Russia Gates not going away. And there are real questions, and I have some answers for you from the man who has dug deeper than anyone. Chris Cuomo here. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo project. Matt Taibi. He is making the case for independent journalism. He's on substack racket news. He is a real one, okay? Not just hot takes. All right? This is a guy who does the work,

who does the reporting, and he has real questions about Russiagate, that some of which I find

the same curiosity, some of which I don't. So how did it go? Let's get after it.

Matt Taibi, my man, Rackett News.

Thank you for joining me, as always.

Of course, thanks for me, Uncle, I appreciate it.

So there's two big ones.

I've got to talk to you about the known and unknown and significant of what we're calling the Russia Gate probe again. And I also want to talk to you about media

and responsibility. But first things first. Why is it called racket news?

That was actually the name of a publication that I was going to co-edit with Alex Perrine once upon a time with the Intercept years ago.

So it was supposed to be a satirical paper like Spy Magazine.

Oh, I love Spy Magazine.

And we do need to make a racket uh that's where the

ricko laws come from a racket was uh from the prohibition days of when people would be making

noise at a speak easy um uh obviously paradoxically because you're supposed to be quiet when you're

in a speakeasy and we need to make noise right now about what matters.

And you say, looking at what happened during the Russian election interference probe matters.

Why?

I mean, I think this story compares, it's very similar to two major scandals in recent American history.

It's very similar to the WMB scandal, but it's also similar to Watergate.

Watergate was a story about the bugging of an opposition presidential campaign during an election season,

and this was also about the illegal surveillance of another campaign during an election season,

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