NBC News anchor Chuck Todd appears to be the final Sunday news anchor still pushing the false narrative that the Christopher Steele dossier that led to surveilance of Donald Trump’s campaign is a verified source of information.
Yet on December 9, the Justice Department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, released a report that concluded the Steele dossier was an unverified document. The report also concluded that the dossier was the primary source of information used to launch the investigation into the Trump campaign in 2016.
“Steele himself was not the originating source of any of the factual information in his reporting. Steele instead relied on a Primary Sub-source for information, who used his/her network of sub-sources to gather information that was then passed to Steele,” the report reads. It continues to explain how the primary sub-sources mentioned in the report had doubts about the validity of the dossier and its claims.
Despite the IG report concluding the Steele dossier was garbage, Todd still defends it using his large public platform. Earlier in December, Todd hosted two co-founders of Fusion-GPS on “Meet the Press.” Fusion GPS hired Steele to produce the dossier of opposition research against Trump at the behest of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. In his December interview, Todd pressed the co-founders to comment on Fiona Hill’s impeachment testimony about the Steele dossier.
Hill had testified that the Steele dossier likely contained Russian disinformation and claimed Steele may have been played by Russians. Hill called the Steele dossier a “rabbit hole.” The co-founders of Fusion GPS said that Hill, an expert on Russia, was not qualified to understand Russia disinformation. They continued to push the false narrative that the Steele dossier contained verified information.
“I was puzzled by her comment, because I don’t really know what a rabbit hole means in that context. I will say, though, that you can’t actually catch rabbits without going down some rabbit holes. So you need to actually follow leads where they take you. And we have full confidence in Chris’ ability to do exactly that,” said Peter Fritsch, co-founder of Fusion-GPS.
Chuck has made his thoughts on the Steele dossier and the IG report crystal clear — he thinks the IG report is being distorted.
“Let’s be crystal clear here. The IG did find some alarming instances of FBI misconduct related to its application to secretly monitor Carter Page. And he could not say whether political bias did or did not influence some of those specific decisions down the road. And, by the way, it’s not just political bias that could have influenced. It’s possible confirmation bias, prosecutorial bias. Not all bias is red and blue in America,” Todd said in a monologue on “Meet the Press Daily.”
“The facts are being distorted more by spin, and in some cases, conspiracy theories,” Todd continued.
Yet Todd’s own theories have been debunked. In testimony, the inspector general affirmed his team did find political bias in the the Steele dossier and subsequent federal agency decisions to investigate Trump. The IG report helped prove there was political bias against Trump. Nearly one month after this information was publicly released, however, Todd is still saying the opposite.
On Sunday, Todd said Trump voters believe in Trump and his agenda because they are living in a fairytale.
“Voters like to be lied to sometimes. They don’t always like being told hard truths,” Todd said.
https://twitter.com/EddieDonovan/status/1211423233288949761
As his inaccurate beliefs about the Steele dossier show, however, the only person still living in a fairy tale is Chuck Todd.
