CNN’s Natasha Bertrand has played a pivotal role in pushing some of the biggest media hoaxes in modern American history. That’s an important fact to keep in mind when reading her latest “bombshell” story about the recent U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
On Wednesday, the left-wing propagandist co-authored an “exclusive” report alongside CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen. Based on alleged claims from seven anonymous sources, the story cites “an early US intelligence assessment” that purports to show the “US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months.”
“The analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is ongoing, and could change as more intelligence becomes available,” the report reads. “But the early findings are at odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes ‘completely and totally obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said on Sunday that Iran’s nuclear ambitions ‘have been obliterated.’”
The authors went on to regurgitate anonymous claims from these unnamed sources, some of whom contended that “Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed” and that “the centrifuges are largely ‘intact.’” Only paragraphs after noting the White House’s characterization of the “alleged assessment” as “flat-out wrong” do Bertrand and Co. acknowledge, “It is still early for the US to have a comprehensive picture of the impact of the strikes, and none of the sources described how the [Defense Intelligence Agency] assessment compares to the view of other agencies in the intelligence community.”
While time and further investigation will reveal the ultimate impact of America’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, Bertrand is one of the last people in media who deserves any semblance of trust to accurately report on the issue.
Americans will recall that Bertrand was at the forefront of pushing the debunked Trump-Russia collusion hoax. Her obsession with promoting the baseless work of Fusion GPS — the opposition research firm responsible for helping compile the infamous Steele dossier — earned her the nickname, “Fusion Natasha.”
After spending years of embarrassing herself hyping such nonsense, Bertrand decided to further tank what little credibility she had by serving as the intelligence community’s useful idiot during the Hunter Biden laptop saga.
After the New York Post dropped a bombshell story on the younger Biden’s laptop and its damaging contents weeks ahead of the 2020 election, Bertrand published a now-infamous letter in the pages of Politico from 51 former intel officials, who falsely claimed the laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” As the Federalist’s Elle Purnell previously noted, “We now know, according to one of its signers, that the letter was crafted to help Joe Biden discredit reporting about the Biden family’s overseas influence-peddling that was sourced to the laptop.”
It’s also worth mentioning that Bertrand and her “reporting” are the subject of a 2019 lawsuit filed by now-FBI Director Kash Patel during his time on the National Security Council in the first Trump administration. As Erielle Azerrad wrote in these pages, Patel claimed that Bertrand and Politico owner Robert Allbritton “’acted in concert’ with Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., with the alleged aim of ‘destroy[ing] Kash’s reputation’ in order to buttress ‘Schiff’s baseless Ukrainian quid pro quo hoax.’”
Unless confirmed otherwise, any piece of “journalism” published with Bertrand’s name attached to it deserves to be taken with a grain of salt, if not ignored entirely. Like many of her fellow defenders of “democracy,” she’s a typical regime mouthpiece who will shamelessly publish and/or say anything to smear her political opponents, irrespective of whether it’s true or not.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
