Clinton’s campaign was materially damaged, day in and day out, by stories about emails that had been hacked by Russia. At the same time, Trump’s campaign repeatedly used these stories to brand Clinton as “crooked,” lied about its attempts to coordinate with the Russians, defamed a dead DNC staffer who had nothing to do with the leak, and suffered no consequences for being the dissemination arm of a cyberattack by America’s enemies.

Also: The Clinton campaign’s attempts to push back on this through their supposed allies in the press and the deep state were completely rebuffed. Not only did the FBI refrain from using the Alfa Bank information to try to take down Trump—they went out of their way to block the New York Times from reporting the story. And then the bureau provided sourcing that the Times used to preemptively exonerate Trump.

Meanwhile, the FBI publicly announced the reopening of its investigation into Clinton, which the Times giddily covered, alongside every development from the leaked emails.

And then, even Franklin Foer—the supposed vehicle for disseminating this anti-Trump “disinformation”—produced a balanced, well-sourced story about the strange Alfa Bank/Trump server connection that presented more questions than accusations and followed it up with another piece that more thoroughly addressed the doubts that it demonstrated foul play.