Remember when the press and leftist politicians badgered President Trump?  A story came out from the New York Times in 2020 claiming that Russia was paying bounties to Talibanites to kill U.S. troops stationed there?  (As if these Islamofacist maniacs might not be motivated otherwise to do it themselves.)

Oh, the brouhaha it drew!  President Trump was constantly blamed for not taking the problem "seriously," and America-hating Democrats had a field day of playing patriot.  It came out during election season, and Joe Biden played it to the hilt, being Mr. Patriot and all, despite never having served.  The aim of all this tiresome crap, played over and over and over on the nighttime news, was to Get Trump by bringing back that old dead cat about Trump being Putin's puppet.

Turns out that this bounty claim was, like a lot of these stories, a naked, total lie.

Here's what the Biden White House, which benefited handsomely from the lie, now has to say about it, according to the Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration Thursday said it didn’t have solid intelligence that Russia had offered bounties to Afghan militants to kill U.S. troops, reports that last summer shook up U.S.-Russia relations, increased tensions between the U.S. and the Taliban during a troop drawdown and prompted bipartisan condemnation over the Trump administration’s inaction.

On Thursday, the administration said U.S. intelligence had only “low to moderate confidence” in the reports of the alleged bounty program.

The administration expressly declined to link the latest sanctions and expulsions of Russian diplomats undertaken Thursday to the bounty reports.

Anybody pay a price for this canard, now that the truth is out?  Turns out it was like the Steele dossier story — pretty much all made up.

Mollie Hemingway notes on Twitter that this bounty lie that ran as straight news was made up by the exact same people: