by Devin Nunes
The publication of the Steele dossier in early January 2017 continued this journey into a bizarre alternate reality. The dossier is a collection of intelligence-style reports on Donald Trump and his associates that was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele for an opposition research group, Fusion GPS, that was paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Full of preposterous conspiracy theories featuring the President’s attorney secretly traveling to Prague to plot with Russian officials, as well as outlandish stories about Trump’s sexual proclivities, the dossier was impossible to take seriously. I saw it as a work of comedic fiction, yet the entire Washington press corps was captivated by it.
The dossier was an obvious farce, yet we later learned that it was fed into numerous government agencies, was the source of allegations cited in the scoping memo that established Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, and was cited four times by the FBI to get a warrant to spy on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page – even though Steele’s primary source told the FBI the dossier allegations were based on Steele’s exaggeration of hearsay information the source had passed on from others.
And the dossier was just the tip of the iceberg. We also later learned that the lead investigator on the case, Peter Strzok, and his mistress, high-level FBI lawyer Lisa Page, frequently texted about how much they hated Trump and vowed to stop him from becoming president. In the Department of Justice, a top-level career official who is supposed to be non-partisan, Bruce Ohr, continued to feed Steele’s allegations to the FBI even after Steele was fired by the FBI for leaking to the press. Ohr’s own wife, meanwhile, worked on the dossier project for Fusion GPS, the smear merchants who were paid by the Democrats to concoct the dossier.
What’s more, thirty-nine Obama officials, including Vice President Biden and White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough, had accessed intelligence reports and suspiciously unmasked the name of Trump’s incoming National Security Advisor, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who had clashed with President Obama. And the DOJ Inspector General found the warrant to spy on Carter Page was riddled with irregularities, including the withholding of exculpatory information from the court and even the doctoring of an email to make it appear that Carter Page had not cooperated with an intelligence agency against suspected Russian spies when in fact he had.
The scale of the abuse was astounding. On the Intelligence Committee, we picked up indications of this malfeasance early on and investigated it deeply. Obstacles were thrown in our path every step of the way. The DOJ and FBI stonewalled our requests for relevant documents and even our subpoenas. Fusion GPS went to court in a failed attempt to fight our subpoena for their banking records, which revealed that the Democrats had funded the dossier. And the top Democrat on our committee, Adam Schiff, used congressional hearings, media appearances, and every other possible venue to spread a fantastic number of Trump–Russia conspiracy theories.
But in many ways, our biggest opponent was the media. Having transformed into stenographers for the Democrats, reporters for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other major outlets spread the Russian collusion hoax with near-daily inventions of some terrible collusion conspiracy. There was an overwhelming barrage of stories about the Trump team’s treason, with each report being gleefully re-reported by all the other mainstream outlets and then relentlessly hyped on cable news and the network Sunday shows. Some of the reporters for the biggest outlets wrote entire books on the collusion conspiracy, vesting their personal credibility in these conspiracy theories being real.
Having gone all-in on collusion, the media furiously rejected all the indications of abuses by the FBI and Department of Justice. As the Steele dossier became increasingly discredited, they switched from promoting its claims to denying the dossier’s importance to the investigation. Bruce Ohr’s bizarre role as a conduit between Steele and the FBI was of no interest to them. When Intelligence Committee Republicans revealed on February 2, 2018, in the so-called “Nunes memo” that the FBI cited bogus information from the Steele dossier to justify spying on Carter Page, the media either denied this happened or dismissed the gross violation of Page’s civil rights as irrelevant. They comically denied the Trump team had been spied on at all, with the New York Times referring to an undercover government agent run against a Trump associate as “a cloaked investigator,” while the Washington Post argued, “The FBI didn’t use an informant to go after Trump. They used one to protect him.” And although the media pose as champions of government transparency, they defended and even encouraged government agencies to block the House Intelligence Committee’s attempts to oversee the FBI’s Russia collusion investigation.
When Committee Republicans issued our final report on our Russia investigation – which described how the Russians’ hacking campaign was executed, Russia’s similar operations in other countries, the U.S. government’s response, and made specific recommendations for strengthening our nation’s defenses against future attacks, the media dismissed it as a whitewash because we found no evidence of Trump–Russia conspiracies.
Unsurprisingly, they championed the Committee Democrats’ short counter-report, which focused almost exclusively on propagating the collusion conspiracy theory. The media found no relevance at all in Republicans’ reporting that none of the dozens of witnesses the Committee interviewed – comprising both Obama and Trump administration officials – provided any evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between Trump associates and Russians.
A good example of the disconnect between the public media hysteria and what the Committee was learning in private can be seen in the testimony of former Obama Department of Defense official Evelyn Farkas. On MSNBC, she had claimed to have participated in an effort at the end of the Obama administration to spread incriminating information on the Trump–Russia conspiracy because they expected the Trump administration would destroy all this evidence once Trump took office. But in private, she admitted to the Committee that she didn’t actually know anything about Trump–Russia collusion and had seen no evidence of it.
