Mediaite reporters ought to know better than to jump on the bandwagon a Republican operative has generously pulled up to the door for them, but apparently not.

In one of the newly-released emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server, the former Secretary of State emailed an Obama administration special envoy and told him to send sensitive information to her “personal email.”

Republican strategist Rory Cooper made the discovery:

That image at the top is of an email the right-wing echo chamber is shouting to the high heavens about, because they're sure it proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the dastardly then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intentionally invited envoy and former Senator George Mitchell to send classified information to her personal email address.

Let's start with some dates. At the very top of the email, there is a date. That date is 8/31/2015, the date the email was released as part of the nearly-8,000 emails dumped that day.

Now let's look at the image GOP operative Rory Cooper sent to Mediaite's reporter.

Oh, look at what's missing! Why, do you suppose, that's missing?

If you look at the entire strand, it is quite similar to many of the other emails because it contains information redacted before they published the batch. Like any other FOIA release, it contains parts of the email which were redacted under various classification and/or FOIA exclusions before release.

In addition, there's a classification reference under the excluded text which is dated 8/27/2015, the date someone decided that particular text was not to be released under FOIA and also was to be further classified as "Confidential," which is not the same as top secret or secret.

It concerns something that George Mitchell said to Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini -- twice, it seems -- and to which Frattini understood and agreed to.

Under the cited section of the 2005 classification guidelines, conversations with foreign countries, or information shared between the United States and foreign countries may be confidential. Not must, but may. The interesting part of this is that it's generally what they tell our representatives that ends up being confidential, not the other way around. In this case, they released Frattini's assent while redacting what Mitchell said.

Are you even a little curious about what Mitchell and Frattini were talking about? I was.

A Google News search turned up the answer. From the Washington Post, dateline July 27, 2010:

Falling into step with the United States, European nations significantly broadened economic sanctions against Iran on Monday in what was described as an effort to force Tehran to resume serious negotiations on its disputed nuclear program.

The new measures targeting petroleum, banking, shipping, insurance and transportation in addition to nuclear-related industries were approved in Brussels by foreign ministers of the 27-nation European Union after weeks of diplomatic consultations and strong pressure from the Obama administration.

That's right. They were talking about laying down the heavier sanctions against Iran that ultimately brought Iran to the negotiating table. I don't know what George Mitchell felt he had to hammer home to Italy's Foreign Minister and I honestly don't care much.

But after reading more than 5,000 of these newly-released emails and seeing those white boxes on names, email addresses and more, it blows my mind that Mediaite's reporter couldn't be bothered to actually look at the authentic document, instead accepting a GOP operative's word for it.

This is typical of the reporting we see on these emails. There isn't a thing there worth paying attention to, unless you're interested in how instrumental Hillary Clinton was in paving the pathway for John Kerry to get ink on that Iran Deal, or how difficult the Middle East work was, on how Bibi threw as many roadblocks into literally anything this administration tried to do in any region of the world while blinking into the cameras and whining about how mean the Obama administration was. If you care about those things, then there's plenty in those emails to keep you busy.

If you care about women, or children, or how much she cared about women and children all over the world as well as right here, then you want to read those emails.

But if you are looking for dirt, there's none here to find. None, that is, unless you take the word of a Republican.