Conservative media has played a vital role in the Republican counter-investigation of the FBI. Congressman Devin Nunes has fed a series of leaks to sympathetic reporters and pundits — Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel, Washington Examiner reporter Byron York, and of course, Fox News. The leaks, purporting to prove a deep-state conspiracy to smear Donald Trump, have thrown charge after charge against the FBI, and nearly every one has proven to be exaggerated, taken out of context, or outright false.
An example of the last is a leak of the infamous Nunes memo. York obtained advance notice of the memo’s allegations, and was able to publish a newsy summary of its contents before the memo was available online. The most explosive allegation in the memo, York was able to report, was that, “The political origins of the Steele dossier were known to senior DOJ and FBI officials, but excluded from the FISA applications.”
This was not true. The Justice Department did in fact mention the political origins of the Steele dossier in its FISA application. Nunes was later forced to retreat to complaining that, okay, they mentioned it but only in a footnote.
York, apparently unchastened by the experience of passing on false reports from Nunes, has more juicy leaks about additional deep-state plots. The latest allegations he has obtained center on Christopher Steele failing to properly disclose his discussions with a reporter. York’s summary of his latest write-up of the Republican counter-investigation is … interesting:
Doctor, what could explain my strange fascination with people believing their source even after he has lied to them?
