I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me. Nothing. Zero.

– George Carlin

Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community and they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.

– Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a 2017 interview on MSNBC

The Russia Hoax: The I... Jarrett, Gregg Best Price: $1.26 Buy New $7.01 (as of 04:10 UTC - Details) As someone whose website was slandered by the earliest manifestations of the hysterical Russiagate mob, I could go on and on now that’s the whole spectacle’s been disproven, but I’m not going to do that. Rather, I want to highlight how despite the whole thing blowing up, we’ll be living with severe direct consequences for years to come.

First, it’s important to point out that none of Russiagate’s most irresponsible grifters will face any serious repercussions for wasting the country’s time, money and energy on a fake story for the past two years. Russiagate was as much a business model as it was a conspiracy theory, and some of it’s most shameless peddlers made out like bandits over the past couple of years.

As Glenn Greenwald noted:

Rachel Maddow makes *$10 million a year.* Every month, more money is put into her bank account by a major corporation than most people make in a lifetime, literally. She went on the air for 2 straight years & fed millions of people conspiratorial garbage & benefited greatly. pic.twitter.com/4PhOrZRR1D

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 24, 2019

Let’s not forget Luke Harding, a guy who literally wrote a book titled “Collusion,” which naturally soared to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

That this is @lukeharding1968‘s pinned tweet is the perfect encapsulation of Russiagate: its media “experts” deceitfully peddled a conspiracy theory that did untold damage to their industry & the world, but they benefited financially. See our interview: https://t.co/AVUQ7HF5Aa https://t.co/wnxadIFsyn

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) March 24, 2019

Of course, nothing seriously damaging will happen to Rachel, Luke or the other myriad Russiagate charlatans who drove and profited handsomely from what was by far the biggest conspiracy theory of the past two years. Will they be banned from Facebook, Twitter or YouTube? Of course not, despite the fact that they played a larger role than anybody else with respect to driving our national conversation into a cesspool of insanity, xenophobia and falsehoods.

Nevertheless, you can be sure Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg will never come out and condemn them for peddling endless amounts fake news. No tech giant scarlet letter will be forthcoming for the priests and priestesses of Russiagate; but why not?

The simple answer is that all the public concern about “fake news” was just a ruse — the tech giants were just pretending to care about it. The real objective was to appease angry politicians by finding an excuse to erase and de-rank opinions that don’t conform to the dispositions and leanings that dominate the executive suites of the largest tech companies and the power players in establishment Washington D.C.

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