Hunter Biden 1 ukr

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THIS IS ORIGINAL ONE

SEE 2 LAPTOP see three

primary 6 22 on longevity deny deflect ctr attack rubber glue inverse?

MERRI OK

bit belated? 1019

see russia-gate

SEE BOSSIE

SEE RUDY

SEE GRU COZY BEAR

see burisma

QANON?

TROLL CAUCUS TARGET?

aha inverse mirror on trump nepotism/corruption, they all do it (or just kremlin muddy water, nothing can be believed)

Plus attempt to neutralize russian collusion (putin bounty on us soldiers?!)

bak 6 22 html endit

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Hunter Biden laptop controversy - Wikipedia

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U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has been conducting an in-depth investigation of Hunter Biden's taxes and business activities, and the fact that he is the president's son hasn't stopped U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland from pursuing the matter.

On Tuesday morning, June 20, a court filing — according to the New York Times — showed that Hunter Biden has reached a plea deal with DOJ. The president's son, under the agreement, will plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and avoid prosecution on a gun-related charge.

Biden, the Times reports, will agree to probation for failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time.

Times reporters Michael S. Schmidt and Adam Entous explain, "The Justice Department would charge Mr. Biden but agree not to prosecute him in connection with his purchase of a handgun in 2018 during a period when he was using drugs. The deal would be contingent on Mr. Biden remaining drug-free for 24 months and agreeing never to own a firearm again. The agreement must still be approved by a federal judge."

In an official statement, Hunter Biden's attorney Christopher Clark said, "With the announcement of two agreements between my client, Hunter Biden, and the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Delaware, it is my understanding that the five-year investigation into Hunter is resolved."

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an 12 22

We’ve been warned. When the Republicans take control of the House, it’s going to be all Hunter’s laptop, all the time.

Despite haughty GOP denials, the laptop story is probably a cover for another Russian hack and leak operation, and the Republicans are gleefully laundering it.

Republicans have browbeaten various social media execs – who are surely nervous about being called before GOP committees – into saying they were wrong to throttle access to what everyone correctly assumed was foreign election interference laundered through Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and election interference go-to-guy Rudy Giuliani.

Various major media outlets have authenticated a small percentage of the data dump as having belonged to Hunter Biden. But that’s exactly what you’d expect in a hack and leak operation. The question is whether the data were really abandoned by Hunter Biden or whether they were uploaded to that laptop as a pretext for trafficking in stolen secrets.

“That’s Rudy”

In October 2020, weeks before the general election,the New York Postran a story about what Rudy Giuliani claimed was a hard drive abandoned by Hunter Biden at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware.

Over 50 retired intelligence pros signed an open letter arguing that L’Affaire MacBook bore all the hallmarks of Russian disinfo. Twitter’s former head of safety said this week that the story set off “every single one of my finely tuned [Russian intelligence] hack and leak campaign alarm bells."

Conveniently, the former shop owner who gave the data to Giuliani is legally blind, so he can’t say whether the man who dropped off the machines was Hunter Biden. He’s also a frothing conspiracy theorist who was unable to tell a straight story about the provenance of the laptop.

We know Vladimir Putin personally directed a campaign of interference in the 2020 elections that focused on feeding anti-Biden propaganda to influential Americans, including members of Trump’s inner circle, according to a 2021 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The report doesn’t name names, but contains enough clues to identify Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, as the useful idiot in chief.

This time, the collusion between Trump and the Russians was right out in the open. With Trump’s support, Giuliani spent much of 2019 ostentatiously shuttling to Ukraine and huddling with Kremlin-linked oligarchs, including an active Russian agent who was later sanctioned by Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s Treasury Department for interference in the 2020 election.

Data from Hunter Biden’s computer were on the market in Kyiv around the time Giuliani went disinfo-shopping. As you recall, Giuliani was searching for dirt in Ukraine because Hunter Biden sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, which, according to that ODNI report, was hacked by the Russian spy service known as the GRU in late 2019.

Multiple US intelligence agencies repeatedly and explicitly warned Donald Trump in 2019 that Giuliani’s bottomless thirst for dirt on the Bidens made him the target of a Russian intelligence operation. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien warned Trump that any information Giuliani brought back from his Ukraine junket should be considered “contaminated” by the Russians. Trump reportedly shrugged and said, “That’s Rudy.”

Stolen and dumped

Let’s not forget Trump’s first impeachment was the result of a desperate bid to wring dirt out of the Ukrainians. Trump froze congressionally authorized defense aid to Ukraine in order to strong-arm the country’s new president into announcing a bogus investigation into Hunter Biden.

Republicans have falsely claimed that forensic analyses have proven that the data was found on a laptop that Hunter Biden abandoned at a repair shop in Delaware. These analyses have shown that some of the materials were produced by Hunter Biden. But that’s how hack and leak attacks work.

In a hack and leak, data is stolen and dumped.

A largely genuine trove of stolen data is also the perfect place to hide forged or stolen elements, which enjoy unearned credibility because they’re packaged with real stuff. That’s why the victims of hack and leaks are advised never to confirm the authenticity of anything.

The attackers are counting on the public to draw the erroneous conclusion that, because some things are genuine, the whole package is real, and – most importantly – that it came from where the cover story says it came from, be that an imaginary collective of good-hearted “hacktivists” or a computer repair shop in Delaware. Anywhere but the GRU.

The GRU is notorious for hacking and leaking.

A GRU unit known as FancyBear or APT128 famously deployed this tactic against the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. They also targeted George Soros, the World Anti-Doping Agency, scientists investigating the poisoning of a former Russian agent, and countless others. For particularly high-value targets, GRU combines hacking with good-old-fashioned stalking, following their targets around, hoping to catch them using insecure hotel wifi.

Isn’t it a crazy coincidence that a disk image of “Hunter Biden’s laptop” was revealed to the world by the same guy who we know was the main conduit for Russian disinformation about the Bidens? A guy who has also been investigated for other kinds of election interference on behalf of Trump.

If you believe that, I’ve got an extended warranty to sell you.

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WASHINGTON TIMES: DAVID BOSSIE:THE OPTICS OF THE STALE JAN. 6 HEARINGSAND PRO-ABORTION PROTESTS

by David Bossie | May 18, 2022

What a bizarre spectacle it’s going to be the week of June 9 when the illegitimate Jan. 6 select committeefinally kicks off its ultra-partisan public hearings at the U.S. Capitol as left-wing civic unrest is occurring simultaneously across the street at the...

FOX NEWS: DAVID BOSSIE: Elections in Georgia, elsewhere show Republican voters love ‘America First’ candidates

FOX NEWS: DAVID BOSSIE: ON HUNTER BIDEN, WHITE HOUSE CAN RUN BUT IT CANNOT HIDE MUCH LONGER

by David Bossie | Apr 27, 2022

As the old saying goes, the chickens are finally coming home to roost. The revelation that a close business associate of Hunter Biden’s was granted access to the Obama-Biden White House on nearly 20 occasions is the just latest shoe to drop in a Pulitzer...

As the old saying goes, the chickens are finally coming home to roost. The revelation that a close business associate of Hunter Biden’s was granted access to the Obama-Biden White House on nearly 20 occasions is the just latest shoe to drop in a Pulitzer Prize-worthy story of power and corruption that’s becoming known simply as “Biden, Inc.”

This new disclosure is part of the shady operation that the mainstream media ignored for years to cover for Joe Biden — is now picking up steam at the worst possible time for the president.

It’s a textbook case of the Washington swamp at its worst and how the politically connected cash in on family members who are elected to high office year after year. And it’s high time for the Biden White House to finally start answering questions.

Richard Nixon answered questions about Watergate. Ronald Reagan answered questions about Iran-Contra. Bill and Hillary Clinton answered questions about Whitewater. Donald Trump answered more questions than any president ever about every topic imaginable. So, why does Joe Biden continue to get the kid gloves treatment?

The White House press corps must make life difficult for this White House on the issue of alleged Biden family corruption because it’s their job to do so, period.

The days ofarrogant Press Secretary Jen Psakibeing let off the hook by her pals in the liberal mediamust come to an end. This is a serious matter that must be dealt with in an up front and transparent manner.

Attorney General Merrick Garland should start by getting his department’s investigation of Hunter Biden out of the hands of President Biden and his political cronies in the West Wing.

It’s a nice talking point, but it doesn’t matter that the U.S. attorney in Delaware who’s conducting the investigation is a Trump appointee; what matters is that the Biden Justice Department cannot be trusted to oversee an investigation into a member of the president’s family — or potentially the president himself. It’s a crystal clear conflict of interest and is the very reason that the special counsel statute exists in the first place.

Appointing an independent special counsel in this case is simply the right thing to do. Refusing to do so is part of the reason why a whopping 56 percent of the American people “don’t trust the government much or at all” to do what is right according to recent survey data.

Furthermore, House Republicans should be putting pressure on the Democrat-controlled Congress to start asking questions about Hunter Biden now — or it’s going to make the tsunami that’s coming their way in November that much worse.

Never before has a party in control of Congress been allowed to ignore a story of this magnitude. Hunter’s international business ties to China, Russia and Ukraine alone are enough for even a casual observer to wonder if President Biden is compromised.

Many believe that the Biden family’s financial connections to our adversaries are a threat to U.S. national securityand that it’s long past time for Congress to fulfil its constitutional oversight duty — regardless of who’s in the majority.

Surely the Pelosi-controlled House of Representatives can handle more than just the January 6 Committee’s nonstop harassment of former President Trump.

If only thebiased media had done its job on the Biden family corruption story from the get-go.

If only Big Tech hadn’t censored the story about Hunter’s laptop for so long. If only the Trump-hating Washington establishment hadn’t falsely labeled it Russia disinformation.

If this story had been investigated then, what’s been revealed this week and what’s in store in the weeks to come would have come out a long time ago; and it wouldn’t be putting Biden’s presidency in jeopardy. The cover-up is almost always worse than the crime — and much more politically costly.

In August 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned the presidency because [GOLDWATER ANd OTHER GOP STOOD UP FOR RULE OF LAW AND TOLD HIM THEY WD VOTE FOR.] he realized he was going to be impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate.

Now fast-forward to 2022. Biden family corruption makes Watergate look like a parking citation. And let’s face reality; it’s only going to get worse when Republicans take back the majority in Congress and start exercising their subpoena and deposition authority.

Joe Biden should consider following in the footsteps of Tricky Dick — it might also save the Democratic Party in the process.

David N. Bossie is president of Citizens United,a Fox News contributor,the 2016 deputy campaign manager for Donald Trump for President, and the former chief investigator [WAS HE? FIRED?] for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform and Oversight during the Clinton administration. He is the co-author with Corey Lewandowski of “Trump: America First: The President Succeeds Against All Odds,” along with “Let Trump Be Trump” and “Trump’s Enemies.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/ron-johnson-obsessing-hunter-biden/}:

an 6 22

Ron Johnson (R-WI) made it clear why it's so difficult to get Republicans and Democrats to come together around gun safety solutions that are overwhelmingly supported by American voters.

On Tuesday, Johnson was asked about increasing the age to buy a gun to 21 and expanding background checks. Instead of talking about bipartisan efforts or indicating what he would support, he turned to attack Hunter Biden.

The right has used President Joe Biden's son in the same way they used Hillary Clinton's emails. The last surviving Biden son is the source of several conspiracy theories involving Ukraine and China. Former President Donald Trump even went so far as to claim that Hunter Biden got $1.5 billion from China and used the government plane to do it. There's never been any proof to confirm it. At the same time, Hunter Biden isn't listed on the Forbes list of American billionaires. FactCheck.org ruled the claim unsubstantiated and Trump hasn't been able to provide the world with proof for his claims.

Still, Republicans have decided that if they take back the House and Senate, their main goal will be bringing down President Joe Biden by destroying his children, who haven't served in the White House as a senior advisers. Republicans have indicated that they intend to spend the two years leading into the 2024 election investigating Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in an attempt to get Donald Trump reelected.

It prompted those online to question why Ron Johnson cares more about the president's son over the safety of children, churches, movie theaters and other mass shooting sites.

Others couldn't help but joke that Hunter Biden's laptop never killed anyone.

See the comments below:

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https://www.mediamatters.org/russias-invasion-ukraine/dan-ball-leads-oans-unhinged-coverage-russian-invasion-ukraine

no lnx many vids

Dan Ball leads OAN’s unhinged coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine

The OAN host pushes a Russian government conspiracy theory about “biolabs” and believes that Hunter Biden has something to do with the invasion

WRITTEN BY BOBBY LEWIS

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM BEATRICE MOUNT & EMMA MAE WEBER

PUBLISHED03/31/22

One America News Network’s Dan Ball is covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine with a scattershot of conspiracy theories, both dredging up old claims and repeating new ones from the Russian government.

