The Fusion GPS rollout was going so well.
The media's puppeteers were lavishing their puppetmasters with so much love. Senator Feinstein was courageous for putting up the Fusion GPS transcript. Fusion GPS had absolutely disproved all the conspiracy theories. Like when it admitted to working for Russia. (But never mind that.) Fusion GPS' smear artists were the media's heroes.
And the media celebrated their heroism with the best possible tribute, fake news.
First, the Washington Post spread the claim that the FBI had someone in Trump's inner circle. Except, never mind. That was just the drunk guy in a bar.
Second, someone died for the dossier. They really, really died.
An attorney for the co-founder of the opposition research firm that sought to dig up dirt on President Trump says someone has died as a result of their findings.
On Monday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein released a 312-page transcript of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson's August interview with the Senate Judiciary Committee. In that transcript, Simpson attorney Josh Levy tells the committee that his client "wants to be very careful to protect his sources."
"Somebody's already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work," Levy explains.
Well that sounds serious. Who was killed?
Oops sorry, we made it all up.
During the closed-door session, Levy did not identify the person who was killed. Despite Levy's clear assertion that someone had been killed, a source close to the testimony told CNN on Tuesday that the comment did not refer to any specific killing. Instead, the source said, it referred to the mysterious string of Russian deaths after the 2016 election.
At least nine high-profile Russians died in the nine months after the election, including top diplomats overseas, a former Russian intelligence official that had close ties to figures mentioned in the dossier, and a security officer in the Russian consulate in New York. Some of the Russians appeared to die from natural causes, while others were murdered.
None of the deaths have been definitively linked to the dossier by the authorities.
HOW DARE YOU CALL US, FAKE NEWS???
Russia is a corrupt, totalitarian mafia state. Officials are always dying under suspicious circumstances. So are assorted businessmen and anyone who attracts too much attention. Suspicious deaths in Russia is rain in Seattle. It's not news unless you have some kind of reliable link.
It's also highly improbable that anyone was killed because of the Steele dossier. Let's look at the facts here.
1. Steele claimed that his Russian intel source gave him the material free of charge. Barring a political dissident, that's just not going happen. And the Trump urine stories don't fit as a political dissident.
2. The Russians planted the material on Steele to cause trouble. Which it did. While making Putin look very powerful. The only reason for him to have anyone killed is if the Russian regime feels that the scam backfired. That's not impossible. But it isn't the dossier that got anyone killed. But the political miscalculations of trying to look like Trump's puppeteer without considering the likely response of the White House.
In any case, there's no evidence an actual person who was killed because of the dossier. The media is just frantically generating fake news to exonerate the source of its fake news.