George C. Parker was a con man who specialized in selling unwary immigrants the Brooklyn Bridge. His ruse was discovered when the police had to arrest a few poor souls who set up toll booths on the access ramp. The resulting expression, “I have a bridge to sell you,” is a gibe at the victims of dumb frauds.

Last week, Andrew McCarthy ended his article about the dubious Russian origins of the Steele Dossier with the following statement:

Really? We’re supposed to believe that when Steele was not slumming with the wannabe likes of Sergei Millian, he was plugged in to the crème de la Kremlin? Count me skeptical. As Daniel Hoffman, the CIA’s former station chief in Moscow, told the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross, trusted figures in Russia’s national-security bureaucracy “never stop” working for the Kremlin. In Trubnikov’s case, “there’s no such thing as a former intelligence officer.” And Surkov might as well be Putin’s right hand. If these characters were Steele’s sources, they were not spying on the Kremlin but getting the West believe what the Kremlin wanted to West to believe.

It is a stretch to think Steele was plugged into real Russian sources.

He had not been to Russia in many years (McCarthy places his absence at nearly twenty). He spent his professional life as an anti-Russia gadfly. Fatuous claims are made on his behalf that Putin has ordered him to be poisoned.

Hilariously, he’s the ex-spy our vaunted intelligence services relied on to explore whether Putin had kompromat on Trump.

Attorney General William Barr has wondered out loud how the FBI could possibly conduct an investigation based on opposition research that, “on its face had a number of clear mistakes and a somewhat jejune analysis.”

“Jejune” is just a fancy way to say, “I have a bridge to sell you.”

McCarthy closes his piece with this statement:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report found no conspiracy between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. What remain to be investigated are the neon-flashing indications that we’ve been had.

Which is fine, as long as we don’t treat our intelligence agencies like fresh-off-the-boat victims who need a hug.

It will be valuable to figure out where Steele got his ludicrous information. Justice Department attorneys looking into the origins of Spygate will soon interview him.

He is not likely to admit, “Um, I made it up.” Nor will he say something like:

“Here’s what really happened: In December 2015 Western big-shots toppled the democratically elected pro-Putin regime in Ukraine, with the strong bipartisan support of Republicans and Democrats in Washington. A few months later, candidate Trump criticized that policy and started to question NATO’s relevance. The EU puppet Ukrainian government that was installed after the coup then began to feed Fusion GPS dirt on Trump, ostensibly from Russian sources.”

Because if he says that, the sorts of people who can get Paul Manafort locked in solitary confinement on Rikers Island may turn against him, and that would be bad.

Christopher Steele will probably tell the Justice Department that it was Russians who did him wrong. In the hysteria he helped generate, Putin is the matinee villain du jour and that answer makes Steele another victim of his shenanigans, poor guy.

Putin is the matinee villain du jour and that answer makes Steele another victim of his shenanigans, poor guy.

Okay, let’s assume it was the Russians. If so, they were just messing with someone they hated, and probably thought if he repeated the stupidity it would only make him look like an idiot.

There is no evidence, though, that Russia did anything illegal to materially influence the election. That hasn’t stopped Washington from developing ontological certainty on the issue.

The Washington Examiner’s Byron York recently wrote:

“That same day, July 22, Wikileaks released emails from the Democratic National Committee. Two days later, on the 24th, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook went on television to claim that not only was Russia behind the hack – that was later proven true – but also that the Trump campaign was in league with Russia.”

When was Russia-was-behind-the-hack proven to be true?

The FBI never tested the computers. The DNC at the time was constructing a Russia-did-it excuse to deflect attention from its damaging emails and did not want law enforcement to poke around its story too much.

That’s when James Comey allowed the DNC to hire an entity that ominously calls itself CrowdStrike to conduct the crucial autopsy in this murder investigation.

Which makes blaming Russia as credible as that time Mohamed Fayed hired experts to say Princess Di was killed on the orders of Prince Philip, because the Royal Family did not want her to marry his Muslim son.

It’s actually worse than that.

Dmitri Alperovitch, the CTO and co-founder of CrowdStrike, is a Russian expat and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank which leverages NATO funding and support in order to promote the European Union and its values.

Here’s an idea. Sometimes the victims of ridiculous cons deserve the blame.

The Atlantic Council is also funded by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, a $10 million donor to the Clinton Foundation with additional millions committed to that particular scheme.

In 2016, CrowdStrike was caught by the Voice of America falsely blaming Russia for a hack into a Ukrainian artillery computer app.

That time, at least the government of Ukraine apologized for paying a consultant to fabricate a Russian hack to serve its political disinformation campaign.

Here’s an idea. Sometimes the victims of ridiculous cons deserve the blame.

Maybe our bright lights at the FBI and Justice Department should have spent more time answering the “hey, a lunatic’s about to shoot up the high school” tips they were receiving instead of buying the Brooklyn Bridge from the DNC and its paid cronies.

Thomas Farnan is a full time practicing lawyer from the heart of Trump-country. He has been featured in American Greatness, Townhall, the Observer, and PJ Media. You can follow him on Twitter.