NBC Hosts Hillary Clinton, Doesn’t Ask About Payment of Fine for Steele Dossier

Chuck Todd speaks during an event in New York in a 2015 file photograph. D Dipasupil/Getty Images for AWXII

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appeared on an NBC show over the weekend, but wasn’t asked about a major development involving her campaign and the infamous dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele.

Clinton, 74, was the Democrat nominee for president in 2016, but she ultimately lost to Donald Trump.

Before the election, Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid Steele through a law firm to compile the dossier, which was full of unsubstantiated, salacious allegations concerning Trump and his alleged links to Russia. The payments were labeled as “legal services” or “legal and compliance consulting.”

Addressing complaints that the payments weren’t reported correctly, the Federal Election Commission found probable cause that the campaign and committee violated federal law. The parties agreed to settle the case and pay fines, according to documents made public on March 30.

Just days later, Clinton appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Despite talking about Russia’s “efforts to help Donald Trump in his 2016 campaign against Clinton,” host Chuck Todd neglected to mention the fines or ask Clinton about them.

Jeffrey McCall, a communications professor at DePauw University, said what happened was “a classic case of the journalism of omission.”

“Oftentimes, what is left out of a story or interview is more important than what is put in the story. That the NBC host failed to ask Clinton about the fines associated with the Steele dossier is another case of the establishment media trying to run interference for Clinton and protect her from scrutiny,” McCall told The Epoch Times in an email.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the 2022 New York State Democratic Convention in New York on Feb. 17, 2022. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee haven’t responded to requests for comment. Clinton, her campaign, and the committee haven’t commented publicly on paying the fines, which was done in a settlement that saw the parties admit no wrongdoing.

NBC didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said the development related to the dossier, which was heavily promoted by NBC and other legacy outlets, was significant.

“For many of us we are ‘not quite sure what the disconnect is’ between an interview on how Clinton would handle the next election and how her campaign was just fined for her handling of the last election,” he wrote on his blog. “This was not some trivial record-keeping violation. This was the concealing of the role of the Clinton campaign in funding and pushing a major scandal—and allegedly lying about that role to reporters.”

Marc Elias was an attorney with Perkins Coie, the firm the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee paid during the 2016 campaign that funneled funding to Fusion GPS, a research company, to assist Steele with compiling the dossier.

Elias, who recently left Perkins, told multiple reporters that the firm wasn’t involved in the dossier. Citing interviews with former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile, the Senate Intelligence Committee said leadership at the parties “were unaware—or at most marginally aware—that Perkins Coie had hired Fusion GPS.” Podesta later told a House panel that he learned about the arrangement after the campaign.