For an embattled Donald Trump, the news that scrolled continuously this week across the bottom of America's most-watched cable news network — the Fox News Channel — could not have come at a more welcome time. The 45th — and hopeful 47th — president had been battered in mainstream outlets over his habit of destroying government documents and the hasty retreat of his business empire's longtime accounting firm. But those stories weren't airing on Fox, because its prime-time hosts were pushing what they saw as a much bigger scoop.
Calling it "the biggest election and presidential spying scandal in the history of this great country," Fox News veteran host Sean Hannity went large with a claim that the 2016 Democratic presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton had paid operatives to spy on rival Trump by "infiltrating" his computers at Trump Tower and even at the White House. Hannity's breathless report on the alleged scandal was backdropped by a graphic calling it "Worse Than Watergate," while his higher-rated colleague Tucker Carlson went with "Clinton campaign paid to 'infiltrate' Trump orbit."
But these claims were 99% adulterated baloney. The so-called "Hillary spied on Trump" storyline was based on a new court filing by federal prosecutor John Durham, who was tasked by then-Attorney General William Barr during the Trump years to investigate their theory that the Trump-Russia probe was rife with official misconduct — and who has little to show for his work so far.
