Matt Taibbi, The Press Will Learn Nothing From the Russiagate Fiasco:
You know what was fake news? Most of the Russiagate story. There was no Trump-Russia conspiracy, that thing we just spent three years chasing. The Mueller Report is crystal clear on this.
He didn’t just “fail to establish” evidence of crime. His report is full of incredibly damning passages, like one about Russian officialdom’s efforts to reach the Trump campaign after the election: “They appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior officials around the President-Elect.” Not only was there no “collusion,” the two camps didn’t even have each others’ phone numbers!
Have you heard that Trump intended to build a Trump Tower in Moscow? Fake news! In 2015, a Russian firm negotiated with Trump to license his brand for use in a development project in Russia. Nothing came out of it. Taibbi:
The report shows the whole episode was a joke. In order to further the Trump Tower project-that-never-was, Cohen literally cold-emailed the Kremlin. More than that, he entered the email incorrectly, so the letter initially didn’t even arrive. When he finally fixed the mistake, Peskov didn’t answer back. That was “the most direct interaction yet of a top Trump aide and a senior member of Putin’s government”!