Well, that didn’t take long.

The useful idiots and Talking Points Memo have started echoing NPR’s false defense that their recently released e-mails show that they rejected the gift offered by the pretend Muslim Brotherhood front group in Project Veritas’ undercover sting operation. With the screaming headline, “NPR Emails Show CEO Refusing Donation from Phony O’Keefe Group” TPM is attempting to preach to its choir of loyal readers that NPR did nothing wrong as an organization in their handling of the donation scenario.

Of course, readers of Big Journalism know that the e-mails released by NPR show nothing of the sort. In fact, they show that NPR CEO Vivian Schiller and the Development staff were corresponding Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) to try to obtain critical information from them so that they could receive the gift of $5 million. As John Nolte pointed out earlier today, not one of the e-mails released today shows anyone from NPR communicating a rejection to MEAC.

TPM’s headline is totally false.

After being pummeled for the past four news cycles without even Media Matters to turn to for help, they are now desperately trying to salvage some kind of narrative out of this disastrous story that has damaged one of the crown jewels of the institutional left. But instead of actually helping NPR, they are getting caught in the obvious and transparent cover-up.

As this article in the Wall Street Journal shows, it’s not just intuitive and observant conservative bloggers who are smelling the blood in the water over at the public-funded radio network. How much interference can the old-guard Journolistas provide as the facts continue to work against NPR’s failing narrative?

Here is the bottom line for the NPR defenders who are still struggling to figure out what’s happening to their lovely, tax-payer funded pleasure cruise that struck an iceberg a few days ago: NPR has continued to claim that they “repeatedly refused” the gift from MEAC. The e-mails they released today only show a standard vetting process for a prospective donor. They have not produced one shred of tangible proof that they ever rejected the donation from MEAC. Not one.

The apologists who are clinging to their belief that NPR has somehow conducted themselves appropriately in their handling of the MEAC donation have not reached that conclusion based on the facts at hand, they are just taking NPR’s word for it. And by running interference for them and trumpeting their false claims in banner headlines, they are making the cover-up part of the story grow even bigger.

Here’s a question for the ever-curious Journolistas: If Ex-CEO Vivian Schiller was truthful when she claimed that NPR “repeatedly rejected” MEAC’s donation, why did she send an e-mail to “Omar Kasaam” asking him to answer “a few questions” and that she “look(ed) forward to hearing back from (him)” on Saturday March 5th, only three days before the Project Veritas videos hit the internet?

Are we now to believe that requiring verification of a group’s tax status is the same as “refusing” their donation?