Why did The New York Times publish a report this week that read like an FBI press release and outlined how the agency had in 2016 employed multiple spies to surveil then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos?

Why would the Times, which is notoriously far-left, out the FBI like this? According to former Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz, it’s because the paper was trying to get ahead of the narrative and “inoculate” both itself and the Obama administration from potential damage.

Listen:

“What we know is happening is the inspector general in the next 60 days is going to come out with a report,” Chaffetz explained Friday on Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”

“We know the attorney general is pursuing the origins of this stuff about Trump and how did that all come about. And it is not going to look good for the Department of Justice, specifically the FBI and potentially some of the other departments and agencies in the Obama administration.”

Inspector General Michael Horowitz is on the verge of completing an investigation into the possible abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the Obama DOJ. Attorney General Bill Barr has meanwhile launched an investigation to determine whether the department’s surveillance of Trump (which for the longest time the media denied had ever occurred) had been “adequately predicated.”

Congressional Democrats and their media allies, including the Times, have spent the last two years mocking the president over his purported “conspiracy theory” claims that former President Barack Hussein Obama’s administration had spied on his 2016 presidential election campaign.

They’ve likewise defended the administration’s repeated claims that spying never occurred:

Check out statement from Kevin Lewis, spokesperson to former President Obama. Enough said. pic.twitter.com/OTEQiVOHvh — Valerie Jarrett (@ValerieJarrett) March 4, 2017

“People forgot about the inspector general who put out several hundred pages about the problems at the FBI,” Chaffetz continued. “But he left off where did they actually take action? Did people like Strozk and Page and McCabe. What did they actually do with this information, this animus and this bias? That is what the inspector general has been looking at for more than a year now.”

“We’ve already had this foreshadowing. We already know this. And when you see The New York Times put out this story in the last 48 hours saying, ‘Well, actually, there was a spy sent by the FBI to go peek in on George Papadopoulos,’ that’s not a coincidence that it shows up in the New York Times. It’s how they inoculate themselves and try to lessen the blow.”

As it stands, the media’s credibility is already low because they spent two years drumming up a Russian collusion delusion conspiracy theory that’s now been formally debunked.

And now that the collusion conspiracy has been debunked, Democrats and their media allies have taken to trotting out new conspiracy theories about both the president and his attorney general.

One of the latest theories is that Barr obstructed justice by doing his job and issuing a ruling on whether the president had obstructed justice. Because both Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein ruled that Trump hadn’t obstructed justice, something must be up, the left claims.

Another theory — this one published Thursday by The Washington Post — alleges that “Trump is already set to use the government to destroy the Democratic nominee.”

When asked about these theories Friday, Chaffetz said they were meaningless noise.

“Well, this is all just a wish list from the Democrats. Barr is a real professional, and I think the way he handled himself in the Senate was admirable. I think he showed that he is very adept at this and knows the law better than anybody who was questioning him,” he argued to MacCallum.

“But I do think that Democrats — from Pelosi and Nadler to the senators and now The Washington Post and the other pundits out there — are trying to distract by saying that Trump will do this and he’ll do that, and it’ll be outrageous, and it’ll be wrong.”

Listen:

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …

What are they trying to distract from? Growing allegations that the real collusion and the real dirt was performed not by Trump or his campaign officials but rather by the Obama administration.

Last month House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes reportedly submitted up to 24 criminal referrals to the Trump DOJ regarding everything from the FISA abuse scandal to the notorious Trump dossier. While the names of those referred remains unknown, it’s believed they could be former Obama administration officials, including possibly disgraced former FBI Director James Comey and disgraced former CIA Director John Brennan.

Speaking on FNC’s “The Ingraham Angle” last week, retired U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova recommended both men hire a lawyer immediately. Correction: Hire many lawyers.

“It has been evident from day one that there was a brazen plot to exonerate Hillary Clinton illegally, and then if she lost the election, to frame Donald Trump. This dossier was a knowing part of that. It was created by Hillary Clinton. It was created knowingly by John Brennan as part of a scheme to do everything they could to harm Donald Trump,” he said.

Listen:

Comey too.

“[T]here is the Horowitz report coming out in May or possibly early June. There is another report that everybody has forgotten about involving James Comey alone. That will be out in two weeks. That report is going to be a bombshell. It’s going to open up the investigation on a very high note,” he added.

And it’s unlikely that puff pieces by the Times and other left-wing media outlets will help Comey and Brennan when their judgment day finally arrives.

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …