A Democratic member of Congress said the quiet part out loud over the weekend, admitting that prominent party officials knew the Trump-Russia collusion allegation was a hoax but chose to pursue it anyway in order to hamstring Trump at the start of his first administration.
The offhand remark by Rep. Jason Crow (D-WI) on “Fox News Sunday” was flagged by conservative legal scholar Jonathan Turley, who called the admission “damning” in light of “falsehoods” being promulgated by U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and others.
“That is a particularly telling and frank[ly] damning statement since figures like Adam Schiff were out spreading the false collusion claims,” Turley wrote on X.
In a column, the George Washington University law professor described the Trump administration’s effort to tell “the story of the real Russian conspiracy: how high-ranking officials in the Obama Administration seeded this false claim with the help of an eager, unquestioning press corps.”
“Not surprisingly, the media (which spent years repeating the false Russian collusion claims) is doing a full-court press to kill the story. Yet, many of these key figures are retaining counsel in anticipation of the unfolding investigation. Many previously secured contracts with MSNBC or CNN, or book deals, where they doubled down on the false claims detailed in these new documents,” he wrote.
