I didn’t really address the case that Russia hacked the DNC, content to stipulate it for now. I was told early on that this piece of the story seemed “solid,” but even that assertion has remained un-bolstered since then, still based on an “assessment” by the intelligence services that always had issues, including the use of things like RT’s “anti-American” coverage of fracking as part of its case. The government didn’t even examine the DNC’s server, the kind of detail that used to make reporters nervous.

Words like "wingnuttery" and "moon landing" weaken your case. If you get enough publications to print something, you can make a terrifically long list of citations, but what does that prove? Quality matters, not quantity, and the quality of journalism devoted to this case has been astonishingly low, as Taibbi shows. As he says:

We won’t know how much of any of this to take seriously until the press gets out of bed with the security services and looks at this whole series of events all over again with fresh eyes, as journalists, not political actors.