Debating Russiagate With Michael Isikoff

A NewsNation interview moderated by Chris Cuomo gets hot

Last night I was invited on NewsNation with Chris Cuomo to discuss Tulsi Gabbard’s Trump-Russia documents. Just before going on, I learned Chris planned to argue against Tulsi’s report as “dangerous” and a “conflation” and I’d be sharing the segment with Michael Isikoff, a central (if sometimes penitent) player in the Trump-Russia deception. At Yahoo! in September of 2016 Michael ran “U.S. intel officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin,” the first major story tied to the “well-placed Western intelligence source,” eventually revealed to be British ex-spy Christopher Steele. The piece, which called former Trump aide Carter Page a “possible back channel” to the Kremlin in September 2016, would eventually be used in a fraudulent FBI warrant application to obtain FISA authority on Page. That wasn’t Michael’s fault, but it wasn’t a proud moment, either.

There’s nothing unethical about springing a surprise like this on a guest. Such confrontations often make good TV. I’ve no ill will to Chris. But I didn’t know I’d be debating two people, and naturally felt annoyance before being introduced. I started by explaining that the core story behind Tulsi Gabbard’s documents is that the Obama administration at the 11^th hour threw its weight behind paid, bogus opposition research of Steele, a source, I made sure to point out, my fellow guest Isikoff knew all too well to be unreliable. Isikoff, virtually alone among Russiagate journalists, took some responsibility for having his chain yanked by Steele in tales like the Page story, eventually saying on MSNBC: “[Steele’s Dossier] was endorsed multiple times on this network, people saying, ‘It’s more and more proving to be true.’ And it wasn’t.”

Now however he was brought in to chuckle at Gabbard’s claims, and say there was overwelming evidence that Russia was trying to help Trump, in the form of the DNC hack that by the way was never conclusively linked to Russia (or even proven to be a hack at all), and the absurd $100,000 worth of Facebook ads that supposedly turned an election. Then, when he pooh-poohed the idea thay the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment was based on “manufactured” or “made up” evidence, I began losing it. What the hell is the Steele Dossier if not “manufactured intelligence?” Hadn’t the country obsessed for 30 months over blatant lies about pee and a “well developed conspiracy” of at least five years? “It was all bull. It’s a lie. And it dominated American politics for years,” I said. When I pointed out to Michael that he shared some responsibility for this, he snickered and said, “Or I blew the whistle on some of it.”

I went ape. Blew the whistle? Michael and co-author David Corn wrote a quickie book, Russian Roulette, that was significantly based on Steele material, and presented him in chapter after chapter as an avenging angel (“Surely, Steele believed, that was more than a coincidence” or “On such matters, Steele was the man to see” are typical excerpts). Steele wasn’t exposed as a paid Clinton researcher until October, 2017, and the information only came out because a combination of Senate Judiciary and House Intelligence Committee investigations pried the fact loose. It certainly didn’t come from Michael or David Corn. It threw me for a moment, figuring the sheer stones it takes to claim to be a Steele whistleblower while authoring Russian Roulette.

Well into my fourth decade in journalism, I can’t remember a time when the business wasn’t dominated by a big lie. It’s been my bad luck to be in the middle of some of the worst episodes, with many of them coalescing in this idiotic Russia story that won’t die. Or maybe it’s better to say, it won’t die easy. As I learned again last night, it’s going to be fought to the bitter end.