‘The indictment details highly specific allegations … that Russia made an active, concerted effort to subvert American democracy…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As mainstream media huffed over their lack of credibility in the coronavirus pandemic, one of the many underlying reasons for the skepticism came to light.
On Monday, it was established no actual “Russians” were involved in the long-running Russia collusion conspiracy that ensnared President Donald Trump for the first two years of his term.
The only case #Mueller brought to prove “Russian interference” w/ any defense is now being dismissed by DOJ b/c prosecutors knew they couldn’t win at trial. Repeat: the DOJ could not find a single case they could successfully prosecute to prove any act of “Russian interference.”
— Robert Barnes (@Barnes_Law) March 16, 2020
On Monday, the Justice Department dismissed its case against the 13 Russians who were accused of “producing propaganda, posing as U.S. activists and posting political content on social media as so-called trolls to encourage strife in the U.S.,” according to the Conservative Treehouse website.
The case involved Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, one of three companies whose staffers were charged with conspiring to hack Democratic servers and spread misinformation via ‘bot’ farms during the 2016 election.
The February 2018 indictments by special prosecutor Robert Mueller and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein immediately raised the eyebrows of conservative legal hawks such as Judicial Watch, which recognized the shakiness and potential political motives behind the case.
When Mueller and Rosenstein announced “Russia interference” indictment, we warned it would go no where and showed Mueller had NOTHING justifying investigation of @RealDonaldTrump. DOJ confirmed this today in embarrassing ditching, after 2 years, of case. https://t.co/TxhVxl5nGi https://t.co/Aa2drhxazN
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) March 17, 2020
Even New Yorker reporter Adrian Chen, who had written about the company in a 2015 profile, sought to rein in the feeding frenzy during an MSNBC appearance.
OMG, a sober/informed Russia take on MSNBC! @AdrianChen , who profiled indicted Russian troll farm in 2015, tells @chrislhayes that what other MSNBC guests have compared to Pearl Harbor “is essentially a social media marketing campaign” and maybe not worthy of a national freakout pic.twitter.com/UkUaK2XRPe
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) February 20, 2018
However, most media not only declined to question the substance of the indictments, but reported on them as if they, themselves, were the evidence of conspiracy.
Some skeptics would later go on to question whether Mueller and his team—several of whom were proven to be biased against Trump—may have known well before the November 2018 election that the Russian collusion claims were false, but withheld the information in order to, themselves, interfere in an election.
Democrats retook the House of Representatives that November after campaigning largely on the debunked claims and promises to impeach Trump, which they ultimately did on an entirely unrelated pretense.
After Monday’s quiet dismissal of the charges, The Gateway Pundit broke down some of the breathless coverage from outlets such as the far-left Atlantic.
“Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals on Friday connected to Russia’s Internet Research Agency—a Kremlin-backed outfit whose employees posed as Americans and spread disinformation online in an attempt to influence the 2016 election,” the magazine reported at the time.
“The indictment details highly specific allegations—including names, dates, and the text of private messages—that appear to substantiate central elements of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia made an active, concerted effort to subvert American democracy.”
Gateway Pundit also called out perjurious former CIA Director John Brennan for his false claims about what the indictments signaled.
DOJ statement and indictments reveal the extent and motivations of Russian interference in 2016 election. Claims of a “hoax” in tatters. My take: Implausible that Russian actions did not influence the views and votes of at least some Americans.
— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) February 16, 2018
Brennan himself has faced investigation for his alleged role in helping to plant the conspiracy theories as part of the FBI’s elaborate “Crossfire Hurricane” sting and then to leak them to the media via the now-debunked Steele Dossier.