MSNBC panel calls Durham's report built on a 'conspiracy theory'
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace argued that Special Counsel John Durham's 300-page report on the 'Crossfire Hurricane' investigation was based on a 'rabbit hole conspiracy.'
Twenty years removed from being tapped as communications director for a Republican president, Nicolle Wallace is now one of MSNBC's most rabid left-wing hosts and fervent Russiagate boosters. Unsurprisingly, she has been quite speedy to dismiss any revelations undercutting the collusion narrative she enthusiastically pushed for years.
Following the release of the Durham Report, which concluded that the Trump-Russia investigation dubbed "Crossfire Hurricane" was based on "raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence," Wallace accused the probe launched by Special Counsel John Durham of being predicated on a "rabbit hole conspiracy." In fact, she made the assessment within minutes of the 320-page report's release.
"Durham’s whole thing is predicated on it’s like a rabbit hole conspiracy that suggests that the Trump-Barr paranoia infected his ability to stand back and evaluate whether the probe yielded guilty convictions of people who would have had nothing to do with any of these questions he looked at," Wallace said. "It is a view from so far down the rabbit hole that what needs some oversight is what Mr. Durham did for four years that repelled his longtime prosecutorial partner, Nora Dannehy, and other high-level DOJ prosecutors."
Despite Wallace's past life as a GOP flack, the host of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House" sang from the same sheet of music as her liberal colleagues Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid and others when it came to the Russian collusion narrative. She has risen up the ranks of MSNBC since Donald Trump took office, winning an extra hour on her afternoon program and becoming one of the faces of its left-wing political coverage.
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Although she cut her teeth in GOP politics, Wallace is perhaps the most prominent media example of a disgruntled ex-Republican in the Trump era who went fully over to the other side of the aisle. Critics still mock her over-the-top gushing over figures like Joe Biden and Jen Psaki in interviews; she once asked Beto O'Rourke what the media could do to cover him better. Disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti was also a Wallace favorite.
Critics say MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace dismissed the Durham Probe because "her career was built upon a fraud." (Nathan Congleton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Image)
"Facts don’t exist in their universe," NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck told Fox News Digital. "It’s an alternate reality where the Trump-Russia probe did, in fact, deliver the goods and Russia ‘hacked’ the 2016 election to install Trump. [Wallace's] show alone is enough evidence for someone to cite as to why no one should take media criticism from that channel seriously."
For two years, Wallace championed the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller delving into Russia's involvement in the 2016 election and alleged collusion with the Trump campaign, calling it a "very rational, evidence-based, fact-based investigation."
In January 2018, Wallace hyped the developments that Mueller team had interviewed both then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former FBI Director James Comey, telling viewers at the time "Special Counsel Bob Mueller just stole the plot line right back from this president and this White House."
"These twin developments are reigniting speculation in Washington, D.C., today about Bob Mueller focusing in on potential obstruction of justice by the president and his associates," Wallace said, although Trump was never charged with that or anything else out of the Mueller probe.
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Wallace was a major booster of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's sprawling Russia probe during the Trump presidency. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
In December 2018, Wallace tried rebuking then-President Trump's assertion that the infamous Steele dossier, which was at the center of the Russia probe and has since been discredited, was fake.
"It may be dirty but it ain't fake!" Wallace gleefully said, later adding, "The dossier on its face is still considered an unverified document compiled by British Intelligence officer Christopher Steele based on raw Intelligence. To date, none of it has been disproven, and whole big parts of it are holding up as Robert Mueller’s investigation has methodically yielded indictments and plea agreements from which numerous Court filings have lined up almost exactly with some of the reporting in the dossier."
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Contrary to reality, Wallace once asserted, "It's a fact that none of [the Steele dossier], not one word of it has been disproven. In fact, a lot of it turned out to be right on the money." Wallace has never issued any on-air mea culpas for her touting of the dossier, which even legacy outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times have thrashed.
Wallace repeatedly defended the infamous Steele dossier authored by ex-British spy Christopher Steele. ( TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)
"Media personalities on MSNBC like Nicolle Wallace owe their careers to stoking and then feeding upon hatred of Donald Trump," Cornell Law School professor and media critic William A. Jacobson told Fox News Digital. "That they now are downplaying the Durham Report's extensive evidence that Russia collusion was a hoax fits into that career path. For Wallace to admit that there never was evidence of Russia collusion would be to admit that her career was built upon a fraud."
While many viewed Mueller's 2019 testimony to Congress as being lackluster, Wallace was one of his biggest cheerleaders, telling a panel "I don't think that Mueller failed" and hyping his "significant breakthroughs" that did not rule out the possibility of Trump ending up in jail.
She later declared that the FBI was "exonerated" by a report authored by Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who directly contradicted her assertion during his congressional testimony.
Wallace also went to bat for disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was ousted from the DOJ after damning texts from 2016 surfaced of him being critical of Trump, saying the former president "exploited" the scandal.
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Special Counsel John Durham concluded that the Russia investigation should never have bene launched since it was based on "raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence." (Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images)
Her Russia paranoia didn't stop with the Mueller probe. In 2020, Wallace encouraged her viewers to not view the bombshell Hunter Biden laptop "as anything other than a Russian disinformation operation." She even suggested that Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., was "in cahoots" with Russia in 2020 to defeat then-candidate Joe Biden.
Additionally, Wallace peddled the unsubstantiated media narrative that Russia had put "bounties" on the heads of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Fourth Watch media critic Steve Krakauer said there are "massive incentives" for liberal media figures like Wallace to ignore the reality of the Durham Report because "they themselves are implicated," noting she never had any objectivity since "she went from a GOP hack to a Democratic hack with great ease."
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"If they are to be introspective about it, it would require them admitting to their audience they are total frauds who misled them for not just months but years," Krakauer told Fox News Digital. "Her star has only risen at MSNBC while she spins the Russiagate lies and others to a doting, but ultimately small, audience."