The strange tale published today by BuzzFeed News of anti-Trump activists duped by a dramatic forgery is the latest sign that the Russia story is veering out of control.

You’d think that what we know would be enough: The Russian government, through open statements on state media and — serious evidence suggests — by hacking the DNC, tried to make Donald Trump president. That campaign helped throw US politics into chaos and elect Trump.

And if that’s not enough, you can examine the allegations in a dossier that BuzzFeed News published in January and in a series of anonymous law enforcement comments to the New York Times, us, and many others, of contacts between Trump aides and Russian officials. Some of those — involving Paul Manafort and Roger Stone — appear to have been confirmed in their outlines. Others remain, as we wrote when we reported on the dossier, unverified.

But the demand on the US left right now isn’t so much for the damning big picture, or the details of what investigators are looking into. It’s for the proverbial smoking gun.

That demand is so clear and intense in the global information market that it was visible to an alleged Italian con man, who went about filling it with a detailed forgery. Progressive activists fell for a hoax that told them exactly what they wanted to hear, paid thousands of dollars for a forgery, and passed it on to journalists.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/beware-the-false-temptations-of-the-russia-story?utm_term=.cx45QKWvvL#.lr7BKQXrrm