FBI found no evidence of collusion with Russia by Trump campaign--Media stories were wrong

Washington Times:

A major New York Times story that helped spawn the unproven Trump-Russia collusion narrative for months in Washington was debunked on Thursday by former FBI Director James B. Comey.

Asked by a senator if the story was “almost entirely wrong,” he answered, “Yes.”

Mr. Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that when the Times story appeared on Feb. 14, telling a story of numerous contacts between Donald Trump people and Russian intelligence, he knew it was not true. He first double checked with the intelligence community and then alerted both Republican and Democrat senators not to believe the Times.

It was a rare public moment in Washington. A former FBI director was totally discrediting a major investigative story by the nation’s most influential newspaper and, in doing so, was backing President Trump.

That February, FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe disclosed to White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus that the Russian probe, by then eight months old, had not turned up evidence of collusion. Mr. Priebus obtained FBI permission to released the information and did so on a Sunday TV show.

The Times story took on enormous importance since the political Left, and Democrats, relied on it to spin the Russian collusion story in Congress, cable TV and the Internet.

The Times lede was a blockbuster:

“Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.”

Mr. Comey said that “many many stories” on the FBI’s Russia probe “are just dead wrong.”
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Those responsible for supplying this false narrative to the media have not been found and the media is not reporting who they are despite being burned by their sources.  I suspect the person supplying the false information either has ties to the Hillary Clinton campaign or to the Obama administration.  I think they are probably among the co-conspirators in the coup attempt against President Trump, that have used the media as their useful idiots because they share a dislike for the President.