The Lamestream’s Russia Collusion Illuminated

George Rebane

Holman Jenkins in his ‘What Ails the US Press?’ expands the strong point, much massaged in these pages, that “the media’s lack of interest in the Steele dossier amounts to collusion in a coverup.”  In this 3aug19 WSJ piece he lays it out so well that I decided to let RR readers crawl under the paywall and read the whole thing themselves

A timeworn TV commentator and professor of politics, in the moments before Robert Mueller’s testimony began last week on MSNBC, told the audience that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election was an “act of war” by a “sworn enemy of the United States.”

Notice how each word is the sheerest nonsense. There is no forum in which countries “swear” their enemyhood. Congress has not declared war on Russia. Our $27 billion in annual trade with Russia does not implicate thousands of Americans in trading with the enemy. If Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic emails, this is a crime, not an act of war, and has been treated as such by the special counsel. And heaven help us if Facebook ads are an act of war. The U.S. conducts, and has for decades, espionage, disinformation, propaganda and other kinds of influence campaigns in numerous countries around the world. Thankfully we do not consider ourselves at war with them.

Don’t get me wrong. The Russian actions during the election, and especially their flagrancy, were an insult to U.S. power, and likely offered as such. I doubt the Kremlin is much pleased with the result, but a response is still required to deter such actions in the future. But what can it mean when grey-haired commentators are employed to speak childishly of these matters to the public?

Or take a sentence in the New Yorker magazine, known for its care with writing. A staff writer positively disdains any interest in who promoted the Steele dossier or why. “There are questions worth exploring about the Steele dossier, having to do with, say, the transparency of campaign spending. But they are not the questions congressional Republicans are asking,” she sneers.

This evasion is so trite as to have a name: the red-herring fallacy, or pretending to refute an argument by changing the subject. That such a sentence passed muster with an editor is an embarrassment (and no favor to the writer). At least be the truth teller you presumably got into journalism to be, and say you don’t wish to know any truths that might tend to incriminate anyone other than Donald Trump.

Ditto the several cable hosts who shrilly promoted the theory that President Trump was an actual traitor and now, with equal shrillness, insist he’s a traitor for not echoing their partisan exaggerations about Russian meddling. In any other time, this dodge would not be enough to keep them in their jobs.

The U.S. is not in a position to get in a moral snit about such meddling, but we are certainly in a position to exact a price for it, and should. At the same time, let us stop lying to ourselves: 99.99% of the consequential effect of Russia’s low-budget actions arose from the panting eagerness of U.S. partisans to weaponize those actions against their domestic opponents. Indeed, if we were to parse the meanings of the word “collusion,” it would not reflect well on Rep. Adam Schiff, who objectively has been invaluable to any supposed Russian desire to confound and embitter U.S. politics (though my real guess is that Russia wants nothing so much as sanctions lifted, and has only shot its foot off).

It needs to be understood whether the Mueller report, and the Mueller investigation itself, was essentially a product of disinformation (and whose disinformation). Did the Steele dossier’s lies really originate with Russian sources, and to what purpose? Was the dossier embraced by members of the U.S. government because they believed it or because it was useful against a presidential candidate they disapproved of? (Pretending to believe false intelligence may not be an actionable dereliction, but the question needs to be asked.)

We need to know whether the secret Russian intelligence that James Comey used as justification for his improper, protocol-violating actions in the Hillary Clinton case was, in any sense, real intelligence. Did it bear any intelligible, logical relation to his actions, or was it a cipher, a piece of digital flotsam, that he seized upon disingenuously as an excuse to clear Mrs. Clinton’s path to the nomination?

These questions are not just necessary for historical accuracy. They are of scintillating journalistic interest. If you’re a reporter who can’t simultaneously disapprove of Mr. Trump (as many journalists do) and see their urgency, you should rethink your career choice. (I believe it was the psychoanalyst Karen Horney who said the professions function partly to attract those least capable of exemplifying their values.) News consumers might marvel that so many journalists at least are so devoted to their partisan allegiances, but devotion has nothing to do with it. It’s just dumb conformism and lack of imagination. As in any field, one learns not to be surprised that so many unprepossessing persons are in positions of authority.

