Save for the Wall Street Journal, few big media operations have reporters with the background or editors and media producers with journalistic principles to accurately inform you about legal matters. This week, looking at John Durham’s Danchenko indictment and the Kyle Rittenhouse case in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that point was made crystal clear.

The Hillary Dossier

It has taken far too long for the Department of Justice to reveal the underpinnings of the phony Trump-Russian collusion story, a story in which Clinton associates and contractors fobbed off shoddy opposition research as “intelligence” to a credulous and corrupt FBI and press. But this week, we are finally getting to the genesis. We know now that the FBI was not duped, but knew the truth -- that the Dossier which the press had trumpeted as proof of the collusion was a complete lie, and yet kept the public in the dark about it. We know also that the factual underpinnings of the Dossier were created by a Russian national (Igor Danchenko) who was introduced to a Clinton associate and Democrat party operative (Charles Dolan) who himself for years had represented Russian interests. We know the two men were introduced to each other by Fiona Hill, a “Russian expert for the National Security Council” under Trump who just happened to testify against the President in the phony unrelated Ukrainian impeachment case, and that she also introduced Danchenko to Christopher Steele, opposition researcher for hire and author of the fabricated Dossier. Kimberly Strassel:

[Charles Dolan] had far more ties to Russians than anyone in Mr. Trump’s circle, having for eight years helped handle “global public relations for the Russian government” and throughout 2016 interacted frequently with senior Russian officials and Russian Embassy staff.

The indictment reveals that in August 2016, Mr. Danchenko asked Mr. Dolan for any “thought, rumor or allegation” regarding the summer’s resignation of Paul Manafort as Mr. Trump’s campaign manager. Mr. Danchenko explained he was working on a “project against Trump.” Mr. Dolan replied that he’d had a drink with a “GOP friend of mine who knows some of the players” and provided gossip. Sentences of this email appear nearly verbatim in the Steele dossier, though they are (hilariously) sourced to a “close associate of TRUMP.” To add farce to fantasy, the indictment says the Mr. Dolan later told the FBI he’d fabricated meeting a GOP friend and had simply passed on info he’d read in the press. [snip]

The indictment flags meetings, emails and calls that suggests Mr. Dolan passed plenty of other information to Mr. Danchenko for the dossier. This includes information he might have obtained during visits to the Russian Embassy in Washington. (Did the Russians know where this was going?) Mr. Dolan was also in regular communication with Olga Galkina, another Russian who fed information to Mr. Danchenko for the dossier. Ms. Galkina noted in two separate emails that she was expecting Mr. Dolan to get her a State Department job in a Hillary Clinton administration.

The indictment alleges Mr. Danchenko lied about Mr. Dolan’s interaction with the dossier when the bureau belatedly tried to check the dossier’s accuracy. The indictment says all this deprived the FBI of the ability to learn about the “reliability, motivations, and potential bias” of the Democratic source. True, though this latest indictment again paints the FBI as either inept or biased.

How many more years will it take for Durham to prove beyond peradventure of doubt that the Russian-Trump Collusion was, in fact, the Russia-Hillary Collusion? Will it take even longer for the media to acknowledge it swamped the public with “a fake conspiracy theory funded and concocted by criminals for partisan gain”?  Glenn Greenwald claims that the Hillary Conspiracy was aided by a partisan, dishonest press and fellow travelers in the FBI and CIA:

...we have heard so little about these indictments from these media figures. Why? Because they know that as long as they stay united in silence, the only people who will point out what they did are those they have frozen out of their circle and trained their audience not to hear 

The NYT, the WPost, CNN, NBC and the digital liberal outlets are all vastly more guilty of what they have spent years claiming Trump and the GOP are: they basically ran a dangerous disinformation campaign, full of lies, in conjunction with CIA/FBI, and now won't own up to it. 

From the start, Russiagate -- which drowned US politics and dangerously ratcheted up tensions with a major nuclear-armed power -- was concocted from whole cloth by serial liars paid for by the Clinton campaign and spread by their media servants: David Corn, Isikoff, Frank Foer. 

They all made gigantic profit from this set of lies: all of them. Their ratings skyrocketed by scaring liberals about Kremlin control of the US. They wrote best-selling books and gave themselves Pulitzers based on this massive fraud. FBI lied to the FISA court. CIA fueled it all. 

It has taken five years for the damnable Russian collusion lies to be exposed.  Andrew Weissman really ran what was supposed to be the Robert Mueller investigation (even Congressman Adam Schiff has admitted, Mueller was “not all there”). Despite years of pecksniffing and millions of dollars even this richly financed and rabidly partisan counsel was able to create only one thing out of nothing -- a very generous $1.5 million book contract for Andrew Weissmann from Simon & Schuster, the money bags of choice for Democrat party figures.

Not only the media lapdogs benefitted financially from the Hillary conspiracy.

Another Legal Travesty: the Trial of Kyle Rittenhouse 

Even the testimony of the witnesses called by the bumbling prosecutors of Kyle Rittenhouse is making a strong case that the defendant acted in accord with recognized law on self-defense in the middle of a violent riot. The best coverage is by Andrew F. Branca at Legal Insurrection: 

Two of the state’s own witnesses, and arguably their star witnesses with the greatest immediate personal knowledge of the events surrounding the shootings -- journalist Richard McGinnis who was filming and interviewing Kyle that night, and former Army Infantryman Ryan Balch, who was also armed along with Kyle that night -- provided lengthy testimony that not only failed to assist the state’s efforts to attack Kyle’s claim of self-defense, their testimony substantively strengthened that claim of self-defense.

So clueless was media coverage of the case that the judge commented on it: 

On Wednesday, Judge Schroeder griped specifically about Toobin’s coverage of the “victim” ruling.

“This was on CNN, Jeffrey Toobin and another attorney there, and a comment was made that the ruling was incomprehensible, and I think they obviously are not familiar with this rule,” the judge said.

He continued, taking aim at the broader press, saying, “I’m going to comment about the media again because there was a gentleman on TV night before last who said this is the most divisive case in the country to date. So anything that undermines public confidence in what happens here is very important.”

“It’s important for this town,” Schroeder said, “it’s important for this country, to have people have confidence in the result of this trial, whatever it is. And I don’t care what it is.”

Earlier, during jury selection on Tuesday, Schroeder also bemoaned what he characterizes as a glut of “irresponsible” news coverage, including reports that are “deliberately biased.”

In the Rittenhouse case, too, the FBI apparently has mud on its face. It had taken a high overhead thermal image video of the incident, which fact it did not disclose until recently to the defense and which it now claims is missing. 

Defense lawyer Mark Richards told the judge he believes there was other video taken by the FBI that’s no longer available.

Richards said he was incredulous that the FBI could take video that captured alleged homicides and then got rid of that video.

“That is preposterous,” Richards added. The judge balked when prosecutor Binger told him regarding footage from the plane that “the federal government is not under our control.”

“I beg your pardon,” the judge said, interrupting Binger.

“I don’t get this,” the judge said. “This is a criminal prosecution… if there is going to be cloak and dagger stuff. What’s going on?”

Indeed, what is going on?

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