In early February, Ball told OAN viewers that President Joe Biden might encourage the crisis in Ukraine to benefit himself. Once Russia invaded, Ball began claiming that Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian gas company Burisma may have something to do with the war, that the Russian military is targeting U.S.-European Union bioweapons plants in Ukraine, and even that theRussian attack on Mariupol hospital may have been a false flag by Ukraine.

There is no evidence that any of this is true, but Ball stands behind the absurd propaganda on his show, assuring his viewers on March 9: “What we are reporting is correct. This was not a conspiracy theory. We are not pro-Russia, so don’t go there.”

This commentary is a sad reflection of Ball and OAN’s obsession with what the host regularly calls the “Biden crime family.” The false allegations against Hunter Biden date back years and were the inspiration for former President Donald Trump’s extortion scheme against Ukraine, resulting in his first impeachment. Ball is undeterred by these basic facts, however, and now going to any length to falsely implicate Biden -- and by extension, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky -- in provoking the horrors of Vladimir Putin’s war.

Ball says that “something does not pass the smell test” in the official story of Russia’s invasion

Five days into the Russian invasion, Ball told his audience, “We really need to ask ourselves, are we getting the whole story,” because several heroic stories of Ukrainian resistance had turned out to be false. Asserting that “the Biden regime” wanted to “wag the dog,”Ball suggested “positive war propaganda” was being used to divert American attention from “the invasion on our southern border” and “the COVID scam,” telling his audience it could even have something to do with “the whole Hunter and Joe Biden connection with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and of course the Russia collusion hoax.”

Video From the February 28, 2022, edition of OAN's Real America with Dan Ball

Days later, Ball insisted on March 3 that “something does not pass the smell test” because Biden “immediately” paused new oil and gas leases in the U.S. as the Russian invasion began. In reality, the timing is coincidence; as CNBC reports, “the Biden administration is delaying decisions on new oil and gas leases and permits after a Louisiana federal judge blocked officials from using higher cost estimates of climate change.”

“Something stinks here,” Ball asserted, because “this can’t just be Putin and Russia going, ‘I want a land grab,’” since “we know Ukraine’s been corrupt for a long time,” and pointed again to “the Hunter Biden connection with Burisma.”

Weeks into the war, Ball continued to suspect that something was amiss about the official story, questioning if President Biden is “the one actually calling the shots” and “how much of this is acting” from Zelensky, a former actor whom Ball said was “install[ed]” by the U.S., “trying to push us to get us into this war.” “Obviously, Biden is compromised. We’re in the middle of a war that we might get into with our troops, and so shouldn’t all Americans be concerned that the guy making and calling the shots is compromised?”

Eventually, with America “on the brink of getting involved in a war with Russia,” Ball warned that Biden is too mentally unreliable and called on Democrats and Republicans to use the 25th Amendment to “remove [Biden], remove Harris, remove the entire administration before it’s too late.”

Ball suggests Hunter Biden and American bioweapons have something to do with the invasion

By February 28, Ball became focused on the idea that because “we know there’s so much involvement [in Ukraine] with this president, his son, Burisma, this oil and gas in Ukraine, plus Russia, the pipeline,” and “billions if not trillions of dollars involved,” that it all must have something to do with the war.

The Biden family was “in bed with Ukraine” and “now we have a war right in front of us,” Ball told a concurring guest, retired Army officer Darin Gaub, who called Ukraine “the bank” of the Clinton Foundation and other Democrats during his March 3 show.

Ball eventually began asking members of Congress what President Biden’s son has to do with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In a March 2 interview with Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ), Ball said that “the Hunter laptop” and “the tie to Burisma” suggested that “there’s more to play than just the gas and oil here. I want to know what the hell is really going on.”

“I mean, all the connections that came out tying the Biden family to Ukraine before he took office, now all of a sudden Russia attacks Ukraine, even though they didn’t while Trump was in office,” Ball said. “What’s at play here? It’s deeper – There’s deeper state stuff here, Debbie, don’t you think?”

Video From the March 2, 2022, edition of OAN's Real America with Dan Ball

After Lesko mostly evaded Ball’s question to instead complain about the Trump impeachments, Ball mentioned “rumors that America’s had biolaboratories set up in Ukraine since ‘14, when we installed the last clown in there,” a topic which became a focal point for Ball’s conspiracy theorizing.

That same day, Ball claimed that in addition to “Hunter’s laptop tying Mr. Biden to Burisma,” there are “questions about Zelensky’s leadership and how he came to power,” as well as “questions about biolabs being set up in that country by America and other corporation, we’re talking biotech-type weaponry.”

Days later, on March 7, Ball asked Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) about “three or four possible biochemical weapons plants” in Ukraine built by the U.S. and EU.Ball told Biggs, who also evaded the question, that “Putin would have an actual gripe” to justify targeting these weapons.

Ball even took an unearned victory lap on March 9, claiming his biolabs conspiracy theory had been “proven correct” by a “smoking gun” from the Russian foreign affairs ministry, which claimed to have found U.S. “biological weapons plants” in Ukraine. Not only that, Ball preened, but “a Biden regime minion” -- Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland -- had openly discussed the labs in the Senate during a recent hearing. RUBIO QUESTIONED

“The headline once again proves that things that we report here on OAN and on this program, Real America, are not conspiracy theories like the left claims,” Ball complained. He later added, “What we are reporting is correct. This was not a conspiracy theory. We are not pro-Russia, so don’t go there.”

Video From the March 9, 2022, edition of OAN's Real America with Dan Ball

NBC News would later report that these “biolabs” claims are essentially Russian government propaganda filtered through American right-wing media outlets like OAN. The only American-supported “biolabs” in Ukraine, including the ones Nuland discussed before the Senate, are research facilities -- that do not produce weapons -- which are part of a public 2005 deal between the two countries.

Nonetheless, Ball has concluded that “obviously, Biden is compromised” by his son, and Ball continued to tout “biolabs” as a potential cause for Russia’s invasion.

Ball suggests that horrific Russian attacks on Mariupol may have been false flags

Part of Ball’s narrative of the Russian war is that the Ukrainian government led by President Zelensky is deeply corrupt. And when the Russian military bombed a maternity hospital during its siege of Mariupol, Ball professed that he’s “not saying somebody staged this to make things look worse,” but he also implied that “special operatives” and “undercover forces” who “do Zelensky’s bidding” may have been involved in the bombing, saying that Russia’s denials were credible since “they haven’t denied … hitting other stuff,” which is not true.

Video From the March 9, 2022, edition of OAN's Real America with Dan Ball

A week later, Ukrainian officials reported that a Russian airstrike destroyed a theater in Mariupol, with hundreds of civilians hiding inside and the word “children” written on the ground outside. On his March 17 show, Ball delivered a winding rant against the American, Ukrainian, and Russian governments, as well as the media trying to “push us into this war and accuse networks like OAN of pushing pro-Putin and pro-Russian propaganda.” Ball then briefly reported on the theater airstrike, and stressed that the story is just “what we’re told.Not saying it’s not true. Just asking the question.”

Ball discovers some consequences of Ukraine conspiracy theories

Despite calling the pre-invasion warnings “a pageant,” suggesting the Mariupol hospital attack was a false flag, and sharing Russian “biolabs” propaganda, Ball has grown tired of conspiracy theories that call the entire war fake.

Above a chyron that questioned whether we are “getting the entire story about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” Ball again stressed “the Biden crime family and its connections to Ukraine and Russia” -- but told viewers, with a hint of frustration, that the war is “undeniable … and I say this because I see so many online stories of people saying this is all false, it’s all made up.”

“Make no mistake: There is a war going on, folks, and innocent civilians are being harmed and killed,” the OAN host said. “That is a fact, and that’s a tragedy. But while all that is going on,what else is going on? Not just with this conflict, but what aren’t we paying attention to globally – and more importantly, here at home. That’s what we as patriots need to stay focused on.”

Video From the March 15, 2022, edition of OAN's Real America with Dan Ball

Even while denouncing actual lies about the Russian invasion, Ball could not resist the urge to indulge in deranged falsehoods.

“Most times, there’s nothing as such called a conspiracy theory,” Ball said. “They’re just coverups waiting for the truth to come out.” But the conspiracy theories he presents to OAN viewers are just as false as the conspiracy theories he denies.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/russias-invasion-ukraine/conspiracy-theory-about-hunter-biden-and-ukrainian-biolabs-went-qanon

no lnx twt pix vid

a conspiracy theory about Hunter Biden and Ukrainian biolabs went from QAnon supporters and far-right message boards to the Kremlin and Tucker Carlson

WRITTEN BY ALEX KAPLAN

PUBLISHED 03/28/22

A version of a false conspiracy theory about Ukrainian biolabs that holds that Hunter Biden is connected to those labs was spread by the Russian government, Chinese state media, and Fox News host Tucker Carlson, after supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory and users on far-right message boards pushed the claim.

In late February, a false conspiracy theory spread online -- spurred on by a QAnon-supporting Twitter account known as “Clandestine” -- that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was targeting U.S.-linked labs working to create bioweapons. In reality, the labs are focused on detecting diseases, the U.S. program aims to prevent the development or spread of biological weapons, and the conspiracy theory has its roots in a longstanding Russian disinformation effort. The false claim has spread online among far-right figures and QAnon supporters, and the Russian government has invoked the conspiracy theory to justify the invasion following its spread in parts of the American right.

In the months before the invasion, a separate conspiracy theory circulated online suggesting that Biden was tied to labs involved in potentially nefarious activity around the world, including possibly causing the coronavirus pandemic.Although Ukraine was not the only focus of the conspiracy theory, it was mentioned as one of the countries supposedly involved in these efforts; this claim also followed previous allegations from right-wing media about wrongdoing by Biden in that country.

In particular, a thread from a QAnon-supporting Twitter account called “Blue Canaries” claimed in October that Biden was connected to an effort to manufacture “bio agents under diplomatic cover at ‘secret’ labs” and sell “pandemic insurance and trackers to help countries get ahead of what they are putting out.”

Blue Canaries Twitter

Blue Canaries’ Twitter thread quickly spread among some online conspiracy theorists, including on 8kun’s “/qresearch/” message board, the forum dedicated to “Q,” QAnon’s central figure. It was shared on-air by Infowars host Owen Shroyer, who hyped the thread as “unbelievable,” as well as by Jeffrey Pedersen, a QAnon influencer and show co-host known online as “intheMatrixxx,” who called it “a very interesting thread/dig.”

8kun Hunter biolabs1

CitationFrom 8kun's “/qresearch/” message board

Soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in late February, and as Clandestine’s biolabs conspiracy theory Twitter thread took off online, the Blue Canaries Twitter thread mentioning Biden was invoked again and began to spread among users on far-right message boards.

QAnon forum Hunter biolabs

It was also featured onPedersen’s MatrixxxGrooove Show(also known as MG Show) just one day after Russia’s invasion began. Pedersen -- who had by that point shared Clandestine’s claim about biolabs as a reason for the invasion -- extensively discussed Blue Canaries’ Twitter thread, linked it to Biden, and suggested “President [Vladimir] Putin and Russia have been worried about this.” Co-host Shannon Townsend added, “This looks like the biggest thing that they would be worried about considering what we’ve experienced in the world for the last two-plus years. Why would he not be afraid that this was going on? And what if we could prove that it was going on all over the country of Ukraine, right next door to him?”

Video CitationFrom the February 25, 2022, edition of the MatrixxxGrooove Show

Following that MatrixxxGrooove Show episode on February 25, both Blue Canaries’ Twitter thread and the claim that Biden was tied to Ukrainian biolabs continued to spread via some social media accounts and on far-right message board site 4chan. On February 28, RedPill78’s Zak Paine, a QAnon show host who participated in the Capitol insurrection, discussed Biden “in regards to those biolabs in the Ukraine” and the “ongoing conversation about biological weapons facilities in the country of Ukraine that were set up by the United States government.”

On March 8, Infowars published an article claiming Biden was “connected to US biolabs in Ukraine,” mentioning some of the same organizations cited by the Blue Canaries thread -- repeating claims that the outlet had pushed on-air months earlier. Two days later, far-right blog The Gateway Pundit came out with its own piece claiming Biden’s investment fund had “provided capital for the firms behind the creation of Biolabs in Ukraine,” citing Infowars’ “excellent article with connections between Hunter Biden” and the supposed biolabs. Pedersen shared both articles and wrote, “You heard it on the MG Show first,” adding that “we also beat infowars” on pushing the conspiracy theory.

Gateway Pundit Hunter biolabs

CitationFrom The Gateway Pundit

Following The Gateway Pundit’s article, the conspiracy theory gained more exposure on some mainstream social media platforms, getting thousands of total engagements on those platforms.

