Dulis: The ‘Pee Tape’ Hoax Is Finally, Absolutely Dead. It’s Time to Brand the ‘Rushers’ Who Pushed It.

I’m talking about the infamous “pee tape,” of course. This week, it was finally decapitated, burned, and buried, thanks to the DOJ Inspector General’s review of the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” campaign surveillance. The most succinct summary of this development comes from Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi, no friend to Breitbart or Trump:

The Steele report reads like a pile of rumors surrounded by public information pulled off the Internet, and the Horowitz report does nothing to dispel this notion.

At the time the FBI submitted its first FISA application, Horowitz writes, it had “corroborated limited information in Steele’s election reporting, and most of that was publicly available information.” Horowitz says of Steele’s reports: “The CIA viewed it as ‘internet rumor.’”

Worse (and this part of the story should be tattooed on the heads of Russia truthers), the FBI’s interviews of Steele’s sources revealed Steele embellished the most explosive parts of his report.

The “pee tape” story, which inspired countless grave headlines (see this chin-scratching New York Times history of Russian “sexual blackmail”) and plunged the Trump presidency into crisis before it began, was, this source said, based a “conversation that [he/she] had over beers,” with the sexual allegations made… in “jest”!

Steele in his report said the story had been “confirmed” by senior, Western hotel staff, but the actual source said it was all “rumor and speculation,” never confirmed. In fact, charged by Steele to find corroboration, the source could not: corroboration was “zero,” writes Horowitz.

You got that? Steele took a joke he heard about Trump (golden showers from Russian hookers), stuffed it into a grave-sounding Word document, and bluffed that it was “confirmed.” And, knowing there was nothing there, watch how former FBI Director James Comey continued to blow smoke as though this thing had any credibility whatsoever — more than a year later:

Comey’s book — and the subsequent press tour — is a main reason why New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait said he went from a pee tape skeptic to a “peeliever.”

While everyone else is (rightfully) outraged about the FBI’s misconduct detailed in the IG report, the pee tape is the most important passage by far, because it’s the only thing that trickles down past the legal wonks (cue Andrew Breitbart’s line about culture being upstream of politics). Stephen Colbert devoted a whole segment to it on his late-night show, pounding on his desk, shouting, “It’s the only part we care about! It’s the part we talk about, the pee-pee tape! Pee-pee tape! Pee-pee tape! Pee-pee tape! Pee-pee tape!”