In February, Fox News published a series of text messages from early 2017 between Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and a Washington-based attorney named Adam Waldman, a registered lobbyist for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Fox News and other conservative media focused on messages in which Waldman had unsuccessfully sought to put Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, in touch with Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer who wrote a series of memos during the 2016 campaign reporting alleged ties between Donald Trump and Russia.