Some in the media have not gotten the memo

There was no Russian Trump collusion and the FBI had zero reason to even start the investigation. But yet, some are still doubling down on the lie!

‘The report details how the Russian collusion conspiracy was invented by Clinton operatives and put into the now-infamous Steele dossier, funded by the Clinton campaign,’ Turley writes, incorrectly. At another point, he writes that “President Barack Obama and his national security team were briefed on how ‘a trusted foreign source’ revealed ‘a Clinton campaign plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin so as to divert attention from her own concerns relating to her use of a private email server.’ It then happened a few days later.” That is also incorrect.”

The author of this nonsense is WaPo's Philip Bump, who apparently still believes that Trump and Russia colluded to steal the election from Clinton? Now Bump doesn't really explain how Turley got any of this wrong. Did the report not detail exactly what Turley suggests it did, because that is the consensus from pretty much everyone who wrote it. Is Bump arguing that what Turley states is incorrect because he believes what Durham's report suggests was incorrect? If so, what evidence does he have that it is incorrect?

Now interestingly, even the FBI itself has acknowledged what Durham has written to be largely true, but that it is no longer of consequence because they have learned from the situation, fixed all of those problems, and there is no longer any need to worry. But I guess according to Bump and others, even the FBI must be incorrect to acknowledge their missteps here.

The sad part about the Russian collusion story is just how engrained people can become with their belief system. Even after James Comey testified under oath that they had found no actual evidence of collusion, the pattern of thinking from everyone pushing the hoax was that it just hadn't been found yet. People still believed.

When Mueller started his investigation many were certain he would uncover what the FBI has failed to uncover. When he didn't, they blamed Barr and suggested Barr was wrong with his "executive summary" as it did not capture the full nuance of what Mueller did not find. But the full report did not show anything that the summary missed. Only that had certain people in the investigation had their way, they would have written a different type of summary that left open the possibility that collusion existed (even as they had not found it).

But even after a two year $40 million investigation found no evidence of the collusion, coming after the FBI and Congress also failed to find any evidence, only a small percentage of Americans changed their minds. Over a third of Americans wanted Congress to continue to hold hearings and continue investigations into the subject matter in spite of the finding and approximately half still demanded there were unanswered questions. Reality is that many Democrats still believe the collusion hoax (without any evidence to support them) and this is why a person like Bump can continue to push this lie.

More ironic is the fact that the Mueller probe never made much attempt to prove any collusion after a period of time. It just sort of gave up. Instead the probe moved into a focus on whether or not Trump had obstructed the investigation. If this sounds like a familiar theme with special counsels going after Trump, it is because this is the same thing Smith is doing now with the classified document probe. Can't charge the crime, so we look for a process crime to charge to save face?

So as Turley pointed out the other day in a column, the Durham report will not change many minds either. To a large segment of the population, the report will be the classic tree falling in the forest with nobody there to hear it. Journalists can still lie to their gullible audience and simply demand that the report is wrong without offering any proof that it is wrong. This should be an open and shut case at this point. There should be no more reason to believe that Trump collusion hoax than to believe that the earth is flat. But yet... you still have it pushed and these same people will push till the end of time.