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While the United States is waiting for the final report of special advocate Robert Mueller, Fox News has taken the habit of arguing a false argument as to the origins of its investigation – that it began after that Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in 2016 has alerted the FBI Steele file, an unverified intelligence document that contains a number of assertions, some of which are far-fetched, about the relationship of the Trump campaign with Russia.
"Keep in mind that all of this seemed to have started with this file which was essentially an opposite research paper funded by the Democrats, after the Republicans started it – dust on Donald Trump. " Fox and friends The host Steve Doocy said Friday.
Steve Doocy repeats, for the umpteenth time and without respite because it is Fox News, the complete lie that the Russian investigation "started with this file". pic.twitter.com/nq99156Ovb
– Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) March 22, 2019
Doocy is not alone. Fox News hosts and guests defended this view with impunity. Trump ally Dan Bongino made this claim at Tuesday's edition of Fox and friends. Last Saturday, host Ed Henry falsely claimed that the FBI had been on file "for everything to go well", "all" being the investigation by Russia. On March 10, Andrew McCarthy, contributor to Fox News, said about the record: "I think that's how the investigation was launched." Trump himself tweeted a video clip Monday of Tucker Carlson's Fox News show in which Carlson described "the hoax of Russia" as stemming from the "dirty record".
It's a politically convenient lie. If what Doocy and others said was true, it would mean that the investigation that rocked the Trump presidency is based on a document commissioned by Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired the former spy British Christopher Steele. The case contains outrageous claims – for example that the Russian government filmed Trump watching prostitutes urinate on a hotel bed in Moscow in 2013. This would suggest that the FBI's efforts to associate Trump with Russia could have been motivated by an anti-trump feeling rather than hard. evidence.
All this comes from the fact that the rumors that Mueller was closing his investigation were increasing, so it is not surprising that Trump and his allies insist that the investigation was a political "witch hunt". But unfortunately for Fox News and Trump, their new favorite topic is wrong.
The FBI investigation was led by George Papadopoulos and not by Christopher Steele.
We know since December 2017 that the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign began in July 2016 – months before the FBI became aware of the Steele case.
According to Sharon LaFraniere, Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times, this incident related to WikiLeaks, which published hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in July 2016. These letters have prompted the top Australian diplomat at La Grande Britain will inform his American counterparts of a conversation he had had two months earlier with George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign's foreign policy advisor.
During a night of heavy drinking in London, Papadopoulos boasted that the Australian knew that Russia had criticized Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of e-mails who would embarrass Ms. Clinton, apparently stolen in order to try to hurt her. " As the Times say, Papadopoulos has since agreed to cooperate with the Mueller investigation and was sentenced to only 14 days in jail, even though Mueller's team told "not provided substantial assistance". "
You do not have to believe the words of The Times. Even Nunes' so-called "memo", prepared by Devin Nunes (R-CA), chairman of the then Intelligence Committee of the House of Commons, and published about a year ago, acknowledges that FBI investigation of the Trump campaign had been "triggered" by evidence presented to US authorities that Papadopoulos allegedly had secret contacts with Kremlin agents when it was published about a year ago.
In summary, the investigation on Russia would have existed even if the Steele record had never existed. But Trump and Fox News are not about to let the facts hinder their favorite story.
Why are we still talking about Steele?
The file is back in this news this week for two reasons. First, an excerpt of a statement with Steele, the former British spy at the origin of the case, was unsealed last week. The statement clearly indicates that Steele "used Internet searches and unverified information to support the details he had collected about an Internet company mentioned in the record," CNN reported, revealing a revelation reinforcing the idea that the document was not reliable enough to form the basis of an FBI investigation.
But it's also in the news because Trump puts it there. He makes it a central part of his bizarre and one-sided quarrel with the late John McCain – in which Trump criticized him for the role he played in alerting the FBI of this issue.
"They gave it to John McCain, who gave it to the FBI for very perverse purposes. It's not good, "Trump told Fox Business in an interview broadcast Friday morning. "I'm not a fan."
Trump tweeted last Sunday that McCain "had sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and the media in the hope of having it printed BEFORE the elections."
So it's good (which is proven in court documents) "the last of his class" (Annapolis) John McCain who sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and the media in the hope of having it printed BEFORE the election. He and the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the false news refused this trash!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2019
Trump's tweet is incorrect. McCain alerted the FBI on the record, but he did so in December 2016, a month after the presidential election and five months after the opening of the counter-intelligence investigation of the FBI on the Trump campaign.
While Trump and Fox News are now trying to revise the story, the facts behind the FBI's involvement in the 2016 elections do not support the allegation that office officials decided to do so for Trump. Remember that during the 2016 campaign, the FBI investigated both Hillary Clinton and the Trump campaign. Yet the office has only published the Clinton inquiry, which is now extremely embarrassing for those who want to argue that anti-Trump bias has motivated its decisions.
In addition, if senior FBI officials were so opposed to Trump, it is difficult to explain the decision then made by the director, James Comey, to send a letter to Congress announcing the discovery of new relevant emails. for the investigation of Clinton's practices regarding email a few days before the election. . Well-known pollsters concluded that Comey's letters, which had allowed Clinton's e-mails to become an important topic again, may have cost him the election.
The news goes fast. To stay up to date, follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter, and read more Political and political coverage of Vox.
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