A bombshell story by a liberal reporter from Rolling Stone Matt Taibbi about the origins of the Russia/Trump story got little attention from the major media outlets.
Matt goes through the sordid start of the entire affair and it is a disgrace. Either the Intel community did a hit job on Trump or they fell for a fake story pushed by people who wanted to cash in. Either way, it is bad and now Barr is putting the media on notice for their role in pushing the conspiracy.
Remember, CNN and MSNBC have actually hired many of the same experts involved in the failed conspiracy.
“It is the doomsday scenario of abuse of government power, which is the party in power uses the police and intelligence services to tilt the field against their political opponents,” Barr said.
“And that’s terrible from a governmental and civil rights standpoint,” Barr added.
“The media was part of this, and that’s, to me, probably the worst aspect of this. The so-called watchdogs of the system — they became attack dogs.”
“They weren’t watchdogs. They had no critical, they didn’t use any critical faculties,” Barr added.
“In fact, some things that were clearly preposterous, they took hook, line, and sinker, and they fanned the flames of this worse than anybody else,” Barr said.
“They all got out on the limb. The limb has been sawed off, but you wouldn’t know it, because there’s, you know, they don’t even say, ‘Whoops, we got that one wrong.’”
“They’re onto the next conspiracy theory.”
On any indictments for the Durham probe, Barr said,
“What I want to do is make it clear that we will indict people only when we are satisfied that the standards of the department have been met, which means that we believe a crime has been committed by this person and we have proof beyond a reasonable doubt to prove it,” Barr said.
“And we have to go to a grand jury, and the grand jury has to agree to get the indictment,” Barr continued.
“And proof beyond a reasonable doubt is a high standard. And I think all political sides have gotten into the habit in this country of just sort of saying that their political opponents have done something terrible.
They think it’s terrible. It’s enough for me to conclude he’s terrible, why isn’t he in prison?”
