Some stories write themselves. Others are written by “two people familiar with the matter” and fall apart before the coffee gets cold. Recently, MS NOW, the network formerly known as MSNBC, interrupted its programming with breaking news that FBI Director Kash Patel had touched down in Russia. Anchor Peter Alexander told viewers, “MS NOW has learned that Patel has landed in Russia for a meeting scheduled to take place there.” There was only one problem. Director Patel was in Virginia.

Not Moscow. Not St. Petersburg. Lynchburg, Virginia, at Liberty University, honoring the men and women of law enforcement. You could hardly invent a setting further from the Lubyanka if you tried. And yet, the network’s crack justice and intelligence correspondent, Ken Dilanian, was summoned to the set to explain what it all meant. According to Fox News, Dilanian fretted that his FBI sources were worried because they didn’t know why Patel was in Russia, and suggested the trip would “raise a lot of eyebrows,” given that his hosts might be the FSB.

The FBI’s Rapid Response account was quick to the draw. “MS Now’s ‘sources’ are ‘familiar’ with NOTHING,” it wrote. Director Patel answered with three words: “Facts over clickbait.” Then he followed up, noting that MS NOW “just reported I had ‘landed in Russia’ for meetings with the FSB,” and laying out the numbers the network would rather not discuss — more than 53,969 violent crime arrests, up 90 percent, a nearly 20 percent drop in the nationwide murder rate, and 11,081 child victims........

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