I will never call the mainstream media “the enemy of the people.” But I will call them out for having strayed from fairly reporting some of the biggest stories of the last two years. No matter how egregious their errors, they insist on pointing fingers elsewhere and reinforcing their political biases, in ways unimaginable to those of us who grew up in the Walter Cronkite era.
A few days ago, The Hill’s John Solomon revealed that Congress has discovered that Bruce Ohr — one of the highest-ranking Department of Justice (DOJ) officials reporting to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — was in continuous secret communication with former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the salacious Trump-Russia dossier produced for an opposition research firm on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party.
Steele also just happened to be a paid informant for the FBI but was later dismissed for lying about his contacts with the media. The FBI used Steele’s dossier to apply for warrants to surveil Trump campaign consultant Carter Page. And, it turns out, part of the FBI’s substantiation for those warrants was a Yahoo News article which was, in fact, not independent reporting but simply the same story from the same source — Steele — although Steele apparently never told the FBI he was connected to it.
Regardless of whether there was any truth to the unsubstantiated dossier, Steele caused the FBI to lie about the back-up for its warrant and, thus, was dismissed as an informant. Or was he?
It turns out Ohr’s wife was employed by Fusion GPS, a political research firm, working on the Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee (DNC) efforts to discredit Donald Trump. Ohr apparently failed to disclose that and was demoted when it came out later. But what has come out now is that Steele, even after being dismissed by the FBI, continued to have ongoing input into the Russia investigation through Ohr, who was trading information with the opposition researcher.
Ohr was not even officially part of the Russia investigation, and yet he had more than 60 contacts with Steele. Rosenstein, his boss, has testified he knew nothing about about these contacts, so it remains unclear for whom and why Ohr was busy trading notes with Steele about the investigation. This, then, is another reason Rosenstein should have removed himself from supervising the Mueller investigation: He is a witness here as well.
Now, these are all established facts. Let’s review them again: Ohr was a senior Justice Department official whose wife was employed by the research firm hired by Clinton and the DNC to get dirt on Trump. This was not reported on any disclosure forms. Ohr’s wife worked on the same Trump-Russia project as Steele, who concocted the dossier, and Ohr himself established a secret back-channel with Steele, who had been dismissed for lying to the FBI — all, apparently, so that Steele was never far from learning about the investigation or having input into it. His texts even refer to a fear of “firewalls” being discovered.
This is an absolutely stunning development, suggesting a “deep state” conspiracy hidden even from superiors and driven on the basis of undisclosed dollars ultimately from the opposition candidate going to the wife of a DOJ official. Even moderate senators like Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have been shocked by this and called for a special counsel to investigate the FBI. Yet, the mainstream media not only ignores the story while in the throes of Omarosa fever, but suggests only tin-hat conspiracy theorists would believe anything is wrong here.
The New York Times did write a story about Ohr — a story wondering why Ohr would possibly be on a list of people the president has suggested might lose their security clearance. The article says Ohr has been “at the center of a right wing conspiracy theory” about the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Ohr, according to the Times, has been the subject of “conservative attacks” about the origins of the investigation which, the article notes, the Justice Department kept under wraps so as not to affect the election. Yup, they were actually trying to help Trump.
In the last paragraph, the article notes that Nellie Ohr did work for Fusion GPS but completely omits Ohr’s failure to disclose this, his demotions, his contacts with Steele, or that he has been called to testify before Congress about his contacts with Steele and Fusion GPS partner Glenn Simpson.
Finally, the article notes that Ohr worked in organized crime and drug cases and the loss of his security clearance could hinder his work — but it fails to point out that his undisclosed contacts caused him to lose that job and be demoted. The article makes it seem as though none of this either happened or is real, that this is just a DOJ guy picked almost at random for possible disciplinary actions by a rogue president.
Reporting like this has caused the public to lose complete faith in the mainstream media, in poll after poll. It is seen as essential to democracy in one Gallup poll, but only 28 percent of Gallup respondents see the media as serving democracy well. The Times should have 15 full-time reporters on the obvious problems at the FBI, DOJ and State Department, about which legitimate questions have been raised.
There’s a reason that the No. 1 nonfiction book in America is “The Russia Hoax.” It’s because millions upon millions of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, are hungry for the truth here and they’re not getting it from the mainstream press that has put its war with Trump above unbiased reporting.
After hundreds of days of 90 percent negative reporting on Trump, the media didn’t need another day to dump on Trump. Instead, it needed a media introspection day to consider how it could have so misunderstood America in the election and how it can restore its credibility and role in democracy by covering all sides of stories. Mainstream media should be at the vanguard of discovering corruption at the FBI and the DOJ rather than helping to cover it up. Only then will it earn the right to criticize others and once again be listened to by an America that, by and large, has written it off as biased, out of touch and putting political partisanship over journalistic integrity.
