omitted his connections to Hillary. Tucker helpfully tweeted the Democrat line: “Sussmann’s lawyers struck back at Durham team’s over its inclusion in the court filing of allegations they said were false and ‘intended to further politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool.’”

Have a great time.

Durham is a threat to this. Durham is exposing the fact that Clinton’s campaign politicized national-security agencies and shared their smears to the FBI/CIA in order to encourage spying on Trump advisers. This was done to inflame media coverage and to taint judicial processes through the Mueller team. In this Mueller team, 11 of 16 prosecutors are Democrat donors. Hillary donors were five of these men.

Tucker had to also pounce on S-word. It’s not spying! They were “mining information” to establish an “inference” tying Trump to Russia. “The researchers were not ‘spying’ on the Trump campaign in 2016, but were instead working to investigate a Russian malware attack that had targeted the U.S. government and the White House.”

A similar spin came from taxpayer-subsidized NPR, under their internet headline “The John Durham filing that set off conservative media, explained.” Their online summary of the All Things Considered story blatantly editoralized “The political right is making hay out of a recent filing in special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the Trump-Russia probe. We break down the truth behind their outlandish claims.”

Outlandish? Fill-in host Elissa Nadworny asserted “Fox News even said Clinton had, quote, ‘infiltrated Trump Tower and the White House.’ But is that what Durham actually said?”

Reporter Ryan Lucas replied: “No. Durham did not say in his filing that Clinton had paid for operatives who spied on Trump and his campaigns. He never used the word infiltrate.” All this parsing sounds like saying Bill Clinton never had “sex” with Monica Lewinsky, since he claimed it was all oral sex.

Nadworny implied this was ancient history: “So all of this is tied up in events that happened five or six years ago. Why does it matter now?” Lucas explained “Trump had hoped that Durham would deliver a report before the 2020 election that could help Trump’s campaign. This, however, did not happen. But the battle over shaping perceptions is still very much raging.”

NPR is aggressively “shaping perceptions” that conservative media manufacture “outlandish” claims that mangle the truth. 

Also, this is how The New York Times The Washington Post climbed on the bandwagon, ranting about conservative “conspiracy theories watered with fresh misinformation.”

Thus, the media who fabricated a fake dossier with “pee tapes”, and suggested that Donald Trump was either happy to be in collusion with the Russians or being blackmailed from the Russians are lecturing everyone else about vain conspiracy theories. It’s clear that everything is being fabricated because there are a conservative and reality-based media.