After the crooked FBI agent, Andrew McCabe, was finally fired by Mister Magoo, there were posts in the official media about the wrongness of it. After all, he would lose his pension, we were told, because of politics. Of course, that was never true. He would lose some extra benefits, but it would be a drop in the bucket. A former FBI man of his status will land in a high six-figure job. Given his status in the Cult, he could even end up at a financial house, making seven figures, using his FBI contacts for his new bosses.

Soon after that round of stories, a new set of stories popped up about his crowd-sourced fundraising effort. He was up on GoFundMe and supposedly raising tons of money. The point of the stories was to show that the public was rallying to the side of this poor man, a victim of the evil Donald Trump and his Nazi minions. Regardless of the agit-prop, there was no doubt that he was raising a lot of money. Then, it turned out to be a complete fraud. The whole thing was an elaborate PR effort from a lobbying firm.

Andrew McCabe recently raised over half a million dollars from small donors by way of crowdfunding platform GoFundMe. McCabe’s cash-collecting prowess was buoyed by several #Resistance-linkedpersonalities and MSNBC’s own Rachel Maddow, who suggested McCabe should run for office because he’s so good at raising money.

Was this apparent “grassroots effort” actually a PR campaign put together by high-priced, well-connected, and experienced PR professionals in order to take advantage of the #Resistance’s seething anger at the Trump administration? A Monday report in Slate suggested as much. Law&Crime can now confirm that some of those allegations are true, while some of them appear to oversell the issues at hand.

Most likely, the firm behind this scheme provided the logistics, but also the seed money to get the fund going. The theory behind this stuff is that people will donate if they see other people donating. If other people are giving to this guy’s fund, then you may feel more comfortable giving money, because you assume it is the right thing to do, based on the fact others are doing it. This is marketing 101. Companies often use various forms of indirect peer pressure to sell product. It’s why people carry canvas sacks to the market.

Of course, there is another angle to this.

Melissa Schwartz is a crisis and communications consultant who currently works for The Bromwich Group. After previously working for then-Senator Barbara Mikulski, the Department of Justice, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (where she served under her once-and-future boss), Schwartz joined The Bromwich Group as their chief operating officer in 2012. She’s also McCabe’s present spokesperson.

The Bromwich Group is a K Street consulting and PR firm headed by Michael R. Bromwich. Immediately prior to founding the firm, Bromwich served as the first director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management under President Barack Obama. As a former mineral extraction regulator, Bromwich promised that his firm would never lobby for energy industry clients. Prior to this role, Bromwich served as the Inspector General for the Department of Justice under President Bill Clinton.

Given the people involved, would it surprise anyone if McCabe is eventually found stretched out in Fort Marcy Park? That’s most likely been carefully explained to the McCabe family in detail by someone who “has their best interests at heart.” Even the most generous reading of events suggests McCabe is a man who knows too much. For now, the syndicate is looking out for him, but eventually he’ll have to be dealt with in a more permanent manner. You don’t want to be the guy selling him life insurance right now.

That aside, it is a good reminder that nothing is on the level. Politics has always been crooked, but the degree of dishonesty is different. Rachel Maddow is a dunce, but the people running MSNBC are not stupid. They knew what this firm was doing. They probably offered to help promote it. Today, it is prudent to assume everything in mass media is a carefully considered PR campaign. The point of the media is to bamboozle the public in some way. Nothing is on the level and no grift is too small.