I’ve been calling out malign, Russian influence in our country for decades. But just because Russia collusion regarding President Donald Trump wasn’t real and was a very damaging lie that has hurt the country for years, that doesn’t mean Russia hasn’t been trying to push chaos for a very long time.

Indeed, even in the lie about Russia collusion, while I’ve often spoken about the Clinton connection, we should also not forget that Christopher Steele worked for Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch who was close to Vladimir Putin, and there were tons of Russian links connected to Steele’s dossier. So, we’re not just talking about Clinton and the Democrats potentially pushing fantasy here to hurt Donald Trump and the country.

But when Sen. Mitt Romney (RINO-UT) attacked Tulsi Gabbard for talking about biolabs in Ukraine and called her treasonous. Gabbard took him to school in response. Not only doesn’t he understand treason is a very specific, legal term that doesn’t apply and shouldn’t be thrown about lightly, but he’s jumping over the fact that yes, there are biolabs in Ukraine. That’s not a conspiracy theory; Victoria Nuland testified earlier in March that they were there, and that they were concerned about what might happen if they fell into the hands of the Russians. In response, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said that if there was any release/attack, the fault would be on Russia.

My colleague Streiff did a rundown earlier on Wednesday, on various aspects of the question. He noted this clip from Fox’s Jennifer Griffin on the topic.

Fox News's Jennifer Griffin expertly dismantles Russian propaganda about bio-labs in Ukraine
"Those are Soviet-era bio-labs that the U.S. has been engaged [in] since 2005" as a way to clean up and convert what the Soviets left behind, essentially de-proliferate Soviet-era weapons pic.twitter.com/dvjeuP4SyZ

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) March 10, 2022

There’s also another clip, with Laura Ingraham referring to information from 2005 about what was going on with the labs.

Fox News’s Laura Ingraham deduces that the evidence-empty claims by Russia and China about Ukraine bio-labs are “a pretext for more propaganda, more anti-Americanism, and justifying this hit on Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/ykEBH4ZAs6

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) March 10, 2022

Now, Russia of course is going to say whatever they think they can about what’s in Ukraine and spread a lot of disinformation about U.S. involvement–and we should call that out. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the issue that yes, there are labs there and yes, apparently that is a problem, otherwise Nuland wouldn’t be so concerned and Rubio wouldn’t be talking about the risk of something being “released.” You can acknowledge that, while knocking down the false claims from Russia. But if you simply deny it, then try to shut down any discussion of it, even after what Nuland said, then you’re not operating with a lot of credibility and you look like you’re trying to cover things up.

Here’s Tucker Carlson’s take on people attacking him over the biolabs question.

The U.S. government confirmed there are biolabs in Ukraine. But now anyone who says that out loud is accused of treason. pic.twitter.com/8s6UPhBoAL

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) March 15, 2022

He even invited Rep. Adam Kinzinger (RINO-IL) on to justify his attacks, in which Kinzinger called Carlson “pro-Putin.” But as we noted, Kinzinger punked out. He no doubt knew that he wouldn’t stand a chance.