Russiagate reckoning wouldn’t be necessary if media didn’t ‘lie’ in first place, Nunes memo author says

Republican advocates behind a key moment in the Russiagate saga may appreciate how badly the media has botched the story, but they are unimpressed that only a few Americans are now aware of it. Waking up to what he calls “total lies.”

Kash Patel was the primary author of a 2018 memo by then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., about significant flaws in the sprawling Trump-Russia investigation, which included only the Russia probe. can be defined as the coverage of which dominated the Trump administration.

But the idea that former President Trump was involved in a diabolical conspiracy with the Kremlin has fallen into disrepute, and the Nunes memo and other narratives once fueled by the left have lost journalistic credibility as a result. have received a retreat from Patel, who helped draft the memo as a senior committee aide, will take what he can get, but wishes there was no need to reexamine the Russiagate narrative first.

“If only they had gotten it right the first time, when Devin and I and many others were actually putting the truth out there, instead of being a disinformation machine for the left’s agenda,” says Kash Patel. work properly, so there is no re-diagnosis,” Kash Patel said. “They couldn’t do their job in the deep state without their partners in the mainstream media, who are part of that deep state.”

The liberal Columbia Journalism Review offers a scathing indictment of the New York Times’ Russiagate coverage

At the time, then-CNN analyst Jeffrey Tobin called the memo a “total travesty”, MSNBC and CNN pundits alike called it a “dud”, future Biden press secretary Jane Psaki called it a “nothing burger”. declared and liberal cable news programs spent countless hours participating in similar groupthink. Ironically, Patel believes that liberal viewers who used non-stop coverage painting Trump as a Russian asset are likely to admit their preferred pundits were wrong.

But since allegations of collusion have dwindled amid Russiagate reassessments, the Columbia Journalism Review, the in-house publication of Columbia’s prestigious journalism school, Produced by a Last week’s lengthy recap of the media’s Russiagate coverage examined multiple news organizations and their various culpability throughout the story.

The liberal Columbia Journalism Review offers a scathing indictment of the New York Times’ Russiagate coverage

The New York Times’ coverage of the Nunes memo drew sharp criticism from the report’s author, Jeff Gareth, as the Gray Lady called it “politically charged,” focusing on “difficult Democrats,” Steele’s memo. Rejected the charge. The dossier’s role in garnering oversight over Carter Page and the “severe” criticism from the left. Aaron Black of The Washington Post later acknowledged that the Nunes memo was largely vindicated, particularly in its scathing assessment of how FBI and Justice Department officials obtained secret surveillance warrants. .

Gareth noted that the Democrats’ countermemo was covered more favorably by the Times. Despite Gareth’s criticism, the Times told CJR that it still stands by its reporting on the Nunes memo.

The four-page memo alleges misuse of intelligence by the DOJ and the FBI during the 2016 Trump campaign, citing a senior administration official who said the two agencies had worked on behalf of Democrats. In the absence of the controversial anti-Trump dossier it funded, surveillance warrants were never sought. Despite the skewed coverage it’s received, Patel doesn’t expect The Times to admit any inaccurate coverage of the memo — or Russiagate in general — anytime soon.

“They have to admit they got the Pulitzer for disinformation,” Patel said, referring to the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting that went to the Times and the Washington Post for their coverage of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Was shared.

“Neither side wants to say they are wrong,” Patel said. “They certainly don’t want to do it publicly, and they don’t want to do it on the most productive surveillance investigation in modern American history.”

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Kesh Patel was the lead investigator on the Russiagate investigation for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. During the Trump administration, he served as chief of staff at the Department of Defense and deputy assistant to the president, among other top national security positions. He is a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America.

Patel believes that Democrats were essentially feeding “misinformation and disinformation” to news organizations.

“Politicians such as Adam Schiff and [Eric] “Swalwell and company were leaking misinformation and disinformation to them that they knew The New York Times and The Washington Post … would go along with because there was a narrative to attack then-President Trump,” he added. Said that the Times and Post were awarded “the biggest award on planet earth in journalism by basically cheating and lying.”

Trump has since filed a defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize board for standing by the “totally debunked” coverage.

“I think the fact that President Trump has been so vocal about taking back his awards and, you know, trying to restore the credibility of journalism, he can’t just come out and say, ‘We got it wrong,’ because then I think that would be an avalanche in the public view of his reputation,” Patel said.

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Patel said that getting the facts before the American people should be a top priority.

“Over the last five years, half of America has believed and still believes that Donald Trump is a Russian asset. And now, finally, we’re reaching at least the middle of the spectrum that said, ‘Okay. “Wow, this big piece shows what I was reading, and what I was making my life decisions about, and what I was voting on was basically a complete lie,” Patel said. “If we can do that and get that message out, that’s more important to me than focusing my efforts on what The New York Times does with its landmark awards.”

The Pulitzer Prize Board has stood by its 2018 national reporting prizes awarded to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. (Image example)

J. Peder Zane, a right-leaning columnist for RealClearPolitics who once clerked for The New York Times as a clerk in its writing program, The newspaper wrote “Deliberately trying to deceive his readers.”

The lack of coverage of skeptical voices about the Russia investigation, such as former FBI agent Peter Strzok’s initial skepticism about the veracity of the collusion allegations, is a major factor Zin pointed out in the Russiagate story. It was one of the journalistic failures. His colleague Aaron Matt referred to it as “promoting the narrative of Trump-Russia collusion and subverting the facts”.

“The Times is suspicious of Trump,” Zane said of how he felt the paper had gotten it wrong.

“The Times accepts the idea that it did something. The Times exclusively uses anonymous sources who clearly have an agenda, who have told them clearly about key aspects of this investigation. misled, and once it was shown they were wrong, the Times both failed to correct the record and failed to acknowledge who those anonymous sources were,” Zane added.

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Zain said the Times knew “what they were doing” and echoed Patel about the media’s intentions.

“It’s outrageous … a hallmark of their Trump-Russia coverage was the incredibly skillful language that ultimately misleads the reader,” he continued. “My whole point is that the New York Times and the Washington Post and the New Yorker and MSNBC, they’re disrespectful to their liberal and left-wing leaders who they’re misleading.”

Patel calls CJR’s removal of mainstream Russiagate coverage a “valiant effort” to help spread the truth after all these years, but feels it was incomplete.

“If they really wanted to do a reassessment, they would call the people who, you know, wrote the Nuance memo,” Patel said. “We must capture this story.”

CJR executive editor Kyle Pope did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Patel was not surprised that the media covered the memo as some sort of “political hit piece” and said he knew the truth would eventually prevail.

In this March 22, 2018 file photo, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, leaves a secure area to speak to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jay Scott Applewhite)

“We just said, look, when the information came out, backing it up, as the IG and many others have now confirmed, there’s not a single word wrong,” Patel said. said

“I think the viewers who are very strict and dial in on the MSNBC front, and some of the others, the CNNs of the world, I think they know. I think privately, they’re definitely saying that. are,” he added.

“They’re telling themselves that because they spend so much time on it. They know how the Russia investigation actually unfolded,” Patel continued. “Will they ever admit it publicly? No, I don’t think so.”

He feels that even the newsroom leaders of liberal organizations knew the truth.

“They knew what the information was because it was being leaked directly to them. And how do we know that? Because of the reporting details that were put out there. So what they did, I think, was almost Worse. What the FBI did with lying to the FISA court,” Patel said. “He used falsehoods in journalism to portray a political target that he hated so much that he was willing to stake his reputation and his fan base and say, ‘We Whatever they print is the truth, even though we know it’s a lie.'”