MSNBC Trashes ‘Dangerous Disinformation’ From Conservatives on Durham Filing

Deadline for White House MSNBC provided MSNBC with the only mention Wednesday of the explosive revelation from John Durham, Special Counsel on Spying against Trump Campaign and Early Presidency. However, they used just 16 minutes and 10 second to discard it. “dangerous disinformation” sold by “right-wing media.”

Ironically, this came after the first half-hour of the show was spent spinning webs about Donald Trump’s White House visitor logs and January 6 prosecutions. This begs the obvious question: Does anyone ever hear these people talk to themselves?

“Remember Spygate? Well, Trump and his allies never really let it go and they’re back this week. Trump and his allies again allege hacking, intercepting…with new names. None of what they’re alleging is true,”Host Nicolle said it in a tease.

She added in a second one that “the spreading” and “dissemination of disinformation right-wing media is not new and it’s not a bug, it’s a feature, but they’re at it again” by “misrepresenting a court filing and running wall to wall coverage[.]”

Going to break, she described serious coverage of Durham’s filing against Clinton affiliated lawyer Michael Sussmann as a “dangerous narrative.”

Begin with a chyron decrying “Conspiracies in Right-Wing Media About Democrats Spying on Trump,” Wallace showed zero irony in lamenting how “Trump and his allies and conservative media have been totally consumed by a story, they say, wait for it, is bigger than Watergate”That “[t]hose of us on earth one may have missed.”

Wallace summarised the allegation and then read an excerpt from that snarky condemnation. New York TimesCharlie Savage is a reporter and he welcomes Frank Figliuzzi (deranged MSNBC reporter).

Wallace warned her viewers to get out of their bubble and see the world from a cartoonish perspective. “[I]f you don’t tune in to the events on earth two, on right-wing media, you don’t know that this is still such a big deal on the right, these conspiracy theories about Trump being spied upon.”

Savage gave a long explanation of his views on the case. He emphasized that a specific detail regarding Russian phones located near the White House was already known. The Times, arguing the internet data had an unknown time stamp, and downplaying Sussmann’s connection to Clinton.

This was in spite of the fact that Sussmann worked as a lawyer at Perkins Coie and was listed in the filing saying he was charging the campaign for his activities.

The two continued to explain away the case by dismissing the picking up of server data (click “expand”):

WALLACE: Because the data happens when Obama was president, so the most honest effort to strain the facts would be that Obama’s White House was spied on by Hillary’s associates. I mean, I can’t follow the thread out the window from where the good faith effort ends, and the outright lie starts.

SAVAGE : I think the spying thing is a tortious way of analysing this data. According to what I have seen, such data can be found on Internet servers. It’s kind of like phone books that when your computer or your smartphone is going to look up — go to a website, first, it has to ping one of these servers to say, what is the digital address of the thing that I know of as nytimes.com or msnbc.com, or whatever? Then it receives a series of numbers. The DNS data is a kind of echo. It’s like a looking — some of us looking up this server. It’s — and you can exist in the wild. This data was actually being examined by cyber-security experts at Georgia Tech. DARPA was a military agency which asked them to analyze it in order to find signs of hacking. In 2015, Russian malware had been discovered in the White House network. Then, in 2016, Russian hackers hacked the Democratic Party servers. So, they were looking for signs that there was some kind of malware pinging weird Russian websites in networks connected with the government, connected with people associated with the campaign….What I don’t fully understand either is that the Obama White House era data — there may be two different issues here and this is still a little bit murky to me, I have to say. Maybe someone had one of these weird smartphones in the White House, totally unrelated to Trump, and then someone else has had one of these weird white phones — Russian phones in the Trump area[.]

Figliuzzi said later that Durham coverage fighting back was more than just a defensive move. “important”But it is necessary “at risk of peril to yourself.”

“[I]t’s really important to take the time to break this down and get the truth out…[T]here are platforms out there that are all too happy to provide the public the simple explanation to what is otherwise an incredibly complicated story,” He concluded.

He said that people won’t do it if they don’t. “default to…dangerous disinformation” that’s placed Hilary Clinton in peril.

Figliuzzi also turned his guns on Durham (click “expand”):

FIGLIUZZI – I expected this behavior from Fox News people. What I’m really kind of continued — continue to be perplexed by is the conduct of John Durham. This guy ought to have realized that the filings were being done just as fire for disinformation echo chambers. Yet, he published it. Now he has to take responsibility. If he were a reasonable prosecutor to come in and say, look, I can’t comment on the case, but I got to tell you, this has been really misconstrued. I didn’t say this, this, and this, and then he just walks away. Is he going to do that? No. Will — should Merrick Garland come in soon and ask John Durham where in heaven’s name he’s headed with this, particularly with Friday, a hearing coming where Sussmann is supposed to ask the judge to toss the case against him? Merrick Garland might then be in a position to ask Durham: What are you doing? When are you finished? Yes.

WALLACE: We’re getting more on what Durham is doing and why this story matters. It’s important to show you the absolute finger in the electrical socket that it caused one Laura Ingraham, more on that on the other side of a break. Don’t go anywhere.

In a second segment, Wallace used a clip of her interview with corrupt former FBI agent Peter Strzok as a way of painting Durham’s probe as a waste when the real problem lies with Trump.

Of note was this admission from Savage about Durham’s case against Steele dossier source Igor Danchenko: “Obviously, the Steele dossier is a fairly discredited document at this point, by far, actually, I would say.”

This would be contrary to Wallace’s beliefs. The dossier gained credibility in February 2018. “a third of it has been proven true” by someone who’s “credible all over the world” And “an expert in Russia.”

The support of Wayfair and Stanley Steemer advertisers made it possible to dismiss the accusations of Trump spying. Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.

Click here to see relevant MSNBC transcripts from February 16th.