How liberal commentators dedicated HOURS to debunked Trump Russia collusion ... trends now

Liberal commentators who pushed the claim Donald Trump colluded with Russia were delivered an embarrassing blow on Monday when John Durham's long-awaited report said there was no 'factual evidence' to justify a drawn-out FBI inquiry into the allegations.

News pundits and comedians spent countless hours rehashing the theory that Trump and his campaign officials conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election victory over Hillary Clinton.

Their coverage was often couched by reference to several inquiries into the matter.

But Durham's report, the latest to center on the allegations, found that the Department of Justice and the FBI 'failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law' when launching the Trump-Russia probe.

Several investigations, including the Mueller probe, have now failed to uncover evidence that Trump and his aides colluded with Russia.

Rachel Maddow, the MSNBC anchor and host of The Rachel Maddow Show, has been one of the most vocal proponents of the claim Trump colluded with Russia.

Her broadcasts embraced the controversial Steele dossier, which included a string of lurid, unproven allegations about Trump's ties to Russia.

Indeed, the Durham report 'determined that the [FBI] investigators did not and could not corroborate any of the substantive allegations contained in the Steele reporting'.

But Maddow implied on several occasions that Steele dossier gave weight to the claims of collusion.

In March 2017, she said: 'The bottom line allegation of this unproven dossier is that Russia didn't just attack our election, they did so with the knowledge of and support of the Trump campaign that the Trump folks were in on it that they knew what Russia was doing while they were doing it and they continued meeting with Russians.'

Maddow says later in the show: 'What [Steele] says he found was evidence not just of Russia attacking the US presidential election, but one party in that election - the Trump campaign - helping, going along with it, colluding, being part of it, and that is way worse allegation than just the Russians attacking our election.'

She added: 'We have to continue describe them as uncorroborated but toward the basic thesis of this dossier that the Trump campaign was in on it little pieces of that little checkable pieces of that have been falling into place almost every day now.'

Joe Scarborough, the former Republican representative who now co-hosts Morning Joe on MSNBC,

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