As we've extensively documented, Megyn Kelly spent the latter part of last year pushing phony allegations against the Obama Justice Department, hyping the fact-free claim that the DOJ is "flat-out racist." All of that started of course with her interview of a GOP activist whose purportedly “explosive new allegations” about a voter intimidation case at DOJ turned out to be false. This afternoon on her show, Kelly did her best to nurture another false allegation about the administration, this time implicating the Defense Department.

During an interview with financial analyst Kevin Freeman, the author of a Pentagon-sponsored study asserting that the United States may be under attack by financial terrorists, Kelly claimed that “senior Pentagon policy makers have blocked further study, and, according to one senior official, 'nobody wants to go there.' ” Kelly added: “They don't want to hear anything more about this theory, Kevin, as disturbing as it is.” But Kelly never once pointed out that the Pentagon disputes those allegations.

Kelly was apparently reading from a Washington Times article on the report, which concluded that "[t]here is sufficient justification to question whether outside forces triggered, capitalized upon or magnified the economic difficulties of 2008." The report goes on to name several suspects, including “financial enemies in Middle Eastern states, Islamic terrorists, hostile members of the Chinese military, or government and organized crime groups in Russia, Venezuela or Iran.” In his interview with the Times, Freeman directly cited “radical jihadists and the Chinese” as “among the best positioned in the economic battle space.” Freeman added that his report provided sufficient “theoretical evidence” to justify further study of economic warfare.

Early reports on the study have in turn been mocking and dismissive, with the Business Insider calling it “rubbish” and “anti-Muslim.” The Times itself cited Paul Bracken, a Yale University professor who has studied economic warfare, saying he saw “no convincing evidence that 'outside forces' colluded to bring about the 2008 crisis” and that “suggestions of an organized targeted attack for strategic reasons don't seem to me to be plausible.”

But Kelly picked it up and ran with it, as did Fox Nation and some right-wing blogs. And she took the story even farther, suggesting a conspiracy at the Pentagon to turn a blind eye to possible financial warfare.

However, as the Times reported:

Regardless of the report's findings, U.S. officials and outside analysts said the Pentagon, the Treasury Department and U.S. intelligence agencies are not aggressively studying the threats to the United States posed by economic warfare and financial terrorism.

“Nobody wants to go there,” one official said.

A copy of the report also was provided to the recently concluded Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, but the commission also declined to address the possibility of economic warfare in its final report.

Officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said senior Pentagon policymakers, including Michael Vickers, an assistant defense secretary in charge of special operations, blocked further study, saying the Pentagon was not the appropriate agency to assess economic warfare and financial terrorism risks.

Mr. Vickers declined to be interviewed but, through a spokesman, said he did not say economic warfare was not an area for the Pentagon to study, and that he did not block further study.

Kelly of course conveniently left out the part where Vickers says it's not true that he “blocked further study.” But then again, she has proved herself capable of manufacturing a controversy where none exists.