George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Wednesday corporate media outlets would ignore the involvement of former President Barack Obama in the creation of the narrative that Russia colluded with President Donald Trump to defeat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because the outlets helped push the story.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released documents and a memo Friday detailing what she called a “years-long coup” against Trump after he defeated Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, adding that she had referred the documents to the Justice Department for potential criminal activity. Turley called the media coverage of the allegations a “dog pile” that “consumed” Trump’s first term.
“I think [Tulsi] put it very well. The fact is that those of us who were involved in different aspects of the first term in the media or in Congress, that was a real dog pile,” Turley told “America Reports” co-host John Roberts. “The minute he came into office, he faced this investigation that consumed much of it. They were successful. You know, these are media figures who were looking for [a] Russian conspiracy.”
“This is it and you were part of it. That is, the Russian conspiracy was to seed this false narrative that would consume the first Trump term and it worked, but it wouldn’t have worked without the people in that room,” Turley said. “You will notice how they fervently refused, despite [Tulsi’s] efforts, to address the evidence that she just released. That’s consistent with what they did during the first term. They weren’t interested in looking at evidence that contradicted the narrative. They’re still not interested, because it implicates not just these high-level officials, it implicates them.”
Information purporting to show Russia colluded with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was leaked to The Washington Post in the aftermath of the Nov. 8, 2016, election, according to the documents released by Gabbard Friday. Trump sued the board of directors of the Pulitzer Prizes in December 2022 after they defended the joint 2018 award to the Washington Post and The New York Times for reporting on the allegations.
The dossier created by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele was repeatedly cited on CNN, MSNBC and other corporate media outlets to advance the unproven claims that Clinton lost the 2016 presidential race due to Russian interference in the election. Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee were fined by the Federal Election Commission in 2022 for their involvement in the since-discredited dossier, which was used to further allegations of collusion, CNN reported.