After AG Bill Barr announced yesterday that the Trump campaign was spied on, this sent mainstream news agencies into a hair-fire-setting frenzy. I wrote about some of their reactions here. All kinds of crazy and obtuse claims emanated from blue checkmark Twitter accounts everywhere. You’d think journalists would be happy to pursue a story possibly as big as Watergate (i.e. a sitting President weaponizing intelligence to spy on a rival). But nah, it hurts their narrative so they are doing everything they can to bury the story.

One of the dumber, one-sided quips that the media uses in the Trump era is to qualify every statement made by the President or his officials by saying they “provided no evidence.” This is, of course, a standard that never applied during the Obama administration, nor does it apply to Democrats today.

In response to Barr’s comments before the Senate, CNN decided to run with this headline.

Attorney General William Barr says spying on Trump campaign "did occur," but provides no evidence https://t.co/MDLXNqD4A3 — CNN (@CNN) April 10, 2019

The reason for doing this is clear. They want to make it seem as though Barr was just shooting off at the mouth. It’s all part of building a larger narrative that Barr is in league with Trump and doing his bidding by pushing “conspiracy theories.”

Now, given that Rep. Adam Schiff has gone on CNN for two years to claim without evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians, I was curious to see if CNN had ever given him the “but provided no evidence” treatment. After a google search of CNN’s site and their Twitter account, I got my answer.

Not once, ever, has CNN described Adam Schiff’s wild-eyed collusion comments as lacking evidence. This despite the fact that he’s been proven directly wrong by Robert Mueller himself. Heck, CNN doesn’t even hold itself to such a standard, as they spent two years making crazy assertions about Russian collusion with no evidence.

Worse, while Schiff was simply making things up for political gain, the evidence that the Trump campaign was spied on is not even in doubt.

As my Redstate colleague streiff shared yesterday, it 100% happened. The only open questions left are motive and probable cause.

Even taking this at face value it is stupid. We know that Carter Page was first the subject of a FISA warrant in 2014. Unlike the October 2016 warrant, we don’t know why or for how long… …While it is convenient to the surveillance denialists to focus on “wire tapping,” FISA surveillance is not limited to that. Smartphones, computers, etc., are all subject to surveillance. This means that any meeting Page was in was almost certainly recorded via his smartphone… …Right now it seems as though that efforts were made to insert an FBI and MI6 asset, Cambridge academic Stefan Halper, into the Trump campaign. Halper made overtures to Carter Page, Sam Clovis, and George Papadopoulos…. …And we have the shadowy Joseph Mifsud to engaged Papadopoulos to do research for him out of the blue. Papadopoulos alleges that his meeting with Mifsud was brokered by a London embassy employee with long standing FBI connections.

Indeed. That was one of the more ridiculous claims that FBI/press pushed. Remember all the parsing over "human informants" versus "spying"? It was spying. Let's say it again: spying. https://t.co/GFFBJimzCB — Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) April 10, 2019

You’d think a major news network would be aware of all these facts? Instead, they play dumb, asserting that Barr provided no evidence for a claim that is readily provable with a basic google search.

Furthermore, it should be expected that Barr wouldn’t provide evidence in a public hearing before Congress. He’s just starting his investigation. The first real opportunity to see more hard data that’s not already out there will come with the release of the IG report on the FBI’s Trump campaign inquiry.

CNN’s biased evidentiary standards will no doubt continue, with Democrats never being asked to provide evidence for whatever conspiracy theory they are babbling about on any given day. That’s just one more the reason to sit back and laugh at just how much of a dumpster fire their network and news divisions have become. In trying to take a shot at Barr, they simply exposed their own hypocrisy and bias.

————————————————-

Enjoying the read? Please visit my archive and check out some of my latest articles. I’ve got a new twitter! Please help by following @bonchieredstate.