Discredited anti-Trump Steele dossier was embraced by liberal media:
Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the Trump-Russia probe has further discredited the infamous Steele dossier, which provided the roadmap for the liberal media to paint the former president as compromised by the Kremlin and even a possible sexual deviant.
Durham indicted Russian national Igor Danchenko, who is believed to be the sub-source for former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who compiled the dossier.
The scandalous dossier – funded by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign through law firm Perkins Coie – provided the liberal media with countless anti-Trump headlines, cable news segments and helped set the tone for years of daily, feverish Russiagate coverage.
Danchenko pleaded not guilty Wednesday to making false statements about the source of information that he provided to Steele for the dossier – but the damage was done long ago, as pundits on MSNBC, CNN, reporters at major newspapers such as The New York Times and Washington Post, and countless other news organizations heaped credibility on the dossier for yeras.
Here are five of the biggest offenders.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow helped pushed the discredited Russian collusion narrative.
Rachel Maddow
MSNBC’s biggest star relied on the dossier for so much content that Steele probably deserves a writing credit on “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
Maddow routinely insisted “pieces” of the dossier had checked out back when the entire thing was completely unverified. She dedicated so much of her programming in 2017-2019 to hyperventilating over whether or not Trump colluded with Russia that ex-MSNBC host Krystal Ball slammed her former colleague in 2019 when the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony began to debunk Maddow’s favorite narrative.
“Rachel Maddow, you’ve got some explaining to do,” Ball said on her former show “Rising.”
Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple has written a series of columns calling out members of the media who pushed the bogus dossier. Back in Dec. 2019, Wemple penned a column headlined, “Rachel Maddow rooted for the Steele dossier to be true. Then it fell apart,” which came out nearly two years before Durham further discredited it.
Maddow even seemed to dismiss the severity of the new revelations when the Durham indictments continued to undercut her favorite narrative. Journalist Drew Holden recently called her the “vociferous cheerleader of the Steele dossier,” noting she “hyped it at every turn.”
Maddow was hardly the only figure at MSNBC to boost the dossier, with others such as Nicolle Wallace and Chris Hayes also touting it or at least claiming it was not “disproven.”
“The dossier on its face is still considered an unverified document…
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