Glenn R. Simpson, co-founder of the research firm Fusion GPS, arrives for a scheduled appearance before a closed House Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

The founders of Fusion GPS have continued to make the rounds, spending ample time on the cable news networks this week. If you aren’t familiar with the outfit, these are the same con artists who were paid millions of dollars to invent the Steele dossier targeting Donald Trump in 2016.

As streiff reported earlier, they first went on Meet the Press to get fluffed by Chris Todd. In that interview, the two men took a swipe at Fiona Hill, the witness in the impeachment hearings who had called Christopher Steele out for getting “played” by Russian misinformation.

Here was the exchange after NBC played the clip of Jim Jordan asking Hill about the matter.

CHUCK TODD:

Fiona Hill’s an expert.

GLENN SIMPSON:

She is. Actually, she’s not of the same exact area of expertise as Chris. She’s not a disinformation specialist.

CHUCK TODD:

Okay.

GLENN SIMPSON:

And so she is a Russia specialist in general. She’s entitled to her opinion. I know she knows Chris and has worked with him for a long time. So I’m not sure that that is very well-understood within that one remark.

PETER FRITSCH:

I mean, I was puzzled by her comment, because I don’t really know what a rabbit hole means in that context. I will say, though, that you can’t actually catch rabbits without going down some rabbit holes. So you need to actually follow leads where they take you. And we have full confidence in Chris’ ability to do exactly that.

The grift goes on and it’s obvious that any admission on their part that their product was garbage will cost them money. After all, there’s an entire shell industry of donors paying Fusion GPS to feed fake stories to the press.

I love that Todd’s answer there is just “ok.” No push back, no pointing out the myriad of issues with the dossier and Steele’s work. Just “ok.” Stellar journalism on his part.

Yesterday, Simpson and Fritsch made it to ABC, where the topic of Michael Cohen going to Prague was asked about. You may recall that as being a conspiracy theory that has been thoroughly debunked.

Fusion GPS founders still think the dossier's Cohen-Prague allegations are "credible" and merely "unresolved," as opposed to debunked. https://t.co/vEtSYGWP34

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) November 27, 2019

Though the Cohen-Prague theory is widely considered to be debunked, Fritsch and Simpson say they consider it “unresolved.”

“I mean, it’s unresolved. If you look at the Mueller report, Mueller report reports what Michael Cohen told him,” Fritsch said. Asked if they are sticking by the Cohen-Prague allegation, Fritsch said that “we’re sticking by the credibility of Chris’s reporting” — a reference to Steele. “We believe it’s credible. Whether it’s true or not is another matter,” said Fritsch.

That’s actually not true. Mueller did not simply report what Cohen told him. He sent representatives oversees and investigated the matter. Further, it was not Mueller’s job to prove something didn’t happen, it was Steele’s job to prove it did. You can’t prove a negative and Steele’s assertions failed every evidentiary test thrown at them. There was simply no evidence Cohen ever made a secret trip to Prague to collude with the Russians.

Simpson and Fritsch then went on MSNBC, where they were allowed continually dodge questions about their failures. Laughably, the network brought on Ken Dilanian, one of the notorious Fusion GPS mouthpieces in media, to toss softballs at the duo.

“Do you think that Mueller simply couldn’t prove some of these things and that they actually may in fact be true? Or what are your thoughts about some of these allegations that haven’t proven out?” asked Dilanian.

Fritsch ducked the question. “I think the best metaphor for this is Pearl Harbor,” he said. “Here was a report, and we have to think about the meta theme of the report, which is that here was a report that said the Russians are trying to affect the outcome of an American election with the specific goal of electing Donald Trump president,” he added.

That’s some serious spin. The fact that the dossier very, very broadly suggested the Russians were trying to interfere in the election does not excuse the fact that almost all the details (including all the salacious ones) were simply false. These are grifters who got played and paid a lot of money in the process.

Cohen did not go to Prague, there is no pee tape, and there simply was no vast conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the election. The fact that Fusion GPS is still allowed to pedal this garbage is a pretty big indictment of the media’s lack of credibly. Simpson, Fritsch, and their organization deserve to be ridiculed, not given free air time to promote their silly book.

And speaking of that book, here’s a preview of what it’s like.

I’m reading the Fusion fluffer book so you don’t have to and there’s a legit chapter entitled “Captain America.”

It’s about Glenn Simpson.

How he tried to save the republic from Trump, House GOP.

It’s not satire.

— Julie Kelly (@julie_kelly2) November 27, 2019

As much as Democrats and the media like to lose their minds about Russia, there is absolutely no single entity in existence that has done more to damage the country since 2016 than Fusion GPS. To this day they are still feeding dumpster fire information to willing reporters, causing further chaos and division. The country is nearly coming apart at the seams and men like Simpson and Fritsch are making money ensuring it gets worse.

The scary thing is that our own government had a hand in this, taking information from these clowns and propagating it as verified evidence. Worse, it seems no one will even be punished for it.

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