Now they tell us

Word that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian emissary last year in an effort to find negative information on Hillary Clinton has the New York Times digging up San Diego–linked stories of opposition research by Democrats. “Remember accounts of the car elevator that Mitt Romney was building inside his oceanside home in California? Those came from renovation plans submitted to the city of San Diego, which were dug up by President Barack Obama’s campaign,” the Times revealed.

Then there was the case of Chris Lehane, longtime associate of Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani since their days together in the Clinton White House and on the Al Gore presidential campaign. He was once employed by the sons of La Jolla Democratic billionaire Irwin Jacobs to promote a fat public subsidy for the family’s partially-owned Sacramento Kings basketball franchise. In 2000, recounts the Times, Lehane planted a story “five days before the 2000 election on George W. Bush driving under the influence in Maine back in 1976.”

According to the paper, Lehane, “a native of Maine, does not admit to the paternity of that leak, but he does not deny it, either.” When Bush aide Karl Rove later complained about the matter in his memoir, Lehane said, “I told people when asking about the issue only that I was responsible for the popular vote and left the Electoral College for others.”