Whenever evidence emerges that Democrats may have acted in a corrupt, potentially illegal manner — as it recently did when a John Durham filing disclosed that Clinton’s campaign may have recruited a tech company to spy on Donald Trump’s Internet activity in 2016 — a defensive media springs into action.
“Durham Distances Himself From Furor in Right-Wing Media Over Filing,” read a New York Times piece by Charlie Savage today. “The right-wing media quickly embraced a theory that even special counsel John Durham has distanced himself from,” wrote Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler. “In filing, Durham appears to distance himself from far-right theories,” says MSNBC. “John Durham distances himself from right-wing furor,” writes Axios.
Anyway, “distanced” is the word of the day.
These claims were all highly misleading. Nothing in the Durham filing yesterday, in response to complaints from Clinton’s lawyer, Michael Sussmann — who is indicted for misleading law-enforcement agencies — is meant to distance himself from the furor or any specific “theories:”
If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government’s Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government’s inclusion of this information.
The italics are mine. This is a neutral statement, defending the ability of the special counsel to relay pertinent information in filings without worrying if media get the facts wrong. Using the logic of the Post, Times, and Axios, National Review could headline a news piece: “Durham says left-wing media ‘understated’ spying charges.”
Durham, in fact, goes on to write that, “The Government intends to file motions in limine in which it will further discuss these and other pertinent facts to explain why they constitute relevant and admissible evidence at trial.” Publicly sharing this evidence, Durham goes on, “is appropriate and proper, even in highprofile cases where the potential exists that such facts could garner media attention.”
Headline: “Durham Says Sharing Clinton Spying Revelations ‘Appropriate and Proper’”
None of this means that all conservatives got all the facts straight or that many haven’t jumped to conclusions. Fact-checkers like to play a strawman-game in which they highlight some hyperbolic statements or mistakes — the Durham filing did not, for example, use the word “infiltrated” to describe what Hillary’s campaign did — and use it to dismiss the entire scandal as a figment of the conservative imagination. Can you imagine how quickly the Russia-collusion hysteria — or even legitimate news stories — would have been shelved if fact-checkers held the Left to this standard?