Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has been leading a congressional investigation into President Trump's alleged ties to Russia, had extensive contact last year with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch who was offering Warner access to former British spy and dossier author Christopher Steele, according to text messages obtained exclusively by Fox News.

"We have so much to discuss u need to be careful but we can help our country," Warner texted the lobbyist, Adam Waldman, on March 22, 2017.

"I'm in," Waldman, whose firm has ties to Hillary Clinton, texted back to Warner.

We'll bring you Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel's tweetstorm in a moment, but I'll take a stab at answering her question about the media right out of the gate.  Three possibilities: (1) The GOP hyped the Nunes memo, which quickly became the center of this whole firestorm -- replete with counter-memos, FBI objections, etc.  The press followed the spotlight. (2) As we've been saying, there are so many complex pieces of this larger puzzle, following the plot is difficult.  It's not just news consumers wondering, "which memo is this now?" -- it's many of the people trying to cover this drama, too.  The document in question here is a second, less redacted, version of a Senate memo that few people have even heard of. (3) The Senate memo, produced by non-bomb-throwers Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham, is substantially more disruptive to the Democrats' narrative than the Nunes document.  And the press generally prefers Democratic narratives to Republican ones because most journalists are liberals. 

Anti-Trump Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. – who has vigorously promoted his own “fake news” by accusing Fox News’ Tucker Carlson of working for Vladimir Putin and claiming Trump has “instated more pro-Russia policies that America has seen in decades” – says he’s been inspired by President Trump to propose a law making it a federal crime to “intimidate” or attack journalists.

Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, introduced the Journalist Protection Act in the House on Monday. He claimed the legislation must be passed to protect reporters from the “toxic environment” created by President Trump, who has accused some media outlets of reporting “fake news.”

Swalwell’s bill makes it a federal crime “to intentionally cause bodily injury to a journalist affecting interstate or foreign commerce in the course of reporting or in a manner designed to intimidate him or her from newsgathering for a media organization” and “represents a clear statement that assaults against people engaged in reporting is unacceptable, and helps ensure law enforcement is able to punish those who interfere with newsgathering.”

Ah, but you forget....Mr. Page was swept up while the FBI was monitoring someone else and well before campaign time. When Page showed up on Team Trump is when it became "interesting".

And they thought they would get away with it, and keep it hidden because Hillary was going to be elected.  Part of the reason they continue to want to delegitimize the Trump Presidency.