The Russian government invoked this particular version of the conspiracy theory on March 24, with the Ministry of Defense accusing Biden’s investment firm of having a “close connection” to military contractors responsible for “Pentagon biolaboratories around the world” -- similar to what Blue Canaries had suggested those months prior. Russia’s Defense Ministry also released a diagram of supposed connections between Biden, the Democratic Party, George Soros, various U.S. companies and federal agencies, and foreign governments as evidence for the conspiracy theory,and the claim was subsequently pushed by Russian state media. Chinese state media also pushed the claim, citing the Russian government.

Russian and Chinese state media Hunter biolabs

On the evening of March 24, Fox News host Tucker Carlson -- who had previously pushed the broader biolabs conspiracy theory to justify Russia’s invasion -- pointed to a National Pulse article from earlier that day to say that “a private equity firm run by Hunter Biden funded some of the research into pathogens in these biolabs.” The on-screen chyron said, “Report: Hunter Linked To Ukrainian Biolab.” (The MatrixxxGrooove Show’s Townsend had also shared the National Pulse article and claimed that his show found what the article claimed “over a month ago.”)

Video fileCitationFrom the March 24, 2022, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

For his part, Clandestine -- the QAnon supporter who caused the initial biolabs conspiracy theory to spread widely online following the invasion -- joined in hyping the Biden angle and cheered Carlson’s points, calling them “digestible doses for the normies” that are “culminating into a mass realization the likes of which the world has never seen.”

THE LATEST

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04/01/22 3:17 PM EDT

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04/01/22 2:01 PM EDT

Fox News is using the “Libs of TikTok” Twitter account like a wire service for anti-LGBTQ attacks

:{04/01/22

…

IN THIS ARTICLE

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Tucker Carlson

QAnon Conspiracy Theory

Facebook and Instagram have allowed and profited from advertising pushing the false Ukraine-US biolabs conspiracy theory

03/16/22 11:59 AM EDT

YouTube is making money off a false Ukraine-biolabs conspiracy theory that is tied to Russian disinformation and QAnon

03/08/22 3:27 PM EST

QAnon supporters and far-right figures hail Russian invasion of Ukraine as Putin taking down the “cabal”

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// adl

Published: 04.05.2022

Extremism, Hate or Terrorism

April 05, 2022

*Update: On Tuesday, April 5, 2022, Creech appeared on the Alex Jones Show, where he confirmed his identity -- and his role in perpetrating the biolab conspiracy theory.

The ADL Center on Extremism has, with a high degree of confidence, identified “Clandestine,” the man behind the viral biolab conspiracy theory, as Jacob Creech, a self-described former restaurant manager and Army National Guard veteran living in rural Virginia. The discovery highlights how a fringeQAnon figure, harnessing the power of social media, sparked a viral conspiracy theory that – in just a few weeks – made its way from QAnon to the world stage, amplified by Tucker Carlson, white supremacists Nick Fuentes and Vincent James, members of the Proud Boys, and Steve Bannon – and even the Kremlin.

Background

On February 24, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine got underway, Creech, tweeting from his now-suspended @WarClandestine account, posted a thread claiming that Russian airstrikes were targeting “U.S. biolabs” in Ukraine.

“China and Russia indirectly (and correctly) blamed the US for the C19 [Covid-19] outbreak,” Creech tweeted. “And [they] are fearful that the US/allies have more viruses (bioweapons) to let out.” The invasion, he posited, was a smokescreen for Russia to destroy U.S. biolabs in Ukraine, thus preventing another global pandemic.

Within hours of Creech’s initial tweet, InfoWars, a conspiracy site run by Alex Jones, published a story promoting the biolab conspiracy, crediting @WarClandestine for uncovering what it dubbed the “ulterior motive theory.” QAnon forums and Telegram channels also began to share the theory. Meanwhile, the hashtag #USBiolabs began trending on Twitter and TikTok, where posts promoting the conspiracy racked up tens of thousands of likes.

^Within ^hours ^of ^his ^initial ^thread, ^Creech’s ^biolab ^theory ^began ^to ^spread ^across ^QAnon ^communities ^on ^Telegram ^and ^greatawakening.win.

While Russia has peddled false claims about U.S. biolabs in the past, Creech’s thread helped revive a languishing Russian disinformation narrative, providing the Kremlin with another explanation to justify its invasion of Ukraine. On February 27th – just three days after his thread was posted – the Russian Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina posted on Facebook endorsing the theory, accusing the United States of stuffing “Ukraine with biolaboratories, which – quite possibly – were used to study methods for the destruction of the Russian people at the genetic level.” Creech celebrated the embassy’s claims, tweeting from a new account, @clandestinenot, “My hypothesis was correct!... Russian air strikes in Ukraine have nothing to do with Ukraine, but rather AMERICAN ASSETS in Ukraine! It means this “war” is MUCH bigger than Ukraine. It’s a skirmish with the United States of America.”

Russia’s false biolab claims quickly raised concerns that it was laying the groundwork for a future attack against Ukraine using biological weapons. During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on March 8, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) questioned U.S. Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland about Russia’s claims. During her testimony, Nuland confirmed that Ukraine had “biological research facilities” and noted that the U.S. was concerned Russia could gain control of them.

Nuland’s testimony was quickly seized upon by QAnon adherents and right-wing media outlets as “proof” that the biolabs conspiracy was true. A day after the Senate hearing, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, citing Nuland’s testimony, accused the U.S. government of lying about funding secret biolabs in Ukraine. “If, for example, you were funding secret bio labs in Ukraine, but wanted to hide that fact from the people who are paying for it, in whose name you're doing it, then you might lie about it by claiming the Russians were lying about it,” Carlson said.

Conspiracy Theory Goes Viral

As the biolab theory continued to gain traction, Creech repeatedly took credit for coming up with the conspiracy and celebrated its dissemination in mainstream spaces. “YOU GUYS TUCKER’S OPENING STATEMENT IS THE BIOLABS STORY. The story is on the most watched show in America,” Creech wrote on Telegram on March 9, shortly after Tucker Carlson’s broadcast began. “HOLY SHIT WE FUCKING DID IT.” In a follow up post, Creech wrote, “I am trying to get in contact with Tucker [Carlson], [Dan] Bongino, [Jesse] Watters, [Steve] Bannon, Alex Jones. If they wanna use my thread and they wanna send this mainstream, then I guess it’s time to go mainstream.”

Creech, under his aliases WarClandestine and BioClandestine, has twice appeared on RedPill78, a popular QAnon show hosted by Zak Paine, to promote the biolab theory. “I'm the one who wrote the [Twitter] thread that kind of took the world by storm. If you're hearing about the bio labs it was me,” Creech said during a February 26 appearance on the show. He also promoted the theory, under his alias BioClandestine, during a March 15th appearance on election fraud conspiracy theorist Seth Holehouse’s show Man in America, saying, “they're trying to establish a narrative that Russia is going to be the one releasing these biological weapons after they said there were no biological weapons in Ukraine. So now they're in this mass cover-up phase.”

*Jacob ^Creech ^(lower ^right) ^called ^into ^RedPill78, ^an ^online ^show ^hosted ^by ^QAnon ^influencer ^Zak ^Paine, ^on ^February ^26, ^2022.

Creech has attempted to distance himself from QAnon, criticizing news reports that refer to him as a “QAnon influencer.” A review of Creech’s prior social media activity, however, shows he’s been following Q since 2018.

Creech previously tweeted other conspiracies under the monikers “Clandestine Rosenstein” and “Sneaky Rod,” positing that then U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was a secret “white hat” in Trump's war to take down the “Deep State.” Rosenstein, who appointed Robert Mueller to lead the Russia probe, was a frequent target of “Q,” who accused him of trying to “entrap” Trump by secretly recording him in the White House.

“RR [Rod Rosenstein] has been Team Trump since April 2017 when Trump appointed him,” Creech tweeted in April 2020 under the handle @arbiter1776. “All RR has done is prove Trump right, CONFIRM the Russia conspiracy allegations were false, and expose bad actors like McCabe and Comey.”

Creech has repeatedly invoked “Q” over the years. In 2018, he tweeted from his @ClandestineRos1 account, “There are many stances on Q, but we cannot deny the reality and magnitude of the movement.” In 2020, he tweeted under @arbiter1776, “... what is our role as Anons to assist the Q team and carry on The Great Awakening? It is our personal responsibility to be informed.” Creech also appeared on RedPill78 in November 2020, under his alias Clandestine Rosenstein, just a few weeks after the election, where he, alongside host Zak Paine and fellow QAnon influencer Beer at the Parade, peddled false claims that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen.”

He has also allegedly called for various public officials to be executed. Replying to a February 2022 tweet from the Ottawa Police thanking GoFundMe for withholding funding from the Trucker’s Convoy, he wrote, “Don’t worry Ottowa [sic] police. We got enough rope for your fascist asses too. When all is said and done, you’ll be swinging with the rest of them.”

The biolabs conspiracy isn’t the first time that Creech has spread misinformation on Twitter. In July 2019, Creech, tweeting from his @RodSneaky account, alleged that the media was not reporting on the NXVIM sex trafficking case. While the @RodSneaky account was suspended by Twitter shortly after for "platform manipulation and spam,” screenshots of Creech’s tweets continued to circulate online, prompting Reuters to publiclydebunk the claim.

As the war in Ukraine rages on, the biolab conspiracy has quickly emerged as the prevailing narrative among QAnon adherents to explain Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Not only does it “justify” the invasion in their eyes, it also validates their belief that Covid-19 is a U.S.-created bioweapon. This flood of disinformation could have far-reaching implications in the long term, sowing further distrust in democratic institutions and exacerbating political polarization.

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nY post owned by Murdoch

pro disinfo

https://nypost.com/2021/12/14/hypocrisy-of-media-censors-claim-to-be-against-misinformation/

labelled opinion

no lnx many

inside the hypocrisy of media manipulators, censors who claim to fight misinformation

By Christine Rosen

December 14, 2021 Updated

George Soros, billionaire and founder of Soros Fund Management LLC,

Billionaire George Soros will play a critical role in funneling millions into the Aspen Institute's information suppression project.

Related Topics

Impeachment of Donald Trump

US election 2020

Reality Check

Hunter Biden

Joe Biden

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sotu 3 22

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) wasn't part of the Republican response to President Joe Biden's State of the Union Address, but she tried to be. In her own SOTU response video, she ranted against everything President Joe Biden stands for, Newsweek reported.

Republicans have been criticized as the "party of no," for the past two Democratic presidents, columnist Nicholas Goldberg noted in the Los Angeles Times. Greene brought that to a whole new level Tuesday night after the big speech. While many Republicans gave Biden standing ovations over bipartisan initiatives and cheers for America, Greene struggled to find anything she liked. Instead, she sought to rant against Democrats in a 30-minute, conspiracy-laden, word-salad for the Right Side Broadcasting Network.

Greene was one of two Republicans, with Lauren Boebert, who attempted to heckle Biden during the speech, drawing boos from both sides. While Biden addressed the international coalition he's worked to build to help Ukraine, Greene maintained, "under President Trump, this [war] would have never happened. For four years, our country had a real leader that led America and the entire world to peace for strength."

Greene didn't clarify how Trump would have prevented the war, however, or clarify how Trump is stronger. The international community has praised Biden, making it clear that there's no way Trump could have crafted the coalition that Biden worked months to build.

The congresswoman hurled insults, calling Biden "a mentally incompetent, feckless, dementia-ridden piece of crap."

Her speech came after she was triggered into making a video on the right-wing site Gettr. "Joe Biden, you are not a president. You are a piece of s*it," she said.

Greene went on to rant about Afghanistan, falsely claiming "thousands of Americans" were still stuck there. As of Jan. 11, that number was closer to 80. On Feb. 1, Qatar reached a deal with the Taliban to restart the flights and evacuations.

She then claimed that Biden was "compromised" by foreign leaders due to the conspiracy theory about his son's laptop. Biden, she said, is working for "anyone, anywhere that has blackmail evidence on his sexually deviant drug-addled deadbeat dad pathetic, sorry, embarrassing excuse of a son."

Newsweek noted: "Fox News' Tucker Carlson also promised to reveal 'authentic, real and damning' documents regarding Hunter Biden's business dealings in China and the Ukraine, which helater claimed were lost in the mail**."

Greene has been criticized this week after she spoke at a white supremacist conference where Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler were praised from the podium. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took the rare opportunity to rebuke her and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) promised to give her another "talking to." But according to Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), it's Republicans like Greene who are actually running the caucus now.

See the complaints from angry Americans below:

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https://news.yahoo.com/might-not-hunter-biden-shenanigans-085015437.html

the

1980s TV crime drama Hunter featured an eponymous main character who popularized the catchphrase, “Works for me.” Today’s crime drama surrounding Hunter Biden evokes a different repeated utterance: “Who did Hunter work for?”

