OPINION
By Mark Vargas, Editor-in-Chief
The narrative that the Donald Trump campaign in 2016 was colluding with Russia will go down as one of the greatest political hoaxes in history – but the now discredited reporter behind it, who served as the FBI’s mouthpiece and deliberately pushed a fake story and whose actions cost taxpayers $35 million – is back at it again attacking senior Trump campaign officials – proving once again why Americans’ confidence in the media is at an all time low.
Former Yahoo News chief investigative reporter and Daily Beast writer Michael Isikoff is using his new column at the Daily Beast to attack Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita – a Marine Corps veteran who was wounded in the Gulf War and received a Purple Heart for his service to the nation. The discredited writer is also doing the bidding of the Democratic National Committee and publishing articles attacking the Trump campaign while giving oxygen to the narrative that Trump and his supporters are dangerous, unstable people who harass and intimidate anyone in their way.
Isikoff also believes that Trump is a threat to “democracy” – language that has contributed to not one but two assassination attempts on the former president’s life this past Summer.
And despite generations of evidence, Isikoff also denies that voter fraud exists in this country and that such claims are only perpetuated by Trump and his violent supporters. But how he forgets the fact that then U.S. Sen. Joe Biden spent his entire career in the Senate – nearly 40 years – warning Americans about voter fraud.
During the 1990s, Biden sponsored legislation that created harsh penalties for voter fraud. In 1977, he published an opinion piece in a Delaware newspaper warning his constituents about voter fraud and the dangers of registering to vote on Election Day – a view that pitted him against his fellow Democrat and incumbent President Jimmy Carter. But since the 2020 election, President Joe Biden has hidden that earlier version of himself from public view, and remains silent on the issue he once dominated.
In 2016, Iskikoff – with guidance and under the leadership of FBI Director James Comey – led the charge – pushing the fake Russian Collusion narrative by publishing an article in Yahoo News that supposedly linked Trump advisor Carter Page and the Kremlin. As a result, the FBI – whose leadership was hellbent on sabotaging Trump’s campaign and presidency – concocted a plan using bad information and false statements to the FISA Court to obtain a warrant to spy on Page.
In 2020, when President Trump said they “spied” on his campaign – he was right. Because they did. And they obtained the warrant to spy using bad information deliberately.
That same year, the U.S. Justice Department admitted that it lacked probable cause to spy on Page – a point that U.S. Senator and former Senate Judiciary chairman and senior committee member Chuck Grassley made when he issued a statement that read,
“It’s about time. It’s about time federal authorities entrusted with our most powerful and intrusive surveillance tools begin to own up to their failures and abuses, and take steps to restore public confidence.
For years, the American people were fed false allegations of Russian collusion based on the FBI’s defective FISA warrants. We were forced to endure the nearly-two-year spectacle of the unnecessary special counsel investigation because of the warrants, and then forced to foot the bill for it to the tune of $35 million. And we were left to sift through competing storylines as so many loud voices continued to push the now-debunked claims while the rest of us demanded accountability. And only after the inspector general exposed these failures did the Justice Department begin to take corrective action.”
In 2022, it was reported that the FBI – the agency that Isikoff was working closely with – attempted to pay Christopher Steele – author of the now debunked Steele Dossier – $1 million to prove his Russian collusion allegations against Trump were true. Steele, who was a retired British spy, was contracted by a firm that traced back to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, to dig up dirt on Trump. The information in the dossier was unfounded, unverified and false, but that didn’t seem to stop anybody against Trump from using it.
The response from Republicans was immediate, and many, including U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan didn’t mince words after learning about the million dollar offer.
“You can’t make this stuff up. But I think it just underscores how out of touch and how political the FBI has become…and further validates what we all know, which is that the FBI is purely political now, going after their political opposition.”
The FBI not only used Steele as a trusted source – they also shared classified information with him. And even after learning that his information was bad, they continued to cite him as a source.
Who else relied on Steele as a source and personally met with him? Michael Isikoff.
To this day, Isikoff believes that Trump “aided and abetted Moscow’s attack on American democracy” during the 2016 election. Unfortunately for him, the evidence isn’t on his side.
Until then, he’ll continue to write false and sensational stories while his profession’s approval rating continues to drop. And it’s why an overwhelming majority of Americans have a higher opinion of colonoscopies, root canals, head lice and traffic jams than articles written by Isikoff and his colleagues on the left.
Americans distrust the media – and we know the reasons why – because they are constantly being misled.
And those facts are true.
