Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace fact-checked Rush Limbaugh and Fox News' Bill Hemmer's bogus and oft-repeated claims that it was only the Steele dossier that triggered the Russia investigations into Trump and his campaign.
That is false.
Fox News' Bret Baier soiled his Special Report program's reputation by hosting Trump surrogate Rush Limbaugh for two full segments on his supposedly "straight" news program right after William Barr issued his whitewash of a summary to the Mueller report.
Baier introduced Rush to give their viewers an unfiltered analysis of Russiagate and the 2020 election and it didn't take long for Limbaugh to lie.
Limbaugh angrily said, "They began an investigation based on a phony dossier that was created and written by associates of Hillary Clinton. It was opposition research. This is outrageous what has happened here. There needs to be an investigation into this. There needs to be accountability for everybody who participated in this -- including most of the mainstream media.”
If holding the media accountable for promoting false information was the case, Limbaugh would be serving seven life sentences in prison doing hard labor with just bread and water to sustain him.
Chris Wallace joined Bill Hemmer on America's Newsroom on Friday to discuss the week's unfolding events as a set-up to promote his Sunday talk show.
Hemmer played the Limbaugh clip and gave his sense of the afterlife of Mueller's report, "I don't know how much redaction will be contained in there, but Pelosi and Schiff will make a point that on page so and so, there are questions and it's going to continue for them."
Hemmer then brought up the investigations into how the FISA warrants were handled and everybody has already made up their minds on the entirety of the investigations and the deep state conspiracies.
Chris explained that Trump did not get a "clean bill of health" from Mueller or Barr on obstruction of justice charges and Wallace immediately addressed his good friend Rush Limbaugh's comments about the genesis of the Russia investigations.
"And there is only one other point I do want to make," he said.
Wallace continued, "I know this is going to drive some of our viewers nuts. The Trump investigation did not start with the FISA warrant and Carter Page and even the dossier."
His words are going to drive Fox News viewers crazy because they are being lied to by most of Fox News' programming about every negative thing associated with Trump, his administration, and the Russia investigations.
"It started in June and July of 2016 when George Papadopoulos had spoken to a Russian agent and spoke to an Australian diplomat and said he had heard that they had information on, dirt on Hillary Clinton," he said.
"That’s when the investigation started. So it wasn’t October, it wasn’t September. It was in July and it was George Papadopoulos."
"Not to say that the FISA warrant was a legitimate basis"
Hemmer began interrupting him, "I would say..."
Wallace wouldn't be stopped, "Let me just finish. A legitimate basis for inquiry, but that is not where the investigation started. It’s just a fact."
Hemmer said, “I would just add in all of that, you may be precisely right, but I think I would add ‘we think’ in quotes because the story is not entirely yet revealed.”
Wallace slapped that idea away, “I don’t think there’s any doubt that they started investigating,. I mean everybody agrees they started investigating in the summer of 2016. Look, I’m not saying that what they did was right or any of that, but we know that’s when the investigation started. There’s been documentation of that.”
Hemmer moved on from there.
