Members of the propaganda press like David French are scrambling to peddle ignorant and disprovable lies about the damning Russiagate documents that were recently declassified.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley recently released the declassified appendix to Special Counsel John Durham’s 2023 report. The Durham report vindicated President Donald Trump and others who insisted the FBI acted improperly when it opened its investigation into the Trump campaign over allegations of collusion with Russia.
But in an effort to run damage control for the left and their involvement, the propaganda press is trying to run damage control, dismissing the latest declassifications of the 29-page annex to the Durham report as “fake.”
Bulwark staff writer Cathy Young posted on X that an email purportedly from Leonard Benardo — a George Soros executive — that suggested Hillary Clinton “approved” an idea “about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections,” is “fake.”
“Last graph clearly not written by a native English speaker,” Young posted, adding the “First two (except for the 1st sentence of 2nd graph, which is also not English) appear, word for word, in another person’s hacked email sent on the same day.”
Never-Trumper David French reposted the claim on X and also tried to dismiss the latest revelations from the declassified annex: “Please read Cathy’s piece. Looks like parts of MAGA fell for a fake email, a fake so obvious that John Durham dismissed it.”
But as The Federalist’s CEO and co-founder Sean Davis said, French “is dumb, lazy and dishonest, so he’s obviously ignorant of the facts.”
Durham did not dismiss the email, nor did he conclude the email was “fake,” as pointed out by The Federalist’s Elle Purnell in a takedown of the shoddy analysis on the recent revelations by “Russia hoax handmaiden” Charlie Savage of The New York Times.
Durham made clear his office could not “determine definitively whether the purported Clinton campaign plan [intelligence] … was entirely genuine, partially true, a composite pulled from multiple sources, exaggerated in certain aspects or fabricated in its entirety.”
U.S. intelligence personnel “well-versed” in the matter later testified that their “best assessment was that the Bernardo emails were likely authentic.”
Durham also noted that the CIA “prepared a written assessment of the authenticity and veracity of the above-referenced intelligence.” While Durham’s description of their conclusion contains redactions, as Purnell explained, it appears to suggest the CIA “stated that it did not assess that the above … memoranda … [were] the product of Russian fabrications.”
Meanwhile Benardo himself told officials that while, to the best of his recollection, he did not write the emails, he did admit “that the last sentence in the email — noting that ‘things are ghastly for US-Russian relations’ — sounded like something he would have said,” according to the report.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
