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Washington Post columnist admits media pushed Russiagate scandal and never found 'smoking gun'

The Washington Post’s Perry Bacon Jr., warned journalists to be cautious when reporting on President Trump’s alleged links to sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein to avoid a Russiagate situation, where the media insinuated collusion without proving it.

A Washington Post columnist admitted Thursday that mainstream journalists could never prove that President Donald Trump colluded with Russia in 2016 despite their best efforts, suggesting it shouldn't have turned into such a media circus.

On "The Don Lemon Show" podcast, The Washington Post’s Perry Bacon Jr. warned Lemon and other journalists not to report too definitively about Trump’s alleged links to sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, in order to avoid a Russiagate situation in which the media insinuated collusion without proving it.

"You and I were covering the Russia thing a fair amount probably in 2017, 2018. We never really proved the thing we were sort of hinting at—that maybe [Vladimir] Putin and Trump are cheating and so on," Bacon said. 

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President Donald Trump. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

In the clip flagged by NewsBusters' associate editor Nicholas Fondacaro, Lemon remarked that Trump’s relationship with Epstein has broken into the previously uninterested mainstream media.

"After last night, I was like, ‘How should they be treating this story?’ And I ask because, look, this was sort of a Republican and a MAGA conspiracy theory, a la Pizzagate… initially," he said.

He noted how some outlets were interested in the story at the time, but said, "for the most part, sort of centrist media, they were not obsessed with this Epstein story." 

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Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr., speaking on "The Don Lemon Show" Thursday.