RUSSIA HOAX WHITEWASH ERA BEGINS (2) BY SCOTT JOHNSON
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/12/russia-hoax-whitewash-era-begins-2.php
The Clinton presidential campaign’s fabrication of the Russia hoax is the dirtiest trick in American political history. Beginning with Glenn Simpson/Fusion GPS and the Perkins Coie law firm, it enlisted co-conspirators in the Obama Department of Justice, the FBI, and the mainstream media. The principals are not only still at large, they have achieved high office, wealth, riches, and Pulitzer Prizes. They will never be brought to justice. They won’t even break a sweat.
We were never meant to be clued in. As the veil of the fraud was pierced by Rep. Devin Nunes and others including, most recently, John Durham, we now have a good handle on the con. It is almost unbelievable. It is also an inexhaustibly rich subject.
Matt Taibbi took up the role of the mainstream media at his TK News site in “The Russiagate Whitewash Era Begins” (mostly behind his subscription paywall, but also available in the form of a YouTube video and podcast).
To Taibbi’s assessment we can now add Aaron Maté’s RCP column “Five Trump-Russia ‘Collusion’ Corrections We Need From the Media Now — Just for Starters.” In addition to citing a few of the egregiously ludicrous stories that we paused over at the time, the column takes a look back at some of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Russia hoax journalism of the New York Times and the Washington Post:
In this article, RealClearInvestigations has collected five instances of stories containing false or misleading claims, and thereby due for retraction or correction, that were either among the Post and Times’ Pulitzer-winning entries, or other work of reporters who shared that prize. Significantly, this analysis is not based on newly discovered information, but documents and other material long in the public domain. Remarkably, some of the material that should spark corrections has instead been held up by the Post and Times as vindication of their work.
Maté’s column takes up Pulitzer Prize-winning stories in both the Post and the Times. His column includes the photographic rogues’ gallery of the honorees below.
Maté’s column is a valuable contribution to the reckoning that is due. Maté’ proves up serious errors with evidence provided by authoritative sources. In the second of his five cases, the column notes that “RCI sent [Times reporters Mark] Mazzetti and [Michael] Schmidt detailed questions about their February 2017 article and their claim, four years later, that a Senate report and a Treasury press release confirm it. They did not respond.” Indeed, the Times failed to respond to any of Maté’s queries by the time of publication. The baloney resists the grinder. Maté’s excellent column deserves the attention all interested students and observers of the Russia hoax.
By my lights, however, what we have in the hugely influential stories Maté focuses on is complicity with perpetrators rather than lapses in professional standards. That is the case that Lee Smith argues in his Tablet column “Here Comes the Limited Hangout.” Subhead: “America’s Nixonian press corps takes a page from the Watergate playbook to try and cover up its active role in the criminal Russiagate hoax.”
In this column Lee takes up “the story of Sergei Millian, and how he was framed by the press, the Clinton campaign, and the FBI[.]” I don’t share the optimism Lee expresses about the course of the Durham investigation. On that score, I am dubious. Whatever the case, however, his work is first-rate and his column is highly recommended (by me).
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