The troubled presidential scion is in the news again and raising questions about his father, President Joe Biden. This unwanted attention has also renewed questions about the media’s relative lack of interest in the younger Biden’s highly questionable business interests during the 2020 presidential election.

Last week, Politico reported:“The New York Times is still digging into Hunter Biden’s business relationships.” The Gray Lady sued the State Department to get emails about Hunter Biden that were sent or received by the US Embassy in Romania. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, these new emails reveal.

although it garnered more attention on the right than in the mainstream media, last September, Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger, author of The Bidens, confirmed the validity of some of the controversial emails that surfaced during the 2020 campaign—including an email with a Chinese oil executive, referencing equity to be held for “the big guy.” (The big guy was Joe Biden, according to the recipient, Tony Bobulinski, a business partner of Hunter’s.)

Trump’s Promise to Pardon Jan. 6 Rioters Is Worse Than Watergate]

Schreckinger also confirmed an email involving a Ukrainian business executive thanking Hunter for introducing him to his father at a dinner the previous night. (Joe Biden’s team denies the meeting.)

Meanwhile, conservative media is turning up the heat. Fox Nation is currently streaming a four-part series called Who Is Hunter Biden, and author Peter Schweizer just published a new book called Red-Handed, which alleges that the Biden family “received some $31 million from Chinese individuals who are linked to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence.” According to Schweizer, one of those individuals was investor Che Fung, who is referred to in emails by Hunter Biden as the ‘Superchairman.’” Schweizer also alleges that “Hunter Biden was paying his father’s bills with the foreign money…”

If true, these revelations dramatically advance the story from garden-variety corruption (Hunter Biden trading on his daddy’s name) to something much more nefarious.

But how reliable is Schweizer’s reporting? On one hand, he is the president of a think tank that was co-founded by Steve Bannon, and is, as The Guardian reports GUK, “part of the rightwing ecosystem.” His conveniently timed book Clinton Cash(published in 2015), raised legitimate questions about Bill and Hillary Clinton, but also included omissions and errors.

On the other hand, Schweizer’s 2011 book Throw Them All Out took shots at both sides, and it sparked a 60 Minutes segment on how members of Congress cash in on insider information (whichled to the creation of the STOCK Act).

In short, Schweizer’s books often reveal important and overlooked information, but his motives are suspicious. This raises a question: Rather than outsourcing this investigative work to Schweizer (whose goal is to feed his reporting to mainstream outlets), shouldn’t the media just do this work themselves?

Some, like Politico’s Schreckinger and The New York Times’ Ken Vogel, have spent considerable time doing just that. But let’s be honest, if this were any other president’s son, the coverage would have been through the roof.

Even without these post-election revelations and allegations, there was always an appearance of impropriety. We know Hunter was paid a lot of money to serve on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, apparently without ever visiting Ukraine and without any discernible expertise in the energy field. And his father just happened to be the point man there for the Obama administration.

We also now know that Hunter has become an artist, with some of his paintings fetching upwards of $500,000. [so has dubya?]

There’s a lot of juicy stuff here. So why didn’t this receive the coverage it might have deserved before Joe Biden was elected president? For one thing, Donald Trump—and his family—raised the bar for what qualifies as a newsworthy scandal, particularly when it comes to profiting off of the presidency.

And, to be honest, there were multiple red flags. Way back in May of 2019, it was reported that Rudy Giuliani was planning to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden in Ukraine. We also know that on a July 2019 phone call, Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to work with Giuliani on this project.

There was the not-implausible suggestion that this “October surprise” (the release of Hunter Biden’s emails) might be Russian disinformation (as former intel officials said).

Further fueling skepticism, the email story first dropped in a tabloid, the New York Post, and one of the reporters refused to allow his byline to be included in the story, while another reporter only discovered that her byline was included after the story was published.

Serious mistakes were also made by Trump and his allies. The original plan was to have the Wall Street Journal break the email story. But Trump spooked them by bragging that they were working on “an important piece.” Giuliani also scooped their reporting by leaking documents to theNew York Post—and Bobulinski, Hunter Biden’s former partner turned Trump campaign witness, got tired of waiting and made his case to Breitbart.

Biden Just Won’t Admit When He’s Screwed Up

Meanwhile, Joe Biden continued to defend his son and vehemently deny any wrongdoing. I suspect there was also a natural hesitancy to go after Biden family members, especially considering the tragedies that they have endured.

I’ve just explained why the story didn’t get the attention it probably deserved in 2020, but what about in the future? By suing the State Department, The New York Times has signaled that they are serious about investigating the new Hunter Biden revelations. That’s a good start.

Media outlets and investigative reporters should pursue new allegations and leads aggressively, regardless of where that takes them. They shouldn’t let their fear or dislike of Trump guide their reporting.

The credibility of the media is at stake. And in the unlikely event that (as Schweizer’s reporting would suggest) Joe Biden has been compromised by a foreign government, the stakes are a lot higher than that.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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ref

cya by nyt, partner for BS?

New York Timesis suing the State Department over records related to “the possible improper use of federal government resources” to aid the business interests of private citizens—potentially including the president’s son. Politico reported Monday that the newspaper had filed suit, accusing officials of dawdling on the release of correspondence the paper had requested under the Freedom of Information Act. The emails, sent by embassy officials inRomaniabetween 2015 and 2019, could show government officials working on behalf of Hunter Biden and a number of his business relationships, according to Politico. Also of interest to the Times,according to the paper’s filing, are records relating to the activities of Trump associate Rudy Giuliani, who traveled to Europe repeatedly in 2020 to try and dig up dirt on Hunter Biden. The Times's suit is an effort to expedite the State Department’s timeline for the FOIA disclosures, which presently are not due to be delivered until April of 2023.

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ref 2 no lnx

no lnx

natasha bertrand

More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

The letter, signed on Monday, centers around a batch of documents released by the New York Post last week that purport to tie the Democratic nominee to his son Hunter’s business dealings. Under the banner headline “Biden Secret E-mails,” the Post reported it was given a copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive by President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who said he got it from a Mac shop owner in Delaware who also alerted the FBI.

While the letter’s signatories presented no new evidence, they said their national security experience had made them “deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case” and cited several elements of the story that suggested the Kremlin’s hand at work.

“If we are right,” they added, “this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.”

Nick Shapiro, a former top aide under CIA director John Brennan, provided POLITICO with the letter on Monday. He noted that “the IC leaders who have signed this letter worked for the past four presidents, including Trump. The real power here however is the number of former, working-level IC officers who want the American people to know that once again the Russians are interfering."

[NATIONAL SECURITY

Intel chief releases Russian disinfo on Hillary Clinton that was rejected by bipartisan Senate panel

BY ANDREW DESIDERIO AND DANIEL LIPPMAN]

The former Trump administration officials who signed the letter include Russ Travers, who served as National Counterterrorism Center acting director; Glenn Gerstell, the former NSA general counsel; Rick Ledgett, the former deputy NSA director; Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA senior operations officer; and Cynthia Strand, who served as the CIA’s deputy assistant director for global issues. Former CIA directors or acting directors Brennan, Leon Panetta, Gen. Michael Hayden, John McLaughlin and Michael Morell also signed the letter, along with more than three dozen other intelligence veterans. Several of the former officials on the list have endorsed Biden.

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said on Monday that the information on Biden’s laptop “is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” though the FBI is reportedly conducting an ongoing investigation into whether Russia was involved.

The New York Times raised questions on Sunday about the rigor of the Post’s reporting process, revealing that several of its reporters had refused to put their name on the Biden stories because they were concerned about the authenticity of the materials. The Post stood by its reporting, saying it was vetted before publication.

But the release of the material, which POLITICO has not independently verified, has drawn comparisons to 2016, when Russian hackers dumped troves of emails from Democrats onto the internet — producing few damaging revelations but fueling accusations of corruption by Trump. While there has been no immediate indication of Russian involvement in the release of emails the Post obtained, its general thrust mirrors a narrative that U.S. intelligence agencies have described as part of an active Russian disinformation effort aimed at denigrating Biden’s candidacy.

POLITICO DISPATCH: OCTOBER 20

He's been in the Senate since 2003, but this year could be his last. POLITICO's Andrew Desiderio traces Lindsey Graham's transformation from a moderate Republican known for working across the aisle to a staunch defender of President Trump.]

“We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement,” the letter reads. But, it continues, “there are a number of factors that make us suspicious of Russian involvement.”

“Such an operation would be consistent with Russian objectives, as outlined publicly and recently by the Intelligence Community, to create political chaos in the United States and to deepen political divisions here but also to undermine the candidacy of former Vice President Biden and thereby help the candidacy of President Trump,” the letter reads.

National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director Bill Evanina said in August that Russia has been trying to denigrate Biden’s campaign, specifically through a Ukrainian lawmaker named Andriy Derkach who has met with Giuliani at least twice to discuss corruption accusations against Biden. Derkach was sanctioned by the Treasury Department last month for allegedly acting as a Russian agent and interfering in the 2020 election.

Giuliani brushed off concerns about Derkach in an interview with The Daily Beast this week, saying “the chance that Derkach is a Russian spy is no better than 50/50.” And he told The Wall Street Journal of the purported Biden email trove: “Could it be hacked? I don’t know. I don’t think so. If it was hacked, it’s for real. If it was hacked. I didn’t hack it. I have every right to use it.”

BY NATASHA BERTRAND AND KYLE CHENEY

The former officials said Derkach’s relationship with Giuliani and fixation on the Bidens, along with Russia’s reported hack on Burisma — the Ukrainian energy company that gave Hunter Biden a board seat and is at the center of Trump and his allies’ corruption allegations — “is consistent with” a Russian operation.

“For the Russians at this point, with Trump down in the polls, there is incentive for Moscow to pull out the stops to do anything possible to help Trump win and/or to weaken Biden should he win,” the letter says. “A ‘laptop op’ fits the bill, as the publication of the emails are clearly designed to discredit Biden.”

Top Biden advisers who staffed him during his vice presidency, citing their own recollections as well as a review of Biden’s official schedules, have sharply rejected suggestions that Biden ever met with a representative of Burisma in 2015 or has otherwise been involved in Hunter Biden’s business interests.

"Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as 'not legitimate' and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said last week. “Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.”

FILED UNDER: CIA, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, NSA, RUSSIA, JOE BIDEN,

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https://www.npr.org/**2019/10**/09/768556474/how-a-political-hit-job-backfired-and-led-to-trumps-impeachment-peril

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The nation's attention is riveted on the drama unfolding in Washington, where House investigators are assembling evidence for their impeachment inquiry, and President Trump is refusing to cooperate. Our guest, Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green, says that, ironically, Trump's impeachment peril is the unintended result of an effort to help him.

Last spring, a book came out called "Secret Empires: How The American Political Class Hides Corruption And Enriches Family And Friends." Its author was Peter Schweizer, the head of the Government Accountability Institute, a think tank founded by Schweizer and Steve Bannon. The book includes information about Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden and his activities in Ukraine when his father was the vice president.

The book raises questions about possible ethical violations and corruption related to Hunter Biden's activities in Ukraine. The book received a lot of attention on Fox News, where it came to the attention of President Trump and led Trump to send Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to pressure the new government there to investigate the claims in Schweizer's book.

Joshua Green notes in a new article how this echoes the playbook that Schweizer and Bannon successfully used with their 2015 book "Clinton Cash," which raised questions about the propriety of Hillary Clinton's financial dealings and those of the Clinton Foundation. It led to investigations by the mainstream media. Joshua Green writes about politics for Bloomberg Businessweek and is the author of a book about Steve Bannon called "Devil's Bargain." He spoke with FRESH AIR's Dave Davies.

DAVE DAVIES, BYLINE: Joshua Green, welcome back to FRESH AIR. You write that the allegations of corruption involving Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine were first aired in a book published last year by something called the Government Accountability Institute. What is the Government Accountability Institute?

JOSHUA GREEN: Well, the Government Accountability Institute is registered as a nonpartisan research organization. It was founded in 2012 by Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's former chief strategist, and Peter Schweizer, who, I believe, is now the president and still works there. And it bills itself as an investigatory outfit that investigates money and politics, corruption and that sort of thing.

DAVIES: Right. Who funds it?

GREEN: Well, we don't know all the funders, but one of its chief funders is Rebekah Mercer, who is part of the Mercer family, headed by Robert Mercer, the former co-chair of Renaissance Technologies, the big hedge fund. The Mercer family was and still is a major right-wing donor to various different causes, big Trump supporters, and a family that has come into the spotlight since Trump's election - also involved in Cambridge Analytica and some of the outfits that became famous and even notorious after the 2016 election.

DAVIES: The funding certainly comes from partisan sources. You know, the co-founder was Steve Bannon. What's interesting, as you write, is that the work - the research that it produced and the books that it produced weren't intended particularly to reach the conservative media or core Republican voters. What was the purpose?

