Above Photo: From irrussianality.wordpress.com
Trump Team Goes After Mueller, Hints of Possible Firing of Special Counsel and Lack of Evidence Around RussiaGate Grows
White House criticism is focused on Special Counsel Robert Mueller with reports even suggesting that Trump is considering firing him. The investigation seems to be moving toward a focus on obstruction of justice by President Trump and away from RussiaGate allegations. Our radio show, Clearing The FOG Radio examined Mueller, James Comey and the lack of evidence around RussiaGate allegations.
The show, ‘RussiaGate and the Trump Administration’, included interviews with former FBI Special Agent, Coleen Rowley who worked in the FBI when Mueller was FBI director and Comey was Deputy Attorney General, and Max Blumenthal, a journalist who has examined the RussiaGate allegations and found an incredible lack of evidence.
Rowley reviews Mueller’s history and finds a series of areas where he served the power structure rather than truth and justice. She points to the post 9/11 coverup of evidence the government had that could have prevented the attack, the round-up of more than a thousand innocent individuals after the attack, participation in creating the false intelligence that led the Iraq War, false accusations around the Anthrax investigation, infiltration of peace groups in the run-up to the Iraq War as well as infiltration and destruction of the Occupy encampments. She sees Mueller as someone with a history of serving those in power and warns that we do not go where his investigation will go as previous special or independent counsels.
Surrogates for the Trump administration is criticizing Mueller for conflicts of interest and bias. They are upset he is hiring attorneys who donated to the Hillary Clinton campaign. Mueller is also be criticized because he did not disclose he had been interviewed by Trump to replace Comey. The long history of Comey and Mueller working together also raises an ethical issue about the obstruction of justice probe since Comey is a prime witness in the probe.
Max Blumenthal refuses all of the claims that Russia hacked or influenced the election and demonstrates the lack of evidence. He also shows how deep the Democratic Party propaganda has become describing his interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland who made strong statements at a rally about Trump’s relationship with Putin and Russia which Blumenthal quizzed him on. From the beginning many have questioned the party-line that Russia influenced the outcome of the election, those claims keep getting stronger as this compendium of RussiaGate debunkery shows.
Below is a critique of a New York Times article which claimed that seven people related to the Trump campaign or in the Trump administration had contacts with Russia. The article goes through these people and shows there was nothing out of the ordinary in these contacts.
KZ
The Russians Are Here
Good thing I checked. Reading the New York Times this morning I almost coughed out my breakfast cereal on the sight of the following full page ad on page 7:
What was the ‘therussiansarehere.org’, I wondered. The front for a bunch of well-financed maniacs determined to further exacerbate East-West tensions? As it happens, no. It turns out to be an advertisement for the TV show ‘The Americans’, about a pair of Soviet agents working undercover in 1980s America. My initial fears that The New York Times had finally gone from merely paranoid to full-blown crazy proved exaggerated.
But, only slightly.
The newspaper’s front page contained the headline ‘Trump’s standoff with Comey overshadows Russian threat’, a choice of words seemingly designed to create the impression that the ‘Russian threat’ is an incontestable fact.
The article continues on page 26, with a half-page spread complaining that the fuss about James Comey is diverting attention from the real danger coming from Russia. It cites retired diplomat Daniel Fried as saying, ‘we’re facing an adversary who wishes for his own reasons to do us harm. … Comey was spot-on right that the Russia is coming after us, but not just the US, but the free world in general.’ The Russian plan is super-clever, the article concludes. If the Russian successfully undermine the American political process, they win. But if they fail, and are caught in the act, they ‘undercut confidence in the American electoral system’. They’re so cunning, those Russians!
That is not enough for the New York Times, however. For, on page 25 it carries yet another Russia-themed article, titled ‘How seven Trump associates have been linked to Russia’.
Evidence of collusion, perhaps? Not really. It’s pretty thin fare. The sins of three of them are speaking with the Russian ambassador, something even Comey says is perfectly normal. The connections of two of them are actually with Ukraine, not Russia, and include the dastardly crime of ‘proposed a peace plan between the country [Ukraine] and Russia’. And in another case (Carter Page) it is said that ‘Russian spies tried to recruit him in 2013’, which may be true, but if so misses out the obvious point that ‘tried to’ means ‘failed’. My favourite, though, is the blurb for the last of them, Roger Stone, which contains the incriminating information: ‘Had contact on Twitter with a Russia-linked online figure’.
You gotta laugh! This is what the Times’ collusion story has been reduced to? ‘Had contact on Twitter’?
You might imagine that the New York Times might be a little cautious about peddling all this stuff after Comey accused it of publishing ‘nonsense’, but apparently not.