Turley: MSM Willfully Ignoring "One Of The Biggest Political Stories In Decades"

   If the shoe were on the other foot--if Pubs had done something like this to Dems--the coverage would be wall-to-wall every day. "bigger than Watergate" would be the new "new normal." The chorus of condemnations would be deafening. I doubt we've ever seen anything like it.

   But the shoe being on the foot it's on, it's not only not being covered by the MSM, they're actually helping to suppress it. They generally mention it only to ridicule it. 

   An MSM this stupid and this dogmatic and this partisan and with this little regard for the truth may well be more dangerous than even an extremely bad president--and Trump is not an extremely bad president. 

   I'm honestly astonished at how shameless and craven and perfidious the PMSM is. And yet they still have readers and viewers. Part of that isn't their (the readers' and viewers') fault--the information having been hidden from them, and suppressed, how could they know? Well...I have to say...I think they should have been able to recognize the PMSM's unreliability by now. It's not like it only became a giant, lying sack of shit last week. This has been clear for quite awhile now...and I say this though I myself was a bit, ahem, slow on the ol' uptake.

   The MSM's Russiagate coverage was laughable...and I wasn't even paying close attention. Worse was their immediate, automatic acceptance--as if it were the most obvious thing in the word--of full-blown transgender mythology. They didn't think about it, they didn't struggle with it, they didn't discuss it, they just simply accepted that night was day, and began writing stories about how some Neanderthals were hatefully suggesting that night might not be day...  And, of course, their move to all Orange Man Bad all the time--no assertion is too absurd, no accusation too scurrilous... And, in the case of the NYT: the blasphemy against truth that is the "1619 project." Anybody who can trust them after that piece of shit probably deserves to be lied to.

   Anyway, some highlights from Turley:

The Washington press corps seems engaged in a collective demonstration of the legal concept of willful blindness, or deliberately ignoring the facts, following the release of yet another declassified document which directly refutes prior statements about the investigation into Russia collusion. The document shows that FBI officials used a national security briefing of then candidate Donald Trump and his top aides to gather possible evidence for Crossfire Hurricane, its code name for the Russia investigation.
It is astonishing that the media refuses to see what is one of the biggest stories in decades. The Obama administration targeted the campaign of the opposing party based on false evidence. The media covered Obama administration officials ridiculing the suggestions of spying on the Trump campaign and of improper conduct with the Russia investigation. When Attorney General William Barr told the Senate last year that he believed spying did occur, he was lambasted in the media, including by James Comey and others involved in that investigation. The mocking “wow” response of the fired FBI director received extensive coverage.
…
   First, the Russia collusion allegations were based in large part on the dossier funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The Clinton campaign repeatedly denied paying for the dossier until after the election, when it was confronted with irrefutable evidence that the money had been buried among legal expenditures. As New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman wrote, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it and with sanctimony for a year.”
   Second, FBI agents had warned that dossier author Christopher Steele may have been used by Russian intelligence to plant false information to disrupt the election. His source for the most serious allegations claims that Steele misrepresented what he had said and that it was little more than rumors that were recast by Steele as reliable intelligence.
   Third, the Obama administration had been told that the basis for the FISA application was dubious and likely false. Yet it continued the investigation, and then someone leaked its existence to the media. Another declassified document shows that, after the New York Times ran a leaked story on the investigation, even Strzok had balked at the account as misleading and inaccurate. His early 2017 memo affirmed that there was no evidence of any individuals in contact with Russians. This information came as the collusion stories were turning into a frenzy that would last years.
   Fourth, the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and inspectors general found no evidence of collusion or knowing contact between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. What inspectors general did find were false statements or possible criminal conduct by Comey and others. 

   While unable to say it was the reason for their decisions, they also found statements of animus against Trump and his campaign by the FBI officials who were leading the investigation. Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified he never would have approved renewal of the FISA surveillance and encouraged further investigation into such bias.
   Finally, Obama and Biden were aware of the investigation, as were the administration officials who publicly ridiculed Trump when he said there was spying on his campaign. Others, like House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, declared they had evidence of collusion but never produced it. Countless reporters, columnists, and analysts still continue to deride, as writer Max Boot said it, the spinning of “absurd conspiracy theories” about how the FBI “supposedly spied on the Trump campaign.”
   Willful blindness has its advantages. The media covered the original leak and the collusion narrative, despite mounting evidence that it was false. They filled hours of cable news shows and pages of print with a collusion story discredited by the FBI. Virtually none of these journalists or experts have acknowledged that the collusion leaks were proven false, let alone pursue the troubling implications of national security powers being used to target the political opponents of an administration. But in Washington, success often depends not on what you see but what you can unsee.