As the BuzzFeed debacle illustrates, the media devotes itself not to real threats to American security but phantom ones. While the media was obsessing over the Kremlin’s non-existent “compromising information” on Trump, it ignored new confirmation from the FBI that Hillary delivered state secrets to America’s enemies. What is in the hands of Kremlin officials is not dirt on Trump but Hillary’s classified e-mails.

Last Sunday night, WikiLeaks reported, “FBI quietly releases new Hillary Clinton investigation documents,” one of which states bluntly: “that hostile foreign actors successfully gained access to the personal email accounts of individuals associated with whom Clinton was in regular contact and, in doing so, obtained emails sent to or received by Clinton on her personal account.”

Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano calls this new release a “smoking gun” that justifies re-opening her case. “Last Sunday’s revelations make the case against Mrs. Clinton far more serious than Mr. Comey presented it to be last summer,” he writes in the Washington Times. “Indeed, Sen. Jeff Sessions, who has been nominated by Mr. Trump to be attorney general and who has been a harsh critic of Mrs. Clinton’s, told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week that he would step aside from any further investigation of Mrs. Clinton, thereby acknowledging that the investigation will probably be opened again.”

In recent days, CNN has trotted out Carl Bernstein to offer breathless speculation on the “leverage” Putin may hold over Trump. CNN has pathetically attempted to distance itself from the “irresponsibility” of BuzzFeed, as if flirting with fake news absolves CNN of all responsibility. Had CNN not done its report, BuzzFeed woudn’t have released the dossier. Moreover, what exactly was the sensational import of CNN’s report if CNN itself thought the “compromising information” bogus? Why did it bother to report that the Kremlin “might” have dirt on Trump? The relevance of its report rested on viewers thinking that that dirt really existed. The difference between CNN and BuzzFeed is that the latter is less hypocritical. CNN’s anger at BuzzFeed is due not to any concerns about fairness to Trump but to the fact that the release of the dossier exposed the misleading character of CNN’s coverage.

Meanwhile, CNN can’t accord one second to this new confirmation that Hillary gave leverage to Putin by delivering America’s secrets right into his hands. That is a real scandal worth revisiting.