https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/right-wing-conspiracy-theories-are-having-a-bad-day/ar-AA1vLb7i?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=b9cd56583c5d4a39b11c5f83c4a6aa25&ei=12Right-wing conspiracy theories are having a bad day
Right-wing conspiracy theories are having a bad day
© Jose Luis Magana/AP
If you spend much time watching Fox News, or if you look to social media sites such as X for information about American politics and the U.S. government, you have probably heard two specific claims over the past four years. First, that the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was fomented at least in part by government actors, including from the FBI. Second, that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden took millions of dollars in bribes from a Ukrainian businessman.
You’ve probably heard those claims because each offers a different lens into the purported corruption of the Biden administration and/or the governmental Deep State — and because right-wing media organizations such as Fox spent months amplifying them. That claim about the bribes, for example, was hyped by Fox host Maria Bartiromo alone hundreds of times. The agent provocateur allegations about the Capitol riot, meanwhile, were a staple of Tucker Carlson’s former Fox News show.
There was never solid evidence to suggest that either was true. Instead, the assertions relied on the willingness of those on the right and supporters of Donald Trump in particular to embrace flimsy disparagements of Trump’s opponents and, rather than demand incontrovertible evidence from those making the claims, insist that the accused prove their own innocence.
Proving a negative — that someone didn’t do something — is often all but impossible, one reason that those in a weaker rhetorical position often demand it. But, on Thursday, new evidence emerged that brings each of the claims above one step closer to having been affirmatively disproved.
The one about the alleged bribe that Bartiromo found so convincing has already been eviscerated. It depended on an interview the FBI conducted with an informant — a “confidential human source” (CHS) in bureau parlance. This particular CHS alleged that he had been told about the bribe by a Ukrainian businessman and relayed that claim to his FBI handler.
The allegation took a meandering route to public attention but was seized upon last year by Republicans in Congress. At first, they demanded that the FBI release the write-up of the interview with the CHS, later revealed to be a man named Alexander Smirnov. When the FBI balked, noting that the interview was not corroborated and might put their sources at risk, the Republicans suggested it was an example of how the federal government was acting in Biden’s political interest.
In short order, though, that process complaint was overshadowed by the details of the allegation itself. Eventually, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) simply released the interview documentation himself. This claim that Biden had maybe taken a bribe was one of a handful of things that then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) invoked when launching an impeachment probe targeting the president.
And then Smirnov was indicted on charges that he invented the allegation out of whole cloth.
The indictment made public by the Justice Department offered a compelling timeline showing how the conversation in which Smirnov claimed to have learned about the bribe couldn’t have happened. On Thursday, he agreed to plead guilty to the charges he faces and admitted to having made the whole thing up.
In a different part of the Justice Department on the same day, Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a new report addressing the other of our two initial false claims, the one about the Capitol riot.
The 84-page assessment of the FBI’s failure to understand that the Capitol riot was looming looks at a number of things that unfolded in the weeks before Jan. 6, 2021. But it also includes a very clear review of the idea that the FBI directly or indirectly stoked the day’s violence.
“We found no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6,” the report reads. There were informants at the Capitol that day, it continued, but those were people who, like Smirnov, gave information to the FBI rather than working for it directly. But even considering that distance from the government, the inspector general’s office found no evidence the informants were involved in the day’s violence.
“We determined that three CHSs had been tasked by FBI field offices in the days leading up to the January 6 Electoral Certification, with the required approval of the [Washington field office], to travel to DC for the events of January 6 to report on domestic terrorism subjects who were possibly attending the event,” the report states. Later, it notes that in addition to these three, the review “found that 23 other FBI CHSs were in DC on January 6 in connection with the events planned for January 6.” The FBI only knew that five of those informants were likely to be in D.C.
“None of these FBI CHSs were authorized to enter the Capitol or a restricted area, or to otherwise break the law on January 6,” the report states, “nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6.”
Of the 26 CHSs present that day, four entered the building and another 13 entered the restricted area surrounding the Capitol. None was arrested for taking part in the day’s violence — and, as stated, none had been instructed to trigger it.
Those eager to believe that the government did have a hand in the riot have a few options for dismissing this new evidence. Maybe it was some other federal agency, for example, or maybe the inspector general is simply covering for the FBI. This is precisely why demands to prove a negative are unfair; you can always shift to demand different proof.
The developments that unfolded Thursday are not surprising. It’s been clear from the outset that neither of the claims embraced by Fox and their allies were credibly substantiated. What the developments remind us, though, is that there are prominent voices who embraced those claims and that, over time, those claims have gotten substantially less credible.
Yet those voices haven’t gotten much less prominent
