Politico severely downplayed the latest news regarding one of the biggest presidential scandals in history as merely an “impulse” by the Trump administration on Thursday. The outlet has a long history of peddling the fully fabricated, years-long Russia collusion hoax.

Politico’s “Playbook,” which was sponsored by Planned Parenthood in April, is the “unofficial guide to official Washington” that rounds up the biggest news in D.C. Under its “Democracy” section, Politico barely alluded to the administration’s move to declassify information that could lead to Obama being investigated for “criminal implications,” suggesting instead that the Trump administration is “follow[ing] through on his angriest and most authoritarian impulses.” The quote is from a New York Times article, the only article Politico chose to highlight on the matter, which claims Trump is “seeking prosecution of his most prominent rivals — this time with aides more inclined to carry out his wishes.”

The recently declassified material makes it clear that the Obama administration “manufactured” intelligence and used shoddy information to launch the widespread lie that Russia helped Trump win the 2016 election — an action that DNI Tulsi Gabbard described as “treasonous” during a White House press briefing on Wednesday. 

In Thursday’s post, Politico deemed birthdays and random information as newsworthy, like Benjamin Franklin’s appearance on the “250th anniversary stamps from the Postal Service,” Rep. Ro Khanna recording a podcast with Barstool Sport’s “@PFTCommenter and Arian Foster,” and Pete Buttigieg “making another appearance on The Breakfast Club.”

Yet the outlet left the news about the monumental scandal as the last point in their “Democracy” section, buried under paragraphs about the “Epstein list.” Even Politico acknowledged that public information regarding the Epstein matter “does not point to a crime on Trump’s part.”

Politico was already downplaying the news on Wednesday, characterizing Tulsi Gabbard’s release of the bombshell House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence information as the “latest push to cast doubts on Russia assessment.”

Near the beginning of the Russiagate campaign of lies, Politico published an article titled “Here’s What America Needs to Know About Trump and Russia.” Citing the CIA, Politico claimed that “Russia hacked both the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, and the goal was to help Trump win.”

In a 2018 article titled “Trump Is Russia’s Weapon — Not Its End State,” Politico asserted that “Russia gave Trump a boost.” Politico also published an entire article dedicated to “debunking” Russiagate “conspiracy theories advanced by the president or his allies.” This article peddled the claim that the “the yearslong investigation into whether President Donald Trump or members of his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia” was “adequately predicated” and free from “political bias.”

In 2019, the Trump administration filed a $25 million lawsuit against Politico, including its reporter Natasha Bertrand, for “lying, deceit and unethical conduct” for stories regarding “what the president was told about the situation in Ukraine,” Fox News reported.

Bertrand built her career on consistent Russiagate lies published in Politico and even published the letter signed by 51 intelligence officials to propagate the lie that Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” was a Russian disinformation. Two former Politico reporters, Marc Caputo and Tara Palmeri, said they were told, “Don’t write about the laptop,” while Politico set the premise that the laptop was merely propaganda.

Politico’s current campaign to ignore the revelations about Russiagate does not come as a surprise, because, as The Federalist’s Brianna Lyman noted of the corporate media, “Reporting honestly on the newly declassified findings would mean admitting they are indeed propagandists and were involved in peddling a hoax.”

Abigail Nichols is a correspondent for The Federalist. She was previously the opinion editor for the University of South Florida's student newspaper, The Oracle. She is now working as the business manager at the University of North Florida's student-run media outlet, Spinnaker Media, while obtaining a Master's Degree in Social work.