Jonathan Turley Sheds WaPo’s New Defense of Russian Collusion – Watch

In a recent article for The Washington Post, Philip Bump attempted to defend the notion of “Russian collusion” in the 2016 election. However, his argument was quickly debunked by George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.

In his article titled “There’s now even less reason to blame Clinton for the Russia probe,” Bump claimed that there was “ample evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

But Turley went after Bump, “With the release to the Durham report, the media went into total spin mode,” Turley tweeted. “However, the Washington Post (which won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Russian collusion) set a new level of denial with a column by Philip Bump …”

“Bump not only quotes Hillary Clinton on how the allegations against her campaign is possible ‘Russian disinformation,’ Bump actually makes one last pitch that there might have been Russian collusion after all.”

The Durham Report concluded that the entire basis for the inquiry had been based on the Steele dossier, the contents of which the FBI had never independently verified.

“The matter was opened as a full investigation without ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information. Further, the FBI did so without (i) any significant review of its own intelligence databases, (ii) collection and examination of any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities, (iii) interviews of witnesses essential to understand the raw information it had received or (iv) using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence,” the report stated.

Somehow Bump look at the report and concluded that Russian collusion on the part of Trump and his allies was not only possible, but likely.

“There’s an alternative way to consider the Russia probe: that Russia hoped Trump would win, that Trump was happy to have their help and that federal counterintelligence officials saw that as problematic,” he wrote. “This appears to be what actually happened.”

…Bump not only quotes Hillary Clinton on how the allegations against her campaign is possible "Russian disinformation," Bump actually makes one last pitch that there might have been Russian collusion after all.

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 18, 2023