Falsehood No. 1: Michael Flynn Discussed Sanctions With Russia and Lied About It

1 A Feb. 9, 2017 Washington Post article claimed that Michael Flynn had held "explicit" discussions with Russia's UN Ambassador about US sanctions.

Transcripts of the calls, released in May 2020, showed this was false. Sanctions were in fact only mentioned once, in passing. The Flynn transcripts did show that there was a more extensive discussion about a separate action, expulsions. But the Post's sources said the references to sanctions were "explicit", and that Flynn even made a "potentially illegal signal" of a future "reprieve."

In response, the Post acknowledged that the Feb. 9, 2017 story conflated "sanctions" w/ "expulsions" -- but claimed that this was "appropriate." Except an earlier Dec. 29 2016 Post story, linked in Feb story's 2nd graf, makes a clear distinction between expulsions and sanctions.

Falsehood No. 2: Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence

2 A Feb. 14, 2017 Times article reported that "phone records and intercepted calls" show that Trump campaign members and associates "had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election."

Comey testified that the story was "not true." Mueller report contained no evidence of any such contacts. Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who opened Trump-Russia probe, wrote that "we are unaware of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials."

The Times has not only failed to retract this story but it's even claimed that subsequent claims "confirm" it. The basis for that: evidence-free, factually challenged claims of a Senate Intel report and a Treasury press release about one person, Konstantin Kilimnik.

Falsehood No. 3: George Papadopoulos's 'Night of Heavy Drinking' With the Australian Envoy

3 On Dec. 30, 2017, the Times reported that the FBI opened the Trump-Russia probe in 2016 after hearing that a low-level campaign volunteer, George Papadopoulos, had told an Australian diplomat that Russia had "political dirt on Hillary Clinton," including "thousands of emails."

The implication was clear: the FBI got a credible tip that the Trump campaign had specific knowledge of the alleged Russian hack of DNC and Hillary Clinton emails later published by Wikileaks. But all involved -- including the FBI's own docs -- dispute this account.

Alexander Downer, the diplomat who relayed the tip, said Papadopoulos had never mentioned "dirt" or "thousands of emails" - he "didn’t say what it was."

FBI doc that opened the Trump-Russia probe confirms Downer's vague account. Downer said Papadopoulos had "suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist." Nature of this "suggestion" was "unclear" -- no mention of dirt or emails.

Falsehood No. 4: Russia Launched a Sweeping Interference Campaign That Posed a ‘National Security Threat'

4 As Pulitzer-winning media outlets relied on anonymous intelligence officials to fuel innuendo about Trump-Russia collusion, they turned to these same sources to imply that a compromised president was unwilling to confront the existential threat of "Russian interference."

"Doubting the intelligence, Trump pursues Putin and leaves a Russian threat unchecked" was the headline for a Pulitzer-winning Post story on Dec. 14, 2017.

"To Sway Vote, Russia Used Army of Fake Americans", the NYT declared in a Sept. 8 2017, also a winner of the Pulitzer.

Because "Trump continues to reject the evidence that Russia waged an assault on a pillar of [US] democracy", the Post said, he has "impaired" the "response to a national security threat." An ex-CIA chief "described the Russian interference as the political equivalent" of 9/11.

In the Times, Scott Shane described what he called "an unprecedented foreign intervention in American democracy" by "a cyberarmy of counterfeit Facebook and Twitter accounts" from Russia.

But putting aside whether it's appropriate to describe bots & hackers this way, there's a deeper problem: Shane has no idea if they're even Russian. These social media actors are only only "suspected Russian operators" that "appeared to be Russian creations," he quietly concedes.

And for all of the space they devoted to fear-mongering about Russia's 9/11-level "cyberarmy", the Post & Times have not found time to even mention countervailing evidence, e.g. Crowdstrike's CEO admitting that his firm "did not have concrete evidence" of Russian email hacking.

Falsehood No. 5: The Justice Department Pulled Its Punches on Trump

5 When Mueller ended his investigation in 2019 without charging Trump or any other associate for conspiring with Russia, a collusion-obsessed media formulated more conspiracy theories to explain away this unwelcome ending.

First came the belief that Attorney General William Barr had forced Mueller to shut down, misrepresented his final report, and hid the smoking-gun evidence behind redactions. When Mueller failed to support any of these allegations in his July 2019 congressional testimony, a new culprit was needed.

One year later, the New York Times found its fall guy: Mueller's overseer, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, had handcuffed the special counsel.

The Justice Department secretly took steps in 2017 to narrow the investigation into Russian election interference and any links to the Trump campaign, according to former law enforcement officials, keeping investigators from completing an examination of President Trump's decades-long personal and business ties to Russia," Michael Schmidt reported on Aug. 30, 2020. Rosenstein, Schmidt said, "curtailed the investigation without telling the bureau, all but ensuring it would go nowhere" and preventing the FBI from "completing an inquiry into whether the president's personal and financial links to Russia posed a national security threat.

To buttress his case, Schmidt cited the Democrats' leading collusion advocate, Rep. Adam Schiff, who feared that "that the F.B.I. Counterintelligence Division has not investigated counterintelligence risks arising from President Trump's foreign financial ties."

But as Schmidt's article tacitly acknowledged, that outcome did not come from Rosenstein but the Mueller team itself. After Rosenstein appointed Mueller, Schmidt reported, members of the special counsel's team "held early discussions led by the agent Peter Strzok about a counterintelligence investigation of the president." But these "efforts fizzled," Schmidt added, when Strzok "was removed from the inquiry three months later for sending text messages disparaging Mr. Trump." If Rosenstein had indeed "curtailed" a counterintelligence investigation by Mueller's team, why did the special counsel staffers discuss it, and why did it only "fizzle" upon Strzok's exit three months later?

Strzok himself disputed the premise of Schmidt's article.

"I didn't feel such a limitation," Strzok told the Atlantic. "When I discussed this with Mueller and others, it was agreed that FBI personnel attached to the Special Counsel's Office would do the counterintelligence work, which necessarily included the president." The only problem, Strzok added, was that by "the time I left the team, we hadn't solved this problem of who and how to conduct all of the counterintelligence work." Strzok's "worry," he added, was that the counterintelligence angle "wasn't ever effectively done" – not that it was ever curtailed. Another key Mueller team member, lead prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, also rejected Schmidt's claim.

Rosenstein's May 2017 scope memo, which established the parameters of Mueller's investigation, indeed contained no such limitations. It broadly tasked Mueller to examine "any links and/or co-ordination" between the Russian government and anyone associated with the Trump campaign, as well as – even more expansively – "any matters that arose or may arise directly from that investigation."

In his July 2019 congressional appearance, Mueller had multiple opportunities to reveal that his probe had been impeded or narrowed. Asked by Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) whether "at any time in the investigation, your investigation was curtailed or stopped or hindered," Mueller replied "No." When Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) tried to lead Mueller into agreeing that he "of course … did not obtain the president's tax returns, which could otherwise show foreign financial sources," Mueller did not oblige. "I'm not going to speak to that," Mueller replied.

With no curtailing or interference in the probe, perhaps Mueller never turned up any Russia-tied counterintelligence or financial concerns about Trump because there was simply none to find.

For a media establishment that had spent years promoting a Trump-Russia collusion narrative and sidelining countervailing facts, that was indeed a tough outcome to fathom.

But it's no time for excuses or false claims of vindication: The tepid accounting spurred by the Steele dossier's collapse should be just the start of a far more exhaustive reckoning. Broadly misleading journalism that plunged an American presidency into turmoil demands much more than piecemeal corrections.