The constant media hysteria over three years turned the Russia collusion conspiracy into the biggest news story of my lifetime. But in the end, even the partisan witch-hunters on Mueller’s team couldn’t create proof of a massive conspiracy out of thin air. They knew on the first day of the Special Counsel’s operation that there was no evidence of Trump–Russia collusion despite, at that point, the world’s most sophisticated and powerful intelligence agencies having conducted nearly a year-long investigation. So they dragged out the probe for another two years and tried to invent an obstruction case around the imaginary collusion crime – and they still couldn’t create a strong enough case to recommend obstruction charges.
Despite its eventual collapse, the collusion hoax left lasting damage. It poisoned the minds of millions of Americans who believed what they were seeing and hearing on the news every day, and as a result, to this day, they still believe Trump colluded with Putin.
From my perspective on the Intelligence Committee, the damage was especially pernicious to our Intelligence Community. Highly specialized agencies that are supposed to defend our national interests were weaponized against their own elected leader. Having decided the American people chose wrongly in the 2016 election, corrupt elements in these agencies took it upon themselves to correct the mistake.
So they ran a years-long information warfare operation against the President. The agencies transformed into sieves leaking classified information to media confederates who unquestioningly spun the information exactly as the leakers told them to. Classified information is secret for a reason, and the flood of leaks did tremendous damage. Allied intelligence agencies have to wonder whether secrets they share with the United States will suddenly appear in newspaper headlines.
Even more important, the operation undermined the faith of millions of Americans in their own government’s intelligence servic
es. They understand these agencies are entrusted with awesome powers that are terrifying if aimed against American citizens for political purposes. Their attempt to overthrow Trump was an attack on our civil liberties, our democracy, and our nation as a whole.
The Democrats’ contribution to the Russia collusion hoax was shameful. In order to achieve a specifically anti-democratic outcome – the toppling of an elected Republican president – they uniformly betrayed what they had long claimed to be core Democratic values – defending civil liberties and skepticism of the surveillance state. They cheered on leakers of classified information, excused and defended unconscionable violations of Americans’ civil rights, labeled entirely innocent American citizens as Russian stooges, put their full trust and faith in unaccountable intelligence officials running a domestic information operation, denounced attempts by Congress to fulfill our mandate to oversee what these officials were doing, and accused the president and his team members of treason based on a lie.
Democrats and the media wantonly accused Republicans of being Putin stooges and of collaborating with the Kremlin. The hysteria birthed a strange neo-McCarthyism, as any Republican who’d ever shaken hands with a Russian was denounced as a traitor,
I’ve been a Russia hawk for my entire congressional career, and publicly warned in April 2016 that our lack of insight into the Kremlin was our biggest intelligence failure since 9/11. But because I argued that there was no evidence of Trump associates conspiring with Russians, I suddenly found myself being denounced as a Russian asset. MSNBC’s John Heilemann claimed anonymous intelligence officials thought I was compromised by the Russians, and he asked Democratic Members of Congress to discuss the possibility that I was a Russian agent. A billboard ad was even placed along the main highway outside of my hometown depicting me in a Russian military uniform.
The targets of this smear campaign went far beyond me. Adam Schiff accused Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson of carrying water for Putin. Nancy Pelosi referred to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as “Moscow Mitch.” Hillary Clinton accused Trump associates of colluding with Russia. Joe Biden claimed Putin carries around President Trump like a puppy.
I’ve often said that whatever the Left accuses you of, they’re doing themselves. The collusion hoax proved that in spades. Adam Schiff, who finds Putin sympathizers and colluders under every bed, has given interviews to the Russian state-owned propaganda network RT. He even colluded with Russians to get naked pictures of Trump – though his intermediaries turned out to be pranksters exploiting his paranoia for a laugh.
In fact, in the entire collusion hoax, the only people who colluded with Russians were the Democrats and their paid operatives. It was the Democrats who paid for the Steele dossier, which manufactured dirt on the Trump campaign ostensibly with information supplied by Russian officials. Inspector General Horowitz revealed that the FBI believed the dossier contained Russian disinformation fed to Steele, meaning Democrats and reporters who spread dossier allegations were actively propagating Russian disinformation. Steele himself, in fact, worked as an unregistered lobbyist for a Russian oligarch. And Fusion GPS, which commissioned the dossier for the Democrats, took money from Russian clients to run a smear campaign against Bill Browder, one of the Kremlin’s most effective critics.
I’m deeply concerned about the possibility of further operations of this sort being launched by the same corrupt intelligence elements against this president or a future one. The problem is that very few of the conspirators have been held accountable. With few examples that these sorts of crimes will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, a feeling has spread that perpetrators can get away with these abuses with impunity. This is the most frequent concern I hear from Americans about the entire Russia collusion hoax.
Congress can investigate, collect information, and expose wrongdoing, but we can’t prosecute – that’s an executive branch function. Attorney General Barr appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate the Russia collusion operation, and I’m confident they are running a credible investigation that will finally impose accountability. Our intelligence agencies have to remain divorced from politics and focus exclusively on defending the nation from foreign, terrorist, and criminal threats to the American people. Just a few years ago, I wouldn’t have thought that would ever be a controversial or even a debatable argument.
