Wednesday, July 29, 2020

A Steeley Media Silence

One scene will feature top Democrats and Brookings Institution officials who would be flattered if you ended up thinking of them as Steele dossier conspirators as some now wish to portray them.

In the runup to the 2016 election, all were to be seen busily and importantly circulating a dossier of allegations about the Trump campaign drawn up by former British agent Christopher Steele, presumably unaware that Mr. Steele's source was merely a former analyst in their own shop along with his drinking buddies.

Mr. Talbott even phoned Mr. Steele to conspire furtively over the dossier, about which Mr. Talbott's interest would instantly have vanished had he known its true provenance.

What we've learned thanks to popular dissection of a heavily redacted FBI interview with Mr. Steele's "Primary sub-source," made public by Senate investigators: The source was Igor Danchenko, product of a regional Russian undergraduate legal education.

The surface scandal here is the FBI's knowing use of the bogus Steele dossier to spy on an extraordinarily minor Trump campaign associate.

So how did the New York Times handle the outing of Mr. Danchenko this week? As if somebody definitely did something wrong, and it was whoever brought Mr. Danchenko's identity to light.

Except for one thing: At least the Times reported the story, and even confirmed Mr. Danchenko's identity after it was exposed by diligent volunteers on the web.

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