I know that RealClearPolitics is a right-leaning organization and I don’t expect them to be objective or neutral. But I am still very disappointed to see that they’ve prominently promoted this vicious piece of misinformation by Victor Davis Hanson. I’m not sure how to properly characterize the article, but it includes almost every false claim made about the Russia investigation and all of the present lies being told about Joe and Hunter Biden. It also treats the president’s defense of his call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as if it is credible in any respect.

On almost every single point that Hanson raises, there is easy, demonstrable proof that he is either wrong or just outright lying.

A single example will suffice to make my point. Alexander Downer was once the leader of Australia’s conservative party. His personal politics have been described as “slightly to the right of Margaret Thatcher.” Yet, somehow, in Hanson’s telling, he “may have colluded with [British and American] intelligence agencies to entrap George Papadopoulos, a minor and transient Trump campaign employee, to find dirt on the Trump campaign.” There is an obvious problem with the motive here. There is also a problem with the timing.

Alexander Downer, then serving as the Australian ambassador to the United Kingdom, had drinks with George Papadopolous in May 2016. During their conversation, Papadopolous claimed that the Russians had obtained damaging information that would be helpful to Trump’s campaign. Downer reported this conversation back to his superiors in Australia, but nothing was done with the information for two months. It was only after the Russians had been publicly identified as the power behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee that the Australians considered it important to let the FBI know what Papadopoulos had said in that bar two months earlier.

Then this happened:

The Australian government reportedly passed that information to US authorities in July 2016 after a cache of emails from the Democratic campaign was released.

…the New York Times reported that within hours of the FBI opening its investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in the summer of 2016, it had flown two agents to London to meet Downer for a highly secretive interview, after Australian officials cleared the meeting.

The idea that this deeply conservative Australian political leader and diplomat wanted to entrap George Papadopoulos is far-fetched in the extreme, but even if that were somehow the case, he didn’t use the information he’d gained to harm Donald Trump until after it was clear that the Russians had committed a massive crime. At the time, Trump was encouraging the Russians to do more hacking and it seemed relevant that a member of his campaign appeared to have foreknowledge that the audacious crime had taken place.

Hanson pursues what I’ll call “the Giuliani-Barr blueprint” in his discussion of the Ukraine-Biden controversy. Most galling is his willingness to take the word of the prosecutor that Biden had fired as if he’s impartial, and as if it weren’t already clear that he was colluding with Giuliani to substantiate what is clearly false. His investigation of the gas company that Hunter Biden worked with was not active at the time Vice-Present Biden was requesting his ouster. At that time, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union were also lobbying for the prosecutor to be replaced, and this was the official coordinated policy of the West. In the face of all that, this is just irresponsible bullshit:

The Left has accused critics of Biden of indulging in supposition and hearsay and using unnamed sources—despite the fired Ukrainian prosecutor’s insistence that he was dismissed due to Biden’s interference and demands to end the investigation into the likely criminality of Biden’s own son Hunter.

Then there’s the whistleblower part. Every single thing about this is wrong, irrelevant or both:

Yet, the so-called “whistleblower” complaint admittedly is without any firsthand evidence, and rests entirely on two nothings—second and third-hand information the complainant claims he heard, and sources within the White House for such rumors that remain anonymous, in other words accusers of the president who refuse to identify themselves.

In truth, the “whistleblower” is no such thing. He or she is a disgruntled and partisan intelligence bureaucrat, who violated the whistleblower statutes by first going to Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D.-Calif.) staff on the House Intelligence Committee to get help in translating his narrative into Mueller/Steele dossier legalese, and in strategizing the timing of his accusations. Expect a series of John Brennan-surrogate intelligence agency whistleblowers to follow once it is established that now hearsay is admissible and there is no downside to violating the statutes by first conferring with Adam Schiff’s staff.

There is now at least one more whistleblower (and perhaps more) who has firsthand knowledge of the call. However, the best evidence of what was said on the call that we have is what the White House released on their own. The initial whistleblower may or may not be disgruntled or partisan, but they were correct in what they reported, and that’s all that matters now. As for violating the whistleblower statute, this assumes federal employees know the intricacies of the law and are capable of following the correct protocol prior to seeking any advice. It’s completely normal for people to approach members of Congress only to be told that they need to talk to their department’s inspector general and abide by the established procedures. There is no evidence that Adam Schiff’s staffer on the House Intelligence Committee did anything but point the whistleblower in the right direction. It’s pure conjecture that the staffer helped translate “his narrative into Mueller/Steele dossier legalese.” And, even if this were true, it would not constitute any defense of Trump whatsoever.

This kind of misinformation is pernicious and it’s tearing this country apart. RealClearPolitics should be warning their readers against this garbage rather than helping to spread it.