We cannot tolerate anonymous, unaccountable intelligence officials acting as the overseers of American democracy, decreeing who are acceptable and non-acceptable leaders. That the media and the Democratic Party acted as cheerleaders for this “deep state” is all the evidence you need that neither institution can be trusted.
I call these media operations “narrative bombs” – highly publicized but false stories widely reported throughout the media, all geared toward creating a political effect. The Russia hoax was easily the biggest narrative bomb of all time, one that was created out of whole cloth in an attempt to undo Trump’s victory in the 2016 elections. Now, let’s take a closer look at how the media manufactures these bombs and who they cooperate with to ensure their operation is effective.
CHAPTER THREE
The Fake News Complex
ANY AMERICAN who paid close attention to the Russia collusion hoax saw how the media was an active participant in the operation. Instead of simply presenting the facts, reporters at the nation’s most prominent newspapers cooperated with nameless intelligence leakers and “Resistance” operatives to manufacture hundreds of false stories designed to convince Americans that Trump and his associates colluded with Russia.
Throughout the entire media complex, the monolithic presentation of this narrative bomb was staggering. Among hundreds of experienced national security reporters, hardly a single one paid any attention to the obvious weaknesses of the whole conspiracy theory. Every new collusion “revelation” from anonymous sources was eagerly re-reported by hundreds of media outlets, while all contrary information – including the clear FBI abuses that House Intelligence Committee Republicans were revealing – was breezily dismissed as biased or insignificant, if it was reported at all.
As I said earlier, this wasn’t news reporting, it was an information warfare operation. And I learned something about how these operations work when I was the target of one myself.
Throughout the 2018 midterm election campaign, I was barraged by hit pieces published by McClatchy, one of America’s largest newspaper chains, which operates thirty daily papers. A particularly obnoxious purveyor of the Russia collusion hoax, McClatchy launched a sustained attack on me that spanned across nearly all sections of the company’s outlets in my home state of California – news reports insinuated I was corrupt, opinion columnists and editorial boards blasted me for supposedly hiding evidence of Trump–Russia collusion, and even letters sections were dominated by an obviously coordinated campaign against me. The headline for a long profile piece on me asked if I was a “traitor.” All these stories had one clear goal – to stop the investigation I was leading into the FBI’s and the Democrats’ malfeasance in the Russia collusion hoax.
But the media attacks were just one part of the operation. Left-wing groups seized on the stories as the bases to file reams of ethics complaints against me, then McClatchy would run additional stories on the complaints. In one incident, an operative exploited the California Public Records Act to get the emails of my wife, who is an elementary school teacher, then he gave the emails to a leftwing group, Campaign for Accountability, which cited them in another frivolous ethics complaint against me. Meanwhile, smear artists such as Liz Mair, an anti-Trump political operative, were running operations against me for paying clients while being quoted in McClatchy attack stories on me.
We later learned that McClatchy’s most prominent hit pieces on me all had a common source: Fusion GPS – the very smear artists who concocted the Steele dossier. In a 2019 book by Fusion GPS cofounders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, the pair admitted they planted these stories as part of an operation
they ran against me. Apparently they wanted payback for my subpoena, which revealed that the Democrats had paid them for the Steele dossier. We also later learned that Fusion was on the payroll of Campaign for Accountability in 2018, when Campaign for Accountability filed multiple ethics complaints against me.
What McClatchy did was not journalism – it had no connection to journalism whatsoever. They identified a political target – me – and then worked closely with smear artists and left-wing organizations to create a narrative bomb in order to achieve a political outcome – to stop my investigation of the FBI’s and the Democrats’ Russia collusion operation.
The media, of course, hurl these bombs at a wide range of their opponents beyond me. A few examples:
The hysterical promotion of baseless allegations that Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh was a sex abuser and gang rapist.
The shocking media pile-on against teenager Nicholas Sandmann based on false reports that he harassed an American Indian activist during demonstrations in Washington, D.C.
False reports from Trump’s Inauguration Day that he’d removed a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr., from the Oval Office.
The misreporting that Trump had referred to immigrants as “animals,” when his comments were directed only at members of the MS-13 street gang.
The uncritical promotion of actor Jussie Smollett’s false claim to have been assaulted by Trump supporters.
This is how the whole mainstream media operates today. Their goal is not to inform readers or bring them crucial information; it’s to persuade them to adopt the media’s political views – which are the socialist Democrats’ views – while rallying those who already support their agenda. As a result, the media increasingly see no point anymore in publishing other viewpoints.
Just look at the New York Times, which until recently was widely considered America’s most prestigious newspaper. A vehement supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, the paper ran pieces excusing, downplaying, and even praising violent rioting and looting, which supposedly “shined a spotlight on American racism” and instigated investigations “when traditional appeals have failed.” However, when Senator Tom Cotton published a piece in the Times calling for the military’s deployment to end the rioting, Times staffers revolted. Reporters took to Twitter to denounce their own employer for printing Cotton’s piece, and more than a thousand Times staffers signed a letter protesting the article’s publication. Predictably, the Times cravenly proclaimed they never should have run the piece and forced the resignation of the editorial page editor.