Happily, we don’t need to worry about one thing. The hysterical rhetoric on Russia will disappear instantly when it’s no longer useful against Donald Trump.

Comments

[The Estonian Fox]

July 5, 2016. On that date, James Comey held harmless all of the actions of our favorite non-convicted felon (that would be Mrs. Clinton). Yet the Republicans did nothing to charge her. Remember, they held the House, Senate & Presidency from January 2017 to January 2019. And the Press did nothing of substance on that subject either. And the lawyers in the DOJ did nothing. I thought this country had a Rule of Law.

All of this was before the attempted sedition against President Trump. Does no one care? If Deus won't save us, I'll settle for a machina. Someone. Anyone.

Thanks for the article George.

[George Rebane]

EstFox 442am - Ma sündisin Jüri.

[Bill Tozer]

Lack of curiosity into the origins of the Steele Dossier(s) has chapped my hide. Add Mueller’s Investigation and the press to the list of players involved who displayed an astonishing lack of curiosity of the senior officials involved in the Collusion Delusion and I now have a bad case of road rash. What ails the press?

In a related article, with emphasis on last paragraph.

“Was Specious Info Leaked to Justify the Absence of Trump-Kremlin Links?”

“In the absence of evidence tying the Trump campaign to the Kremlin – and a preponderance of leads involving key figures actually tied to the West – U.S. intelligence officials helped cast a pall of suspicion through misleading, and sometimes false, media leaks. In January 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey briefed President-elect Trump on the Steele Dossier's most explosive allegation: that the Russians had a tape of him with prostitutes in a Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel room. Comey's briefing to Trump was leaked to the press, leading to the dossier's publication by BuzzFeed and cementing the story the atop the news cycle for the more than two years since.

“The Ritz-Carlton hotel in Moscow: scene of Trump visit and an infamous dossier claim.
AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko
Less than two weeks after the dossier's publication, someone from U.S. intelligence leaked classified details of an intercepted phone call between Michael Flynn and then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The leak fueled baseless speculation that Flynn and Kislyak had discussed sanctions relief in exchange for Russia's help in the 2016 election, and ultimately led to Flynn's resignation. Weeks later, the New York Times reported that the U.S. investigators had obtained "phone records and intercepted calls" showing that members of Trump's campaign and other associates "had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election." Four months later, Comey testified that the story was "not true." The Times has never retracted it.

“Nunes also tried to question Mueller about U.S. government leaks, asking if he agreed that the leak of a phone call involving Flynn, the then-national security adviser, was a "major scandal." Mueller responded: "I can’t adopt that hypothesis."

“Mueller could very well have a plausible explanation for his inability to account for the investigation's core flaws. Or, as his awkward testimony suggested, perhaps he was not the hard-nosed investigator that the media portrayed him to be, but instead a figurehead who did not make the key decisions in the office of the Special Counsel.

“What is clear is that neither his report nor testimony provide the answer. After determining that there never was a Trump-Russia conspiracy, Mueller showed no interest in investigating why so many high-placed officials said they believed there had been. His report told us what didn’t happen during the 2016 election, but shed little light on what did happen, and why.”

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/08/01/here_are_5_big_holes_in_muellers_work_119790.html

[Russ]

Rush Limbaugh is discussing this Holman article at 10:13 AM on KFBK 1530.

[Bill Tozer]

There might be hope for our Republic yet.

“Solomon recently filed his own motion to publicize FISA records. Solomon has reason to suspect that the court knows of serious misconduct by multiple government attorneys appearing before it. If the government can lie without consequence to a court charged with supervising the FBI’s surveillance of Americans, that operates as a de facto repeal of the constitutional amendment prohibiting warrantless search and seizure. We have reason to hope for Solomon’s success.”

https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/05/barr-far-bigger-things-prosecute-james-comey-leaking-memos/