Durham probe: Media outlets avoid, downplay latest developments implicating Clinton campaign

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Mainstream media largely ignores covering latest developments on Durham probe

‘Media Buzz’ host Howard Kurtz discusses the lack of coverage on the Durham filing and how the media seems ‘determined to ignore’ this story on ‘The Story.'

Liberal media outlets have largely downplayed or otherwise ignored the court filing from Special Counsel John Durham as part of his investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. 

MSNBC, which made the Russian investigation the most dominant topic on the network for years under President Trump, completely ignored the revelations Durham made the court filing late Friday night through Monday. "Morning Joe" addressed it on Tuesday. 

CNN, meanwhile, dedicated less than three minutes to the subject during the same period with only one mention on Monday's installment of "The Lead with Jake Tapper." 

NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER DEFLECTS FROM DURHAM PROBE DEVELOPMENTS BY REFUELING RUSSIA COLLUSION NARRATIVE

None of MSNBC nor CNN's primetime shows, typically regarded as the most watched programming on the networks, touched the subject. 

ABC, CBS and NBC similarly made no mention of the new developments on their morning and evening newscasts, though NBC News published a report online on Monday night.

ST LOUIS, MO - OCTOBER 09:  Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (R) speaks as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump listens during the town hall debate at Washington University on October 9, 2016 in St Louis, Missouri.(Photo by Rick Wilking-Pool/Getty Images) (Rick Wilking-Pool/Getty Images)

The New York Times skipped running a report and went with "news analysis," slamming "right-wing outlets" for pushing a narrative that is "off track."

"Upon close inspection, these narratives are often based on a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation," Times reporter Charlie Savage wrote Monday night. "They also tend to involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time — raising the question of whether news outlets should even cover such claims. Yet Trump allies portray the news media as engaged in a cover-up if they don’t." 

Savage went on to insist much of Durham's court filing "was not new" and quoted lawyers of David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist involved in the research, who claim the mined data from the White House actually occurred under President Obama, not President Trump. 

Like the Times, Washington Post refrained from publishing a report on the matter but rather an "analysis" piece attempting to downplay the significance of the court filing, framing it with the headline, "Why Trump is once again claiming that he was spied upon in 2016," and telling readers, "Durham’s filing ties the campaign to Sussman [sic] and Sussman [sic] to the executive, but it’s not explicitly argued that the probe flowed down from Clinton’s team — or up to it."

"There are legitimate questions about the effort to link Trump back to Russia using this data that was not only sketchy at the outset, but had also been debunked by the time the election was over. But there is no question that this is not proof that Trump Tower was ‘wiretapped,' Washington Post national correspondent Philip Bump wrote. "If it’s evidence of Trump being ‘spied on,’ as the former president has also claimed in recent days, it’s a very broad sort of spying — collecting all of the domain-name lookups from a physical location or a network — being conducted not by the Obama administration or by Hillary Clinton, but by an anti-Trump lawyer."

DURHAM PROBE HAS ‘ACCELERATED,' WITH MORE PEOPLE ‘COOPERATING,’ COMING BEFORE GRAND JURY 

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post received a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 "for deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration."

John H Duhram

Other outlets including Associated Press, Reuters, USA Today, Axios, NPR and The Daily Beast all avoided the subject, according to search results. 

Politico, instead of publishing its own report on the Durham probe, made a brief mention of it towards the bottom of its "Playbook" newsletter on Sunday linking to a National Review article and labeled it "WHAT TRUMP IS READING." 

And the Huffington Post's only coverage was an article focused on comments made by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, reacting to the developments. 

‘60 MINUTES,’ CNN, MSNBC DOWNPLAYED, CRITICIZED DURHAM PROBE OF RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

A court filing made late Friday by Durham, who was appointed during the Trump administration to investigate the origins of the Russia probe, revealed that a tech firm coordinated with the Clinton campaign to mine internet data from Trump Tower during the 2016 election and later the White House in order to "establish 'an inference' and 'narrative' tying then-candidate Trump to Russia" and that, "In doing so, Tech Executive-1 indicated that he was seeking to please certain 'VIPs,' referring to individuals at Law Firm-1 and the Clinton campaign."

The recent Durham probe developments stem from the indictment of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann, who's been accused of lying to the FBI when claiming he wasn't working on behalf of the Democratic nominee when he approached the DOJ pushing a Russian collusion narrative between Trump Tower and a Kremlin-linked bank. 

Sussmann has pleaded not guilty. 

(Getty Images/CSPAN)

Former President Trump reacted to the filing on Saturday evening, saying Durham’s filing "provides indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia."

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The Durham investigation has "accelerated" and more people are "cooperating" and coming before the federal grand jury than has previously been reported, a source familiar with the probe told Fox News.

Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report.