A story making the rounds, based on court testimony from a Saudi fixer — that Rep. Ilhan Omar is a spy for Qatar — is starting to fall apart. It didn't smell right from the start, which is why we at AT didn't touch it, but now the Daily Caller News Foundation has pretty decisively blown the rubbish out of the water. The Caller reports:

The deposition [made in Florida by Saudi fixer Alan Bender] includes all manner of accusations, such as that Omar is a "sex maniac" and that reporters at CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times are on the payroll of Qatar. Bender appeared eager to expose all of that dirt, yet inexplicably said he'd "rather not" provide key details, such as the names of the reporters supposedly taking bribes. "I'd rather not say 'cause I know the name and details," he said of CNN. "I'd rather not mention specific names but I have, yes, several names," he said of the New York Times.

It has its origins in not just court testimony by Bender, but in some of the tweets of Twitter's too cutely named "Imam for Peace," a dodgy guy who's a little too interested in arguing to the West that Islam, read his way, is peaceful, indeed. Someone like that could easily be a Saudi propaganda effort, given that country's other stated complaints and objectives.

The Daily Caller News Foundation reports that a lot of people get accused of being Qatari agents by this guy...including themselves. The Saudis hate the Qataris, so anyone they don't like is easy pickings for being called a Qatari agent. And there's that mishmash of unnamed reporters also accused, yet for Bender, left conveniently anonymous, most likely to avoid libel lawsuits.

So obviously, the Daily Caller had ample reason to raise its antennae.

The ramblings of Saudi fixer Bender, who claims he got called to Qatar and the Qataris just happened to spill their best intelligence secrets to him about Omar, included information that Omar was a "sex maniac" and a Qatari agent, all seem to be built on the template of the phony Steele dossier.

The story itself was delivered Steele dossier–style, too, same way the Democrat operatives managed to make the James Comey–Donald Trump meeting the hook for reporting the existence of the Steele dossier when they wouldn't otherwise touch the story.

The court testimony thing this time was the news hook for getting the dreck in the press, and that matches the dirty-tricks template, too — it's the same way some scumbags managed to get recent accusations against Rep. Devin Nunes sneaking around with Ukrainians he never met with into the press. Start a lie by saying someone will testify something in court, and get the press to report the lie just as a matter of reporting what some other guy said, and the real aim is to just get the lie out there and circulating on the rabid left or rabid right, both of which are easily persuaded of things that confirm their prejudices.

Now, Omar is a disgusting person in her own right and doesn't need a lot of phony stories circling her. She's reflexively anti-American, and who knows? may well be a sex maniac, given her weird love life. Already we know she has ethics problems both around campaign finance and immigration law. She's hollered about Yemen, which would give the Saudis ample reason to dislike her.

But it doesn't make her a Qatari or Iranian agent. Her background doesn't actually point to that — she's more of a Marxist of the third-world liberation movement type, actually, which is hardly the same as loving herself some mullahs or their Qatari ally's money. Spying is a big deal — very secret, very dangerous. If Omar were really a spy, she'd have the FBI all over her. Their job is to bag spies and they get medals for that sort of thing, and, well, Omar doesn't.

Awful in herself, she doesn't need fake stories surrounding her, which she will use to discredit the real ones. If one story is fake, they must all be, so pay no attention to Omar marrying her brother and all the other stuff. A guy like Bender, who rambled around in disjointed testimony, wouldn't know anything real about Omar or Qatar. Heck, who would trust a guy like that with any secrets at all?

Someone noticed that Omar is loathsome and unpopular to the public here and tried to make some political hay out of it. Propaganda and disinformation are such an easy thing compared to real, live spying.

Image credit: LeoPaltik1242 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.