A longtime liberal CNN contributor was caught on hidden camera footage released Wednesday, calling claims of Donald Trump's ties with Russia 'a big nothingburger.'

Van Jones, a former White House 'green jobs' czar who became the first senior official to resign in disgrace from Barack Obama's administration, made the comment in undercover video shot by Project Veritas.

James O'Keefe, the conservative provocateur behind that organization, released damning footage on Tuesday showing a CNN producer describing the Trump-Russia narrative as 'mostly bulls**t.'

CNN has led the drumbeat of news coverage focusing on allegations that the president and his campaign aides improperly colluded with Russia to swing the November election in his favor.

But Jones' admission, and those of producer John Bonifield, hint at Republicans' contention that an undercurrent of 'fake news,' and not the president's own behavior, is responsible for giving him a public-relations black eye.

Liberal CNN pundit Van Jones told a right-wing hidden camera group in an unguarded moment that claims about President Trump colluding with Russia to win the 2016 election amounted to 'a big nothingburger'

In Wednesday's footage, which was shot Monday, a person Jones appears to recognize chats him up on a street corner about what is 'going to happen this week with the whole Russia thing.'

'The Russia thing is just a big nothingburger,' Jones replies, adding: 'There’s nothing there you can do.'

CNN responded to the Bonifield video by standing by its producer, who works mostly on health-related stories.

'Diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong. We welcome it and embrace it,' the network said.

CNN has not issued a statement about Jones – who is an opinion contributor, not a journalist.

A hidden-camera video released Tuesday by the same 'Project Veritas' group stung a CNN producer who admitted that Trump is 'right' to complain journalists focused on Russia stories 'are witch-hunting me'

Jones, like Barack Obama, was a longtime community organizer before joining the then-new administration in 2009.

Months later a different kind of video surfaced – this one recorded openly – in which he was seen telling a U.S. Berkeley audience why he believes Republicans have outperformed Democrats in using congressional majorities to push their legislation.

'The answer to that,' he said then, 'is they're a**holes.'

'Now I will say this: I can be an asshole, and some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are going to have to start getting a little bit uppity,' Jones told the crowd of appreciative partisans.

Months after Jones was named to Obama's White House Council on Environmental Quality, reports emerged that he had signed an online petition demanding congressional hearings into whether former president George W. Bush allowed the 9/11 terror attacks to occur so he would have an excuse to invade the oil-rich Middle East.

He resigned days later. CNN hired him as an on-air commentator in 2013, at the start of Obama's second term in office.

Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe is a consistent thorn in the sides of liberals whom he sees as hypocrites and corrupt opportunists

CNN retracted a story on Friday about Donald Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci, which had tied him to a Russian investment fund; three CNN journalists were forced to resign

O'Keefe's back-story is equally colorful.

He made his name by using a series of 2009 hidden-camera shoots to close down the liberal 'ACORN' housing and voter-registration group – whose employees advised him on camera to commit tax fraud by hiding the nature of a proposed prostitution business, and by claiming a group of underage hookers as 'dependents.'

The following year he and two associates were arrested for entering the office of a Democratic senator on false pretenses, posing as telephone repairmen.

They pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges and were handed community-service sentences.