GREEN: Well, the purpose of GAI originally was to, you know, investigate politicians. But given the conservative band of people like Bannon and Schweizer and their funders, the focus often tended to be Democrats. And in my book, I write about howSchweizer and Bannon resolved to go after Hillary Clinton a couple of years before the 2016 election, knowing that she was likely to emerge as the Democratic nominee.

So through GAI and its investigators, its forensic data scientists, you know, they pored over public records, corporate filings, dark Web scrapings to compile, you know, a damning book about Bill and Hillary Clinton in their work through their nonprofit, the Clinton Foundation, that was published about a month before Hillary launched her presidential campaign. And that book, "Clinton Cash," became an instant New York Times [PARTNERSHIP?!] bestseller and really tarnished Hillary Clinton's image just as she was entering the presidential fray.

DAVIES: And the interesting thing is that, you know, Bannon was not interested in just generating material for the conservative media. It was important that mainstream media draw on this research and, you know, give it their imprimatur tour too.

GREEN: That's exactly right. You know, Bannon's critique of how Republicans deal with the media goes back to the 1990s and Bill Clinton's impeachment, when he thought that Republicans really just wound up talking to themselves in an echo chamber and they chased wild rumors and conspiracy theories and really put off ordinary voters. The media didn't listen to them. Voters didn't listen to them. OPPO RESEARCH

So with "Clinton Cash," he resolved to compile factual information that he wanted the mainstream media to pick up and amplify. And so he explicitly was not looking to reach a conservative audience, which is already going to be predisposed to dislike the Clintons, and was aiming to affect the votes in the views of independents and Democrats and the type of people that Hillary Clinton was counting on.It was important to Bannon that GAI's work be picked up and taken seriously by mainstream media outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg News.

DAVIES: And did those mainstream media organizations publish stories based on the research?

GREEN: Yeah, they did. I mean, famously, there was a New York Times story based on Schweizer's reporting. And it revealed this in the story, looking at a Clinton Foundation deal in a Russian-backed company called Uranium One that really took off and, I think, poisoned the public views of Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. And, as Bannon intended, a whiff of corruption attached itself to Hillary Clinton. Of course, that expanded as the media focused on her missing emails and Republicans pushed these ideas. But the book really succeeded in what Bannon had set out to do. And that was to raise doubts about the ethics and morals and fitness for the presidency of Hillary Clinton.

DAVIES: Right. And we should just note that there is nothing at all unusual about credible reporters getting tips and leads and information from partisan sources. They have to, of course, independently verify the information and assess its credibility. Were the books that the Government Accountability Institute writes generally accurate?

GREEN: Well, they were based on facts. And what these investigators did was go out and turn out examples of foreign donors that hadn't been disclosed and examples of behavior by former President Bill Clinton that seemed to be conducted on behalf of donors to the Clinton Foundation.You know, Schweizer's style is not to fabricate or allege illegality. Instead, he uses his reporting to lay out a suggestive timeline that leads readers to a conclusion that, hey, something is dirty here. This reeks of influence peddling. Something is not right. And it raises doubts about the subjects.

DAVIES: So the new book from Peter Schweizer and the Government Accountability Institute is called "Secret Empires: How The American Political Class Hides Corruption And Enriches Family And Friends." And it identified Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden as a target for some of the material. What did it find about Joe and Hunter Biden?

GREEN: Well, what it found was that Hunter Biden, the vice president's son, had become a highly paid director at a Ukrainian natural gas company called Burisma, a position that he didn't have any obvious qualifications for. But he did have a very famous last name, and the owner of the company was interested, I think, in building credibility. Schweizer also took a look at a private equity fund that Hunter Biden became involved in that drew a lot of money from Chinese investors at the same time that Hunter was flying to China on Air Force Two with his father, the vice president.

So in Schweizer's reporting, you know, this is made to look very fishy and possibly illegal and raise doubts about the ethics of Joe Biden and whether or not, you know, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination really belongs in that position or, you know, is in some way corrupt because of his son's business dealings.

DAVIES: No direct evidence that Joe Biden did anything to assist his son in either of those ventures, right? But there's an association.

GREEN: No. No, there isn't. And Bloomberg News, my employer, has done a lot of reporting and has turned up no wrongdoing.Other outlets have taken a look. I mean, what is going on and what Schweizer is good at finding are situations like this where, you know, I think any objective reader would come to the conclusion that, you know, but for Hunter's last name, he would not be in this position. You and I would not be offered a $50,000 a month board seat at a Ukrainian gas company because our father isn't vice president.

So it's the sort of - it's what, you know, Schweizer calls corruption by proxy. There's nothing explicitly illegal, but it's sort of morally corrupt and an indictment of our system in a way that populist Republicans and Democrats like to criticize.

DAVIES: The Clinton book got a ton of mainstream media attention and had an impact on the Clintons themselves. This book, did it get a lot of mainstream attention? Did it hurt harm the Bidens?

GREEN: You know, it really didn't. It came out in 2018, and it kind of came and went. It - you know, it didn't attach itself to Biden. It didn't become - it didn't drive the political news cycle in the way that "Clinton Cash" drove the 2015-2016 presidential news cycle. It got a decent amount of attention in conservative media, but it never really broke out into the mainstream.

You know, and I speculated in my Businessweek piece, a couple of reasons for this - one, Joe Biden wasn't yet a candidate, and so there wasn't that kind of urgency to look into his past. There might have been had the book come out later on. It also didn't focus only on the Biden's; it focused on John Kerry, Barack Obama, the Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.So I think that influenced how it was received. And of course, unlike "Clinton Cash," it wasn't focused on an actual Democratic presidential candidate; it was mainly focused on his son. And so there - it was sort of one degree removed from the primary actors.

I think all these things together help explain why the book didn't really break out until, that is, Donald Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, became infatuated with it, started trying to investigate these things themselves and now has kicked off what has become an entire impeachment proceeding and put the book and the Bidens and Schweizer himself very much in the center of the 2020 presidential news cycle.

DAVIES: So when this book was launched with these stories, what were the ambitions of Peter Schweizer and the Government Accountability Institute?

GREEN: Well, I think the ambition was a reprise of what they'd seen with "Clinton Cash," that the mainstream media would look into this stuff and amplify it in the way that they had with the Clinton charges. You know, Steve Bannon, who kind of pioneered this model, has a phrase he likes to use - anchor left, pivot right. And what that means is you want to anchor this reporting on the left and the mainstream media - what Bannon considers the left - get them writing about it and then use the right-wing media to amplify what it is the mainstream media is saying and to kind of dominate the entire mediasphere.

So I think Schweizer and GAI were hoping that "Secret Empires," the Biden reporting, would be anchored in the mainstream media, and the whole process would repeat itself, but that never really happened with the second book.

DAVIES: So what did happen? Why do we know about it now?

GREEN: Well, we know about it now - it got a decent amount of attention in the right-wing media, onFox News, in the New York Post.And of course, some of - you know, one of the most loyal consumers of right-wing media is the president, Donald Trump, who according to reporting watches hours and hours of Fox News every day. So he was exposed to this reporting, exposed to the charges and the insinuations that Schweizer made. He's tweeted about the book. He's tweeted about Schweizer.

And, you know, based on everything we've heard from the whistleblower report, from the White House call transcript that was released at the end of September, Trump and Giuliani took it upon themselves to pick up the phone and try and advance Schweizer's reporting into the Bidens. I mean, essentially, calling the president of Ukraine and saying, hey,I know about this Biden stuff. I want you to look into this. I want you to investigate my political opponent. And, you know, if you don't, we're going to withhold this military aid - setting off all the alarm bells that have now led to the impeachment inquiry.

DAVIES: So it really was the president and Giuliani that took this and ran with it.

GREEN: It really was. I mean, the remarkable thing - a lot of people watch Fox News, watch right-wing media, get upset about the Clintons and the Bidens, but only one of them had the power to pick up the telephone, call the president of the Ukraine and put pressure on him to investigate the Bidens in hopes that they could turn up more damning information about Joe and Hunter Biden, knowing that Joe Biden was very likely to be his Democratic opponent in 2020.

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're speaking with Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green about the origins of the story about Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine, which drew interest from President Trump and has now led to an impeachment inquiry. Green is the author of a book about Steve Bannon called "Devil's Bargain."

So President Trump has said that Joe Biden, when he was vice president - I guess in 2016 - sought to get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired, who was, at that time, investigating the company associated with Hunter Biden, his son - in effect, kind of scotching an investigation into his son by getting the prosecutor fired. What's the truth of this?

GREEN: Well, it is true what Trump says, but it is wildly misleading. Vice President Biden played a central role in overseeing U.S. policy in the Ukraine. But Biden, the Obama administration, Republicans in the Senate, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union were all putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to root out corruption and, particularly, to fire the chief prosecutor at the time, Viktor Shokin, who was not - who was essentially beholden to the oligarchs, was not doing the kind of corruption investigations they wanted.

So Biden threatened to withhold up to a billion dollars in aid from Ukraine if Shokin wasn't fired because he was so deeply corrupt. So Biden and the Obama administration were putting pressure on the Ukraine government to do more investigating of corruption not less, as Trump and his allies are insinuating.

And it's also - I mean, just to be clear, they weren't in - Ukrainian prosecutors were never investigating Hunter Biden. They were investigating an oligarch who owned - who is the co-founder of Burisma, the gas company, on whose board Hunter Biden served.

DAVIES: Right. And is it clear whether, at the time that he was fired,this prosecutor, Victor Shokin, was actually investigating the company?

GREEN: You know, it isn't clear.There have been conflicting reports on this. There does seem to have been an investigation into Burisma. But, you know, they paid a fine. That went away. At no point was Hunter Biden ever implicated in any kind of corruption. And part of what, I think, Trump and Giuliani were trying to do was to reopen this investigation and steer it toward Hunter Biden in hopes that they could find or maybe create damaging material around the Bidens.

DAVIES: There is a new chief prosecutor in Ukraine and was quoted as saying that he had opened an audit of a bunch of old investigations, including one into Burisma Holdings, the company that Hunter Biden was associated with. What does this portend?

GREEN: Well, it's not clear. I mean, one of the things, I think, a lot of people don't understand about the whole Ukraine situation is that Hunter Biden was never investigated by Ukrainian prosecutors. What happened was that they were investigating an oligarch named Mykola Zlochevsky, who co-founded Burisma.And so reopening investigations would be investigations into Burisma Holdings. But they - from what we know, that wouldn't affect or have anything specifically to do with Hunter Biden or his situation there.

One of the things that Trump and Giuliani are pushing for in these text messages and these - in these meetings and phone calls is for Ukrainian prosecutors to go further and specifically investigate the Bidens in hope that they can turn up dirt that can be used in the 2020 presidential campaign.

And as far as we know, there's no basis for investigating anything. There is no evidence that I'm aware of or that anybody has reported that would suggest that there was wrongdoing there.And Schweizer himself, in fact, in the New York Times today, has an op-ed saying that, you know, what transpired actually wasn't illegal under U.S. law. It was unseemly. It might have been unethical - the idea of putting a politician's son on a board as a way of maybe trying to influence the political process - but there was nothing illegal here. And that's very much Schweizer's style is not to allege illegality but to insinuate that there is something corrupt going on there.

And, I think, part of the way that this entire story went sideways and went crashing into this impeachment inquiry is that Trump is very much susceptible to the insinuation that there is something, you know, perfidious going on here and took it upon himself to, you know, push and amplify and even threaten people in hopes of advancing the story.

DAVIES: You mentioned that Peter Schweizer, the author of this book that was funded by the Government Accountability Institute, has an op-ed in The Times. He's arguing that there's a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal for an American company operating in a foreign country to engage in, you know, bribery or nepotism to secure favor from governments in which they operate but that there's a big hole in the law in that there's nothing to prevent a foreign government from hiring the family of U.S. officials or creating relationships in order to, you know, create an appearance which helps their business. Does he have a point?

GREEN: I think he's got a perfectly good point. And that's exactly what seems to be going on with Hunter Biden. He had no traditional, professional qualification for the job that he held with Burisma, you know, and that in itself doesn't seem right. I think that is what Schweizer is pointing to.

Now, Trump and Republicans have taken it a lot further, twisting a lot of the facts about what was investigated, what the Obama administration and Biden were pressuring the Ukrainian government to do in 2016. But the basic fact that Hunter Biden was on this board and was probably there for political reasons, because there weren't really any other good reasons for him to be on the board - what Scheizer has pointed out here and what he says in his New York Times op-ed is that what Hunter Biden did was perfectly legal, but that, in itself, is a problem.

GROSS: Joshua Green is a columnist for Bloomberg Businessweek. After a break, he'll talk with Dave Davies about how the controversy is affecting the Biden campaign and how Trump and his allies are fighting back with counter narratives that paint the president as the victim of Democratic attacks.

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the interview FRESH AIR's Dave Davies recorded with Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green. In a recent column, Green argues that President Trump's impeachment worries are actually the unintended result of an effort to help him. He says Trump picked up on research about Joe Biden developed by a conservative think tank and included in a book last year.

The material was intended to harm Biden's presidential campaign. But when Trump saw the story on conservative media and began urging Ukraine to investigate Biden, he created far bigger problems for himself. Trump is now the subject of an impeachment inquiry into whether he abused the authority of his office. When we left off, Green was talking about an op-ed published in The New York Times by Peter Schweizer, the author of the book with the allegations against Biden.

DAVIES: Are you surprised that The New York Times would publish an op-ed by Peter Schweizer, you know, who got funding from, you know, the Mercers and have a very strong political point of view?

GREEN: Yeah. You know, a little bit, given the controversy it kicked up in 2016 when Schweizer's reporting appeared on the front page - in other words, in the news pages. This piece today is in the opinion section, which I think is a little bit more appropriate for the author and the subject and the claims that he's making.

DAVIES: Right. And just going back to 2016, my understanding is that, you know, the author of the Times' reporting on the Clinton Foundations and the Uranium One story is reporting that they stand by, that they independently investigated all of this and found it credible and newsworthy. Do you disagree?

GREEN: No. I don't disagree with that at all. I mean, part of what made the GAI project so effective is that they didn't do what some conservative authors do, which is to, you know, fabricate or publish rumors. I mean, they're - all of this is based in fact. They certainly put their own spin on those facts. They insinuated that there was maybe more going on than was actually going on. But they really did turn up evidence of unreported donations, of relationships that just didn't seem right that, you know, any legitimate investigative reporter, were he or she to come across this information, would want to look into further. And that's exactly what happened.

So the fact that there is a grain of truth in a lot of what is written is one of the things that makes it so effective and that Bannon and Schweizer understood from the outset would get the mainstream media to pay attention and amplify these charges. I think what happened in 2016 that upsets liberals so much is that, you know, as this stuff was being published in the mainstream media, it was also being amplified and distorted in the right-wing media. And that was having a real effect on Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate.

Her reputation was unquestionably tarnished. She was dogged by these charges and allegations. You add in the amplifying voice of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate calling her crooked Hillary and corrupt and I don't think there's any question - but that - it affected voters' views of her in a way that ultimately proved disastrous for Clinton's own candidacy and for Democrats.

DAVIES: One of the things that I think adds to the political potency is that the facts of a lot of these stories are so complicated, that it's really hard for an average reader to sort out what it all means. Was there subsequent reporting on the Uranium One story which cast the Clintons' actions in a different light?

GREEN: Nothing knocked it down. You know, the subsequent reporting - I mean, I think what a lot of Democrats objected to was the fact that this, frankly, partisan outfit and author and right-wing money had produced this information that had made its way onto the front page of The New York Times. And I spoke to the liberal activist David Brock at the time about Schweizer and Bannon. And he shook his head. And he Said, you know, looking at it from their point of view, the Times is the perfect host body for the virus - meaning, you know, the intention all along from these guys was to poison the public image of Hillary Clinton. And by getting these charges onto the front pages of The New York Times, they essentially accomplished that mission. I think everything that happened subsequently with Trump's attacks and Clinton's loss in the 2016 election back that up. And this time around, with Joe and Hunter Biden, they were looking to do the same thing.

DAVIES: In the op-ed, the Times doesn't mention Peter Schweizer's association with the Government Accountability Institute or its funders, you know, the Mercers.What do you think of that?

GREEN: You know, if I were running the op-ed page, I think that's something I would've disclosed based on, you know, his background, the political lineage and what we saw in the 2016 presidential cycle.

DAVIES: So is all of this affecting the Biden campaign?

GREEN: You know, it's not clear that it is. I mean, Biden had been on a bit of a downward trajectory before Trump and the Ukraine charges really came into the news cycle. But, you know, he is - he's starting to slip now. I mean, in the latest averages of polls, Elizabeth Warren has nudged ahead of him. So, you know, it's not clear that this is a deadly development for Joe Biden's candidacy, but it certainly isn't helping.

DAVIES: Since the whistleblower complaint emerged, there's been a lot of information and text and the summary of the phone call between President Trump and the president of Ukraine, which has led to this impeachment inquiry, which is clearly picking up steam. I mean, we're going to see, you know, testimony from other players in this including the former ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch. The Trump administration says it is not going to cooperate with this because, you know, it's a witch hunt. Where do you see this going?

GREEN: Well, you know, the irony here is that Trump, by involving himself, you know, essentially made this entire project blow up in his face and committed actions that, at the very least, have launched an impeachment inquiry and I think are very likely to lead to his impeachment in the House whether or not the Senate ultimately chooses to remove him.

But what the whistleblower report showed, what the subsequent text messages that have now been revealed between the U.S. ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, and Bill Taylor, a top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, that show that the U.S. apparently was withholding military aid to help a political campaign, as Taylor put it in his text. That is the quid pro quo that Democrats are alleging. And I think if there is a trial in the House, that's what it's likely to show. And the evidence we've seen so far certainly supports that.

So I think, from an impeachment standpoint, Trump is in real trouble. Whether or not he's ultimately removed from office, we'll see. I'm skeptical. But certainly this isn't the outcome that Schweizer and GAI and I think Trump and Giuliani expected to happen when they started making noise about this over the summer.

DAVIES: Right. Well, the president's defenders are aggressively promoting other narratives. I mean, Giuliani, a couple of weeks ago, was on the ABC weekend show waiving an affidavit from Viktor Shokin, you know, the prosecutor that was fired in 2016, in which alleges that, in fact, he was investigating the company Hunter Biden's - was associated with. There are certainly reasons to doubt his credibility in the eyes of a lot of people. And then, you know, last week, Senator Ron Johnson had a heated exchange with Chuck Todd on "Meet The Press" in which he was arguing that there's all this credible evidence that people in the Ukraine were trying to hurt Trump and help Hillary Clinton in 2016. [RUSSIAN DISINFO] It's a very aggressive strategy to - you know, bringing up other stuff. What do you think the effect will be?

GREEN: Well, I think the intention on the part of Republicans is to muddy the waters and to turn the charges of corruption against Trump that we've seen laid out in the whistleblower report and the text messages - turn them back against the Democrats.

What is troubling to a lot of people is that a lot of these charges are based on discredited conspiracy theories. What Ron Johnson was talking about was a conspiracy theory that Trump and Giuliani have propagated that it wasn't Russia that hacked the Democratic National Committee servers in the 2016 election but Ukraine.That's something that's been knocked down by every intelligence official, U.S. and otherwise, who's looked into this. And yet, this is what's being propagated by Trump.

And I think a lot of Republican politicians, fearful of Trump's wrath and eager to toe the partisan line, have found themselves forced or obligated to repeat these wild charges in a way that bears no relationship to reality but is nonetheless, I think, muddying the waters and shaping public opinion in a way that is intended to mitigate the damage of the charges against Trump.

DAVIES: Is Steve Bannon playing a role in stoking any of these allegations?

GREEN: You know, he really isn't anymore. I mean, Bannon had a very public falling-out with Donald Trump in 2017, where Trump sort of publicly humiliated him and excommunicated him from the Republican Party. He lost his position as the head of Breitbart News, was essentially sent out into the wilderness.

I mean, Bannon is still around on the scene. He is focused more on China these days and trying to, I think, strengthen Trump's resolve to conduct the trade war. Trump did tweet favorably about him a couple of months ago. But there isn't a close relationship there in the way that there was during the presidential campaign.

DAVIES: Yeah. I asked because you wrote a book about Steve Bannon and talked to him a lot. He was also going around Europe trying to kind of build a, you know, nationalist, populist movement. How did that go?

GREEN: Well, it basically failed. I mean, the nationalist movements in Europe weren't really interested in an American political strategist coming in and telling them what to do. They didn't perform nearly as well in the May European parliamentary elections as Bannon and some of the nationalist contingent were hoping for.

And so he's focused mainly these days on kind of beating the war drums against China, going out and publicly defending Trump's aggression against China when it comes to tariffs and the trade war and that sort of thing, and seeking to remain relevant in that way. But so far, there has been no reproach with Trump and the White House, or the Mercer family, for that matter. And so he's off on his own.

DAVIES: You know, looking at the strategy of the Government Accountability Institute with this book, you know, the idea was to kind of repeat the playbook that worked with the Clinton candidacy in 2016, where you develop information, it becomes adopted by the mainstream media and becomes a scandal. And in this case, it seems like another - kind of a different weird thing happened, which is that it turned into a scandal for the president himself when he pursued a theory and then engaged in conduct which has resulted in this impeachment inquiry.

At the same time, Peter Schweizer, the author of the book funded by the Government Accountability Institute, is being quoted. I mean, the story is out there. I wonder how they view this - how it's all worked out.

GREEN:Well, the irony here is that the target was supposed to be the Bidens, not the president. And by the president becoming involved, you know, the original plan has kind of blown up. What may wind up happening - as you say, you know, Biden and these charges are very much in the news. That was part of the intention, even if the negative attention toward Trump wasn't part of the plan. What we could see end up happening is a kind of a murder-suicide where Trump really does take out his strongest Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, only, he winds up, in the process, getting himself impeached.

DAVIES: Well, Joshua Green, thanks so much for speaking with us again.

GREEN: Thank you. It's always a pleasure.

GROSS: Joshua Green is a columnist for Bloomberg Businessweek and the author of a book about Steve Bannon called "Devil's Bargain."

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an 1021

white House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was forced to push back against a right wing reporter who was trying to spin conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden in the press briefing room.

"There's no reason to yell, I'm certainly not yelling," Psaki had to tell Newsmax reporter Emerald Robinson.

"Though the President has said during the campaign that none of his family will have any business relationship with anyone that relates to a foreign corporation or foreign country wouldn't it be assuring to the American people," Robinson declared, "if they just let the American people know if Hunter has divulged himself?" (She appears to have meant "divested," not "divulged.")

"I conveyed to you and then I think I'm gonna have to move on, that you should talk to, you should talk to his representatives and – there's no reason to yell, I'm certainly not yelling. You should talk to his representatives, that remains his policy, he's been working to wind that down. Beyond that, I'd say talk to his representatives."

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721 an me

At first glance, the post-modern structure situated on East 64th Street looks like nothing more than a residential building. However, according to The Daily Beast, there is more than what meets the eye.

Although it is technically a six-story, six-bedroom residential dwelling owned by Argentinian billionaire Eduardo Eurnekian, it has been converted into what is being described as the "New Federal State of China," announced by former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon and "his flamboyant Chinese patron, fugitive businessman Guo Wengui." It has now been dubbed "The Himalaya Embassy."

When the publication managed to speak with a woman seen entering the building, she confirmed that she is an employee of The Rule of Law Society,one of many non-profit organizations launched by Guo and Bannon. She also noted that the many entities housed at the location were considered "all one organization."

The publication reports that part of the building was illegally converted as Bannon and Wengui ignored code and zoning requirements. Per The Daily Beast:

"Public records, court documents, and in-person observations reveal that Bannon and Guo have converted the building's residential floors, against code and zoning, into the offices for their network of right-wing media and nonprofits—which have recently **gained attention for publishing bogus COVID-19 studies and :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{promoting conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden."

For longtime neighbors of the building,Bannon's conversion of the building has been relatively troubling. The publication reports that residents in close proximity of the building have become alarmed by all of the noticeable changes including the obvious "earpiece-wearing guards" situated around the building.

Employees of businesses in close proximity of the building have also made noteworthy observations of what goes on. "I see cars pull up sometimes and see people escorted inside, and security parked outside," Sarah Graham, an employee of a nearby office, told the publication. "It's kind of weird."

Shortly after the publication reached out to the New York City Department of Buildings, an inspector was dispatched to the location. However, the inspector's report confirms they were denied entry."At time of inspection, access to the embassy denied by unknown security person," the regulator's report reads.

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/hunter-biden-2649459491/

irs bs on hold before election protocol, rudy bogus?

Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani reportedly met with the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agents in Delaware who were investigating Hunter Biden's finances while President-elect Joe Biden was on the campaign trail.

Now, more questions are looming about the FBI. An editorial published by The New York Times lays out how the latest Pittsburgh inquiry raises questions about politicization among FBI agents.

While Hunter Biden did admit that there is a current tax investigation underway, there is speculation that the entire basis of the latest investigation stems from Giuliani's farfetched attempts to throw a curveball at the Democratic presidential candidate prior to Election Day.

It has been reported that U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr personally requested for top Pittsburgh federal prosecutor Scott Brady to review the investigative material Giuliani had gathered on the Biden family. Back in January, Brady met with Giuliani for nearly four hours to discuss the findings.

Due to the election and Giuliani's affiliation with Trump, the meeting is said to have "raised alarms within the F.B.I. and the Justice Department." There were also concerns about the politicization of the bureau in the middle of an election year.

Mr. Giuliani had served as Mr. Trump's attack dog during the Russia investigation before becoming the face of an effort to tarnish Hunter Biden during President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s campaign. If Mr. Brady's investigation became public, the agents feared that the F.B.I. could be drawn into a politically toxic battle in the midst of the presidential election, just as it was in 2016.

Giuliani's track record before and after the election has also been a factor taken into consideration which raises questions about the credibility of the latest investigation.

Mr. Giuliani had tried to promote scrutiny of Hunter Biden's work for Burisma, which had been mired in a corruption scandal. He accused Joseph R. Biden Jr. of corruptly pushing for the ouster of Ukraine's top prosecutor, who had been investigating Burisma, as a favor to his son while he was vice president. No evidence of wrongdoing by the president-elect has emerged.

As of Saturday, Dec. 12, Hunter Biden has not been charged with any financial crimes.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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is he ideol entre, pol op? grifter? all? everyone just freelances in their niche and when they score/do some damage to someone's rep, they get paid?! rewarded by clicks? ctt gig? book deal, fox appearance?

is Christie a weak squish target b/c he did not bounce back from covid and told ppl to wear masks?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/steve-bannons-darkest-plot-yet-is-starting-to-implode

alexh

During the final days of President Donald Trump's reelection campaign, former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon has been desperately fighting to remain relevant in Trumpworld. Bannon's ideas for getting Trump reelected range from firing FBI Director Christopher Wray to smearing former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden. And in his desperation, Bannon has even been attacking major Trump allies like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Attorney General William Barr and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Vice's Emanuel Maiberg is reporting that "a series of videos and photos which appear to show Hunter Biden having sex are going viral on a Chinese-language news and video sharing website" co-founded by Bannon. Maiberg notes that "the videos are often narrated by users in English with a Chinese accent, and claim that the explicit photos and videos of Hunter Biden are proof that he's compromised by the Chinese government."

So far, however, efforts by Bannon and Giuliani to smear Hunter Biden haven't made a difference in the presidential election. And even the far-right Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told Axios' Jonathan Swan that the e-mails and videos on a hard drive allegedly belonging to the former vice president's son aren't having an impact. Cruz told Swan, "I don't think it moves a single voter."

Reporter Madeline Peltz describes Bannon's recent attacks on fellow Trump supporters in an article published by Media Matters this week.

"Poor Steve Bannon," Peltz writes. "As the Hunter Biden hard drive story is lowered into the grave of failed October surprises, he's run out of options to insert his 'influence' into the election media cycle. Having failed to recreate his media manipulation successes of 2016, the former White House chief strategist is melting down and attacking his would-be allies."

Peltz notes how obsessed Bannon has been with getting Wray fired as FBI director.On October 25 in Axios, Swan and his colleague Alayna Treene reported that Trump, according to sources, plans to fire Wray as well as CIA Director Gina Haspel and Defense Secretary Mark Esper if he is reelected. But as Bannon sees it, Trumpworld isn't going after Wray aggressively enough — and he wants to see Wray fired right away, not after the election.

"In the past few days," according to Pentz, Bannon has "lambasted Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Attorney General William Barr and even Donald Trump himself — calling them 'weak' for not pushing for, or bringing about, the immediate firing of FBI Director Christopher Wray."

Trump has clearly been increasing angry with Wray in recent months, stemming from disagreements over multiple issues. Most notably, Trump is outraged that Wray hasn't gone after the president's political enemies, has emphasized the serious threats of right-wing violence and white supremacy, diminished the significance of antifa and left-wing violence, and failed to provide support for Republicans' attacks on the integrity of mail-in voting.

The contents of a hard drive that supposedly belonged to Hunter Biden were first reported by the New York Post, and Bannon and Giuliani collaborated on that story. But Bannon, according to Peltz, has lashed out at Giuliani for not being hard enough on Wray.

"On October 29," Peltz reports, "Bannon attacked Giuliani even though they've been working together to launder the bogus story that first appeared in the New York Post, calling him 'one of the weak guys around' Trump."

In a transcript of that October 29 conversation, according to Peltz, Bannon declared, "Wray must be fired this morning" — and Giuliani agreed with firing Wray, but not until after the election. Bannon, in response, told Giuliani, "You're one of the weak guys around him. You're getting weak on me, Rudy. No, you're weak. You sort of sound like Chris; you spent too much time with Chris Christie. You're getting weak."

Bannon also slammed Barr as "another weak link in this chain."

In an October 29 broadcast of "War Room," Bannon ranted against Wray as well as Trump allies who he believes haven't done enough to get him fired.

"Fire him today," Bannon declared. "Do not wait. You show weakness — the president is showing weakness by waiting. There's not one person in this country, not one voter that will not vote for you by firing Wray. And don't let theweakpeople around you convince you of that.Be strong, be who you are, be what your presidency is about."

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an 1020

...[reporter] jenkins explained that the news organization had been provided documents by Tony Bobulinski, Hunter Biden's former business partner.

"You're talking about a business venture with the Chinese energy company in 2017 at a time when Joe Biden was not vice president," Jenkins explained. "But Fox's review of Bobulinski's documents, which were given to us, found no role for Joe Biden in that business venture."

"There's another former business partner who says he knows of no involvement by Joe Biden," Fox News host Howard Kurtz added. "The Wall Street Journal says it also reviewed the text messages and emails, saying, they don't show either Hunter Biden or James Biden — the brother — discussing a role for Joe Biden."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/youre-not-supposed-to-understand-the-hunter-biden-smear-chaos-is-the-point

kos

Acclaimed journalist and historianAnne Applebaumunderstands the universe of propaganda as well as anyone alive today. Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, she has devoted the past three decades to studying Russia and Eastern and Central Europe, with an emphasis on disinformation and propaganda so acute that she washerself targeted—by a Russian-originated smear campaign in retaliation for her writings about Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea. She now contributes her cache of knowledge toThe Atlantic, among other publications.

For someone so well-versed, analyzing the blatant behavior of propagandist right-wing media outlets such as Fox News is something akin to a chess master analyzing the strategy of Tic-Tac-Toe—simple, and even relaxing. So after watching the antics of Donald Trump during his final debate with Joe Biden, she wrote a piece for The Atlanticon Friday that explains what millions of Americans are still shaking their heads in bewilderment about today: the source—and more importantly, the purpose—of Trump's bizarre accusations about Hunter Biden and his allegedly nefarious dealings with certain obscure individuals.

Of course the direct conduits of this nonsense are what we in the sane world regard as the fever swamps of paranoiac right-wing conspiracy thinking, most visibly manifested on the Fox News channel. As Applebaum notes, the actual storyline, spun out of whole cloth, is purposefully designed to be opaque, leading someone trying to divine the actual facts to become frustrated and give up trying to make sense of them. In fact, as her article's title suggests, "You're not supposed to understand the rumors about Biden."

Because the story is not intended to make sense, but to create a fog of doubt.

Just like the fictional legend these same people wove around "Hillary's emails," the Hunter Biden fiction also concerns emails—these ones allegedly kept by a former business partner of Hunter Biden, and miraculously disclosed to a peripheral former and supposed "investigative journalist" named Matthew Tyrmand. Tyrmand, notably, was formerly (and peripherally) associated with the right-wing fraudster and provocateur James O'Keefe.

That piece of critical information would lead most knowledgeable people to immediately shelve the unfounded Hunter Biden scheme in that mental compartment where bad ideas go to eventually die. But the Fox News audience is by definition anything but "knowledgeable people." On that network, the Hunter Biden nonsense is not something analogous to the disappointingly empty caverns of "Al Capone's vault," but rather an ever-opening flower, chock full of conspiracy-thinking goodness.

In releasing the 26,000 emails, Tyrmand and his collaborator, the Breitbart News contributor Peter Schweizer, are not bringing forth any evidence of actual lawbreaking, or an actual security threat, by either Hunter or Joe Biden. They are instead creating a miasma, an atmosphere, a foggy world in which misdeeds might have taken place, and in which corruption might have happened. They are alsoproviding the raw material from which more elaborate stories can be constructed. The otherwise incomprehensible reference in last night's debate to "the mayor of Moscow's wife," from whom Joe Biden somehow got rich, was an excellent example of how this works.A name surfaces in a large collection of data; it is detached from its context; it is then used to make an insinuation or accusation that cannot be proved; it is then forgotten, unless it gains some traction, in which case it is repeated again.

Applebaum provides some basic background for the uninformed and uninitiated (i.e., normal Americans).

Those who live outside the Fox News bubble and intend to remain there do not, of course, need to learn any of this stuff. Judging by what has been published, the very worst thing that Tyrmand's email cache could reveal (if it is authentic) is that some unattractive people sought to use Hunter Biden's surname and connections to get business deals or score a visit to the White House for their clients. But we already know about Hunter Biden's involvement with unattractive people, and his struggles with addiction; we also know that, under normal circumstances, dozens of people visit the White House every day. On the grand scale of misdeeds committed by politicians and their relatives, this kind of thing barely registers.

Applebaum then helpfully includes a laundry list of Trump's corruption that puts to shame whatever the right hopes to spin out of this email concoction. As readers of Daily Kos, you're more than familiar with these.

But there is a purpose lurking here in the mind of Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch. The first and most obvious? To assist Trump in deflecting attention—for these final 10 days—from his horrific malfeasance in the face of a pandemic whose vicious resurgence is soon likely to be the sole focus of the nightly newscasts. The second reason is to provide a ready well of sludge to draw upon in the seemingly likely event (as Murdoch himself has acknowledged) that the polls turn out to be correct, and Trump loses the election.

They will continue to serve a function after the election as well. If Biden wins, Foxworld will need some way to keep its audience focused on something other than the Cabinet he appoints, the new legislation he passes, and all the other events, decisions, and changes that used to constitute "news." Instead of all that real-life stuff—laws and regulations, statistics and investigations, debates about the economy and health care—the leading figures of the right-wing conspiracy bubble will,over the next months and years, dip into the email caches to keep their followers focused on an alternate reality in which Joe Biden is a secret oligarch, his son is an important figure in the Chinese mafia, and LOL nothing matters. Just as you need to know the backstories of the stars in the DC Comics universe in order to understand the nuances of a Batman movie, six months from now you might also need to know all about Cooney and Archer and the wife of the mayor of Moscow if you want to understand Ingraham's monologues.

Applebaum, a rapt student of propaganda, knows that outside of hosting the inevitable guest appearances (between court dates) that Donald Trump will insist on during the next four years—assuming he loses—the Fox News yappers need something to talk and talk about, and it certainly isn't going to be Republican policies. So this fictional narrative serves the interests both of Fox News—whose main concern is keeping its soon-to-be demoralized audience content and soporific—and also helps to deflect the inevitable horror stories that will be uncovered by a Democratic-controlled Congress investigating the Trump crime family's vast trail of detritus throughout our government.

By talking about Hunter Biden, the Trump family, especially the Trump children, also hopes to deflect attention from their own greatest weakness, namely the amoral, kleptocratic nepotism that they embody like no family ever before in American history...

[...]

None of them can win using ideas anymore, because they don't have any. All they can do is seek attention: gesticulate, wave their arms in the air, shout at the crowd, invent things, and try to attract the fame and attention they feel they deserve, even though they can no longer explain why they deserve it.

Put simply, assuming Joe Biden wins this election, we should all gear up for four long years of Fox News-inspired fantasy programming.

Of course, there's always the mute button.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trumpworld-is-going-full-qanon-with-the-election-less-than-2-weeks-away-report/

Whenever President Donald Trump is asked about QAnon extremists, he will say a few nice things about them while insisting that he knows very little about the movement. But journalist Will Sommer, in an article published by the Daily Beast on October 22, reports that Trump's allies are trying to use the QAnon conspiracy theory to get him reelected.

To say that QAnon's beliefs are absurd would be an understatement. According to the QAnon conspiracy theory, the U.S. government has been infiltrated by an international cabal of child sex traffickers, pedophiles, Satanists and cannibals — and Trump was put in the White House to combat them. An anonymous figure named Q, according to the theory, is giving them updates on Trump's battle. QAnon also believe that R&B superstar Beyoncé is really an Italian woman named Ann Marie Lastrassi and is working with billionaire George Soros as part of the conspiracy.

But as ridiculous as QAnon's beliefs are, Trump's allies are willing to promote the cult if it will help his reelection campaign. One of those allies, Sommer notes, is former Breitbart News Chairman Steve Bannon, who has been using QAnon-like rhetoric and claiming that at least some of their beliefs are true. Bannon said of QAnon, "How are they not at least — at least an aspect of their argument — at least appears, directionally to be correct?"

Sommer explains, "With less than two weeks before Election Day and Trump lagging in the polls, some of the president's most prominent allies are going all in on QAnon, while Trump and other top supporters refuse to denounce the conspiracy theory. It is, at its most innocent, a crass political calculation designed to keep a relatively modest, though loud and influential, chunk of the party's base engaged. At its worst, critics warn, it's a green light of acceptance to dangerous conspiracy theorists and a normalization of their beliefs."

The Beast reporter goes on to say that Trump has "refused to disavow QAnon, which the FBI considers a potential source of domestic terrorism." And in Georgia, Sommer notes, "Two Republican candidates are competing for their own QAnon endorsements. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) touted the backing of Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican and outspoken QAnon supporter who's set to win a House seat in Congress in November. Loeffler's challenger, Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), meanwhile, rushed out his endorsement from former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a hero to QAnon believers who recently took the QAnon oath with members of his family."

Flynn, CNN's Marshall Cohen reported on July 7, posted a video using QAnon rhetoric. In the video, Flynn declared, "Where we go one, we go all" — which is a QAnon slogan. [also lemmings]

Another QAnon slogan is, "The storm is here." And Sommer notes that Bannon has been using "storm" references when promoting conspiracy theories involving former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden.

Bannon recently declared, "It's gonna be a storm. The storm clouds are around the Biden camp. The storm clouds are around the Biden camp — a gathering storm."

---

https://www.salon.com/2020/10/19/fox-news-rejected-hunter-biden-expos-new-york-post-writer-refused-to-put-his-name-on-it-reports/

oct 20?

when former LifeLock spokesperson Rudy Giuliani approached Fox News with the trove of emails he alleged had been retrieved from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the network declined to run the story over concerns about its credibility, according to a new report.

Sources told Mediaite that "the lack of authentication of Hunter Biden's alleged laptop, combined with established concerns about Giuliani as a reliable source and his desire for unvetted publication, led the network's news division to pass."

Giuliani previously told The New York Times that he had chosen to place the material with The New York Post because "either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out."

The Post, a sister company of Fox News, published the unverified emails in a Wednesday exposé, which drew widespread blowback for its dubious sourcing. The Times earlier reported that most of The Post article had been written by a staff reporter who refused to allow the tabloid to attach his name to the byline over doubts about the article's credibility.

The alleged emails informing the article were obtained in a circuitous route by two Trump allies: Giuliani and former White House strategist Steve Bannon,** who currently faces wire fraud and money laundering charges in a federal court. The pair gave the outlet a copy of what they claimed was content copied from a hard drive belonging to Hunter Biden, the youngest son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, which they said had been obtained from a computer repairman who wished to remain anonymous.

The repairman told a group of reporters last week that a man named Hunter Biden had dropped the laptop off at his store, but medical issues with his vision prevented him from making an identification.

A number of Post staffers questioned the vetting process for the article and expressed concerns about the sources and the timing as the election nears, The Times reported. Upon publication, other journalists pointed out major errors and holes in article, and the FBI has since opened an investigation into the story as part of a possible Russian disinformation operation, according to multiple reports.

The Times also reported that one of the article's two bylined authors had first learned that her name was on the report after publication; the other writer never previously had a byline at the paper. Both writers formerly worked at Fox News.

The Trump-friendly cable network's so-called "Brain Room" had previously warned hosts about Giuliani's reputation for "amplifying disinformation,"according to The Daily Beast.

One day after The Post published its story, The Washington Post reported that U.S. officials had repeatedly warned the White House in 2019 that Giuliani was a target of Russian intelligence, and information he passed along might be tainted by his interactions with pro-Putin officials in Ukraine.

In the days leading up to publication, a team of The New York Post's top editors met to determine a course of action, including the editor-in-chief and the digital editor-in-chief, a person with knowledge of the meeting told The Times. At least two writers refused to put their names on the report, according to The Times.

The bylines eventually went to Emma-Jo Morris — a deputy politics editor who joined the Murdoch-owned tabloid this spring after four years at Fox News — and Gabrielle Fonrouge, a reporter at The Post since 2014.

At Fox, Morris worked as an associate producer for Trump "pillow-talk" confidante Sean Hannity,according to her LinkedIn profile.Morris' Instagram, which has sent been set to private, included photos of her posing with Bannon and Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally and Republican operative. In July, President Donald Trump commuted Stone's sentence on seven felony counts.

Fonrouge, the article's other acknowledged writer, "had little to do with the reporting or writing of the article," according to The Times.

"The senior editors at The Post made the decision to publish the Biden files after several days' hard work established its merit," a senior Post official told The Times in an email.

The Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have all reported that they were not able to independently verify The New York Post's reporting or the contents of the hard drive.

News outlets have repeatedly debunked allegations of corruption against the Bidens, and a roundly discredited investigation by Senate Republicans — predicated in part on information Giuliani acquired from a Russian agent sanctioned by the Trump administration — found no evidence that the former vice president had engaged in wrongdoing related to his son's business dealings.

Reports of the FBI investigation echoed headlines from the final weeks of the 2016 election cycle, when U.S. intelligence agencies began probing whether individuals connected to the Trump campaign were involved in Russian government efforts to harm Hillary Clinton via dumps of emails stolen from Democratic officials.

"At least in 2016, Trump's allies pushed powerful disinformation," national security attorney Bradley Moss told Salon last week. "These last-ditch efforts barely qualify as trying anymore."

"It's a garbage fire story with obscene numbers of legal holes and flaws," he added.

A Post spokeswoman told The Times in a statement that the story had been "vetted," and it "stands by its reporting."

Roger Sollenberger is a staff writer at Salon.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/how-to-not-be-a-useful-idiot-for-the-rights-smear-machine/

Trump is trying hard to recreate the perfect storm that landed him in the White House in 2016 despite being the most unpopular candidate in the modern polling era. That year, the Clinton campaign's hacked emails were dribbled out over the final six weeks of the race. There wasn't much to them, but internal campaign communications tend to be frank and are easily mined for scandalettes. Having established the storyline that Clinton was as corrupt as Trump, they provided a steady stream of stories with "emails reveal" in the headlines which served to reinforce the right's narrative.

We can expect a similar stream of stories of ostensible "smoking guns" stemming from Hunter Biden's emails (whether hacked or fabricated) to come our way in the final weeks of this race.And some people who want to see themselves as fair will inadvertently amplify the right's preferred narratives by assuming that there must be something there.

So it's very important to keep in mind that the "scandal" is supposed to be that then-Vice President Joe Biden pushed for the removal of Ukraine's top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to stave off an investigation into Burisma Holdings--the Ukrainian gas company whose Board Hunter sat on--in order to protect his son. It is supposed to be a story about conflict of interest--of the elder Biden using the office of the Vice Presidency to help his son.

There is not a shred of truth to those claims. The effort to get Shokin fired "was prompted by a push for anti-corruption reforms developed at the State Department and coordinated with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund," *The Washington Post*reported. And according to CNN, a bipartisan "letter from 2016 shows that Republican senators pushed for reforms to Ukraine's prosecutor general's office and judiciary, echoing calls then-Vice President Joe Biden made at the time."

Shokin was corrupt, and that was a problem. Vitaliy Kasko, a former deputy of Shokin's who resigned over his boss's habit of stymieing corruption probes, told*Bloombergthat Shokin was not investigating Burisma during the period in question. "There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against" the firm or its owner. "It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015," Kasko said. And Daria Kaleniuk, a prominent Ukrainian anti-corruption crusader, told The Washington Post that*"Shokin was fired not because he wanted to do that investigation, but quite to the contrary, because he failed that investigation."

Without some impropriety on Joe Biden's part, Hunter Biden's business ventures aren't a story. He isn't running for office. Like many, if not most children of the powerful, the younger Biden leveraged both his family name and the connections he'd made at Yale to land various business deal and secure a cushy, high-paying position on a corporate board. Both Hunter and Joe Biden have acknowledged that associating himself with a shady Ukrainian gas company--as opposed to, say, a reputable American or Western European firm--was an error of judgment, but it was neither illegal nor unethical. This isn't a meritocracy, and this is one way that wealth and power are reproduced from one generation to the next. It's distasteful and unfair, but that's a class issue, not a scandal. Hunter isn't running for office and his judgment, or lack thereof, isn't a matter of public concern.

Joe Biden spent years in the Senate, and year after year he ranked among the least wealthy members of that body. We know how he came into his wealth--mostly through a multi-million dollar book advance and speaking gigs after leaving office. Biden may not be everyone's cup of tea, but there's no evidence that he's corrupt.

---

twt facebook took down ny post on info from stolen laptop?

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/user-far-right-message-board-was-promoting-ny-post-hunter-biden-articles-days-advance

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// russ hack burisma server?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/conservative-argues-the-on-hunter-biden-are-going-too-far/

With President Donald Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in countless polls and the election less than three weeks away, Republicans are hoping for some type of "October surprise" that will derail Biden's campaign. To fulfill this wish, some right-wing media outlets have been obsessing over the contents of a laptop hard drivethat, according to the New York Post, allegedly belonged to his son, Hunter Biden. Conservative Ed Morrissey discusses the laptop in an op-ed for Hot Air, arguing that the attacks on Hunter Biden are crossing the line.

"Rather than delve into business or political revelations," Morrissey explains, "the NY Post chooses today to report on personal e-mails, photos and the pain and partying they reveal. In a way, it's a more human side of Hunter than we've so far seen."

In the New York Post article, reporters Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge write, "Hunter Biden's e-mails and texts show not just a politician's troubled son angling for lucrative overseas business deals — they also reveal a concerned father, a fun-loving friend and a man tortured by the deaths that have devastated his family."

But Morrissey is critical of the Post's reporting, saying, "I suppose the Post can argue that they are trying to paint a more balanced portrait of Hunter, but I somehow doubt that he or his family will appreciate that nuance. There is something very creepy about publishing the personal e-mails of a public-figure-once-removed like Hunter, and especially those of his daughter in a time of financial crisis."

Morrissey adds, "On top of that, none of what's revealed in this report has anything to do with public policy. It's private conversations and private behavior with no connection to anything to voters' lives or choices. It's an unwarranted intrusion of privacy with no real purpose other than to offer a prurient look into Hunter's 'wild life (and) pained soul' when Hunter's not running for anything. Imagine the outcry that would arise if NBC did this to Tiffany Trump."

The conservative writes although the Post is claiming that the material on the hard drive is entirely Hunter Biden's, he has his doubts.

"It's possible that it's all Hunter's," Morrissey writes, "but it's also very possible that some of it isn't."

Morrissey stresses that the material on the laptop still needs to be "authenticated."

"The potential for dirty tricks looks rather large," Morrissey warns. "Until this data gets fully authenticated by an outside agency — hopefully the FBI, which reportedly has the laptop — the earlier reporting isn't reliable, and this manipulative story doesn't do much to boost the Post's credibility either. The best we can assume is that this story signals that the Post doesn't have much more to wring out of this October surprise."

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/john-bolton-rudy-giuliani/

When Former National Security Adviser John Bolton received a warning about President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani due to his suspected ties to Russian operatives, he wasted no time heeding the warning and urged his staff to steer clear of having any involvement or interactions with

The Daily Beast compiled a report based on what the publication described as "interviews with 11 knowledgeable sources" detailing Bolton's repeated attempts to maintain distance between his department and Giuliani.

It has been reported that in January of 2019, the intelligence committee warned Capitol Hill and the White House that Giuliani was "a target of Russian intelligence operation to feed disinformation to Trump." As months passed, the warnings about Giuliani are said to have "intensified."

"Officials said the warnings about Giuliani intensified in the spring and summer of 2019 as the president's personal attorney appeared on television propagating disinformation about the Bidens and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Masha Yovanovitch. One ex-NSC official said that Giuliani, as a U.S. citizen, was neither named nor referenced in contemporaneous intelligence reports about Russian disinformation efforts. But Giuliani's alarming role was the subject of informal discussions between White House and intelligence officials." - The Daily Beast

A former official also raised concerns about Russia's server hack of the Ukranian energy company Burisma—where Hunter Biden once served on the executive board. It reportedly led to "informed speculation among professionals that this would be the entrée to fabricate material connecting Hunter Biden to corruption inside Burisma, and it wouldn't take more than 10 percent truth."

Bolton even warned his subordinates to refrain from being in meetings with Giuliani present. In fact, Bolton's directives were so specific he even advised against his staff attending Trump's Oval Office meeting May 23, 2019 following the Ukrainian inauguration of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

An unnamed Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee also weighed in as he admitted that Giuliani had been a big topic of discussion.

"Rudy's been the topic of conversation a lot," said the other source, a Democratic member of the House intelligence committee. "Wittingly or unwittingly, Rudy seems to care more about what he can gain politically from his relationship and discussions with Russian assets than he does about how he might be being used."

When contacted about the latest debacle, Giuliani claimed he was unaware of Bolton's opposition toward