Legal scholar Jonathan Turley blasted the mainstream media for its “willful blindness” as the Trump-Russia collusion narrative falls apart.
Turley, who has been celebrated by folks on the Right ever since being a witness called by the Republicans during the House impeachment investigation into President Trump, delivered on Saturday a rebuke of journalists who he claims have not owned up to their flawed reporting over the past few years.
“The media has steadfastly refused to see what should be one of the biggest stories in decades: an administration’s targeting of an opposing party’s presidential campaign based on false and, in at least case, possibly criminally falsified evidence,” he tweeted.
“Of course, willful blindness has its advantages,” Turley added, referring to the legal concept of deliberately ignoring facts. “Virtually none of these journalists or experts have acknowledged that the collusion leaks were proven false. But then, in Washington, success often depends not on what you see but what you can unsee.”
Turley linked to an op-ed he wrote for The Hill in which he listed out declassified documents, testimony, and other disclosures that refute statements about the Russia collusion investigation.
This comes as U.S. Attorney John Durham is conducting a review, which last year morphed into a criminal inquiry, into misconduct during the Russia investigation, including leaks.
The House Intelligence Committee released dozens of witness interview transcripts in May showing several top intelligence, law enforcement, and national security officials from the Obama administration all denied seeing evidence of collusion, a much different story than what the media and Democrats were saying at the time. Chairman Adam Schiff long insisted there was “collusion in plain sight.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller, who concluded his two-year Russia investigation last year, determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish” any criminal conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign.
Still, after Trump declared he received “total exoneration,” Mueller told lawmakers last year that his investigation, which also explored possible obstruction of justice, did not completely exonerate the president.