Another coordinated media and intelligence community hit against President Trump?

Sean Davis writes in the New York Post,

An old adage holds that while history doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes. Not so in the case of the latest manufactured anti-Trump “scandal.” The anonymous whistleblower’s allegations of corruption involving President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, appear to be a note-for-note reproduction of the discredited “dossier” of 2016.

The template for a coordinated media and intelligence community hit against the president was first perfected in the dossier. British ex-spook Christopher Steele compiled the bogus allegations at the behest of the Democrats. Yet it formed the basis for secret wiretaps, human informants and a sprawling, multi-year special-counsel probe of the president.

...“I was not a direct witness to most of the events described,” the whistleblower wrote. Just like Steele’s dossier, the complaint is riddled with third-hand rumors, gossip and hearsay gathered from similarly anonymous officials.

“I was told that a State Department official” did this or that. “I heard from multiple US officials” that such and such. “Officials have informed me. …” And so on. Much like Steele, the Ukraine informant lacked first-hand access to evidence he claimed proved Trump’s guilt. It must have been hard to blow an accurate whistle when the whistleblower wasn’t even in the same room.

The questionable use of media sources to buttress hearsay claims is also consistent across both documents. After Steele compiled his dossier, he peddled the allegations to numerous reporters, who then dutifully reported them as fact. The Obama administration then cited those articles, which were sourced directly to Steele and his dossier, as proof of the validity of the allegations. One article was given to a federal intelligence court to justify wiretaps on a Trump campaign affiliate. The information it alleged was false.

Reporters, lawmakers and others who fell for the collusion hoax might blame naiveté. But that ­excuse won’t work this time around, not when the remix sounds exactly the same as the original song. Those who go along with this charade the second time around — be they in media, Congress or any of the intelligence and law-enforcement agencies implicated in the collusion hoax — have no such alibi.

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