Taibbi has mostly torpedoed his credibility with Russian apoligism. Him and Glenn Greenwald.
This is why I read Taibbi, because the legacy media has lost so much credibility. (It should go without saying the Russian invasion is obviously appalling and wrong but many people appear to have calcified into 'any criticism of Ukraine makes you a Russian 'apologist' etc etc)
Given the very serious diplomatic disaster and subsequent hot war is now endangering the planet the tight focus is on that nation state's leadership. I consider Russia a fascist country that lost tens of millions to the nazis last century. There is a fringe far right in the US with little political power, but those two realities are of minor importance compared to the disaster that has been inflicted on the Ukranian people who absolutely don't deserve this.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/matt-taibbis-not-so-secret-ru...
As for your first statement, you will find that yes, every public figure has some dirt on them, if only because the definition of dirt keeps changing. For example, the comments made by Taibbi when he lived in Russia ~23 years ago~ are reflective of what the culture at the time found acceptable to say. Cancel culture is so obnoxious because it is used for hit jobs exactly like the one you are presenting here: find one or two events from someone's past and use that to close your ears to whatever they have to say at present, no matter how valid. Throw in some demands for them to be fired as well, because why not. Oh, and you have no way to atone for your supposed sins; even if you apologize you are tainted forever. It's time we fight back against this idiocy.
You could choose to look at it critically and decide for yourself what you believe in. It is a factual, point-by-point destruction of your claim above. Zero percent of it hinges on how perfect Taibbi as a person is, or was 20 years ago. Your ideological purity, or whatever it is you think you are standing for here, serves only to close your mind.
The impeachment trial laid out the details of the Trump campaigns relationships with Russia. No, Trump wasn't taking direct orders from Putin. That was never even suggested. All the MSM stories described back channels, influence, complimentary strategies and that was all true. Trump and the right-wing media upgraded the accusations to a level they knew could never be proven in order to reset expectations to something unattainable. Then obstructed every investigation, waited for convictions on obstruction charges and issued pardons so no one could ever be forced to give up details. Taibbi is framing the story exactly how Trump wants it framed and ignoring the reality. Nothing he references in the MSM reporting was actually incorrect. The hype around what the result of this reporting would result in was never promised by any of the legitimate reporting.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-01/no-rus...
EDIT:
Bonus content, here is Taibbi casting doubt on the Ukrainegate whistleblower based purely on his personal bias about what a whistleblower should look like. Again, he was carrying water for Trump and was 100% incorrect in his agenda-driven reporting:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/w...
This has nothing to do with the endless 'mastercard or visa' team sport that is US politics, which is stitched up by the DNC & RNC and their media so no new parties or politicians can play. We need quality independent journalist more urgently than ever as a result...
It is unquestionable that Russia tried to influence the election. They hacked the DNC and released it via WikiLeaks. They spread disinformation in Trump's favor. And that they invaded Ukraine. Trump at every turn supported Putin and hindered Ukraine. And so did Taibbi for his part. And then he says this story wasn't worth reporting because it didn't result in a criminal conviction?
You clearly have not read my linked article, as most of your points are covered there. Here is a short collection of paragraphs that might interest other readers of this thread who are more inclined to a honest intellectual debate:
"Even the mistakes caught were astounding. On December 1, 2017, ABC reporter Brian Ross claimed Trump “as a candidate” instructed Michael Flynn to contact Russia. The news caused the Dow to plummet 350 points. The story was retracted almost immediately and Ross was suspended.
Bloomberg reported Mueller subpoenaed Trump’s Deutsche Bank accounts; the subpoenas turned out to be of other individuals’ records. Fortune said C-SPAN was hacked after Russia Today programming briefly interrupted coverage of a Maxine Waters floor address. The New York Times also ran the story, and it’s still up, despite C-SPAN insisting its own “internal routing error” likely caused the feed to appear in place of its own broadcast.
CNN has its own separate sub-list of wrecks. Three of the network’s journalists resigned after a story purporting to tie Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci to a Russian investment fund was retracted. Four more CNN reporters (Gloria Borger, Eric Lichtblau, Jake Tapper and Brian Rokus) were bylined in a story that claimed Comey was expected to refute Trump’s claims he was told he wasn’t the target of an investigation. Comey blew that one up, too.
In another CNN scoop gone awry, “Email pointed Trump campaign to WikiLeaks documents,” the network’s reporters were off by ten days in a “bombshell” that supposedly proved the Trump campaign had foreknowledge of Wikileaks dumps. “It’s, uh, perhaps not as significant as what we know now,” offered CNN’s Manu Raju in a painful on-air retraction."
You seem to be under the impression that Taibbi is some sort of agent working for Trump, because that's what the current zeitgeist is: if someone disagrees with your opinion, they are evil, and likely working for the enemy too. You already relied on your hit piece to try to prove Taibbi was evil, now you are trying to suggest he is a right-wing agent. This is delusional.
We need another 1000 Taibbis with the same passion for fact based journalism. “Apologist”, yeah… sure he is.