After a bit of a lull, more Russia investigation news is making its way into view as the IG report on the original investigation itself nears.

Earlier today I posted on one of Mueller’s two major pillars proving Russian interference falling apart. Sometimes, evidence can lead where you don’t want to go and a decision has to be made. Do you take one on the chin or keep pressing? Throughout this entire ordeal, from the FBI investigation to the Mueller investigation, we’ve seen the latter choice made in order to push the right narrative.

Perhaps the biggest example of that was the treatment of Christopher Steele’s dossier. Whether talking about the FBI or Robert Mueller, the evidence went somewhere contrary to the conclusion they wanted to reach. That meant the FBI ignoring red flag after red flag and continuing to push the document anyway. For Mueller, it meant inexplicably ignoring it’s existence, despite it being central to the entire case.

Apparently that hasn’t been lost on IG Horowitz, who is finalizing his report on possible FBI and DOJ corruption during the Russia investigation. He, unlike Robert Mueller, felt that Christopher Steele was actually worth talking about and this culminated in a 15 hour interview. News of that broke today and as per usual, the report came via a liberal media outlet desperately seeking to get out ahead of the story.

The New York Times, obviously working with leakers friendly to Steele, ran to try to whitewash the whole matter.

lol this entire paragraph is just straight up disgusting propaganda and it's par for the course for the partisan hacks at the failing New York Times. Seriously who writes like this and then pretends to be an unbiased news organization? Just admit you're Democrat hacks already. pic.twitter.com/QaYKUdM4BB

— Shem Horne (@Shem_Infinite) July 9, 2019

The “much broader” investigation excuse has always been a farce. The FBI were not concerned with stopping Russian interference before the 2016 election and their lack of action through election day is fairly strong evidence of that. Instead, they continually sought to try to tie the Trump campaign to some kind of Russian conspiracy. That was clearly their main goal and anyone pretending otherwise is just being disingenuous.

Mueller’s conclusion that the campaign “welcomed and expected” to benefit from Russian interference still has precious little evidence to back it up as well. Any politician would welcome the dropping of damaging information on their opponent. That’s far from nefarious and the Clinton campaign were certainly open to help from Russian sources via Steele’s work. Robert Mueller never found that worth pursing though. Odd, right?

IG Horowitz is reviewing all the stuff the FBI knew about the dossier that would discredit it, from when they found out the DNC/Clinton paid for it to also why they didn't notify the court about things like them KNOWING a person that was a main source for Steele wasn't reliable. pic.twitter.com/2nmvgwg1CI

— Shem Horne (@Shem_Infinite) July 9, 2019

Every step of the way, the Times seeks to downplay behavior that would immediately be red-flagged if they were the actions of a Republican administration. The number of wiretaps given over the course of a year is not a excuse for malfeasance and to trot that out there is transparent at best. The FBI knew Steele’s main source was unreliable and had lied, yet they kept using Steele’s work anyway. That doesn’t just happen. Someone consciously made the decision that the narrative was more important than the evidence.

Things get even stupider in the the article though.

"They asked Mr. Steele whether the bureau was overly reliant on the Russian expertise of outsiders like him. Mr. Steele told them that he believed the F.B.I. probably was underequipped to judge the inherently murky intelligence he was relaying."

😂 what type of excuse is that? pic.twitter.com/hZIZAzwrY5

— Shem Horne (@Shem_Infinite) July 9, 2019

The Times clearly has sources who directly worked on this investigation. They are the same sources who feed them leaks, like those in this article, in order to get out ahead of stories and sanitize them for those implicated. But the same New York Times can’t figure out something as simple as who the main source in the Page warrant was? That’s implausible and the much more logical explanation is that the answer isn’t flattering for the FBI.

Steele’s answer on whether the bureau was relying too heavily on outsiders says a lot. On one hand, we are told the FBI are the best in the world and would never screw things up. Yet, here’s Steele basically saying they were too stupid to handle and judge his intelligence on their own.

Jule Kelly also laid down some critiques of the reporting.

Also @adamgoldmanNYT you try VERY HARD several times to assure readers that the FBI didn’t have the dossier until September. So what material did Bruce Ohr give McCabe and Lisa Page on July 30, 2016 after he and his wife met with Steele personally in DC? You know, a day before…

— Julie Kelly (@julie_kelly2) July 9, 2019

Also @adamgoldmanNYT why didn’t you mention that Steele was working for Oleg Deripaska, the Putin-linked oligarch, in 2016 at the same time he was an FBI informant AND a DNC/Clinton campaign operative?

— Julie Kelly (@julie_kelly2) July 9, 2019

Bruce and Nellie Ohr have been at the heart of this since the beginning, yet the media continually brush them aside and accept nonsensical, inconsistent excuses for their behavior. Nellie was working for Fusion GPS and feeding information to the DOJ through her husband long before September. The idea that the FBI was unaware of Steele’s work until then is a laughable premise. In fact, Bruce Ohr would later admit in his Congressional testimony that he discussed Steele’s work with Glenn Simpson in August of 2016. Even more damning, Bruce and Nellie Ohr met with Steele personally in July of 2016.

In all of these numerous puff pieces by The New York Times and The Washington Post on this topic, Steele is painted as a reliable guy just doing his job. His pervasive connections to the Russians are never explored. His motives never analyzed. The obvious questions about how he could have gotten it so wrong are never asked. Even when the Times admitted that the dossier may have been a Russian disinformation operation, they never bothered to ask whether Steele was part of that, you know, given that he wrote the thing.

To cap it all off, Robert Mueller, who we were assured was going to leave no stone unturned in search of the virtuous truth, didn’t even bother to look into any of this. Does that make sense?

This entire thing is just a mess. Hopefully, the coming IG report can shed some light on this, but even then, I don’t expect any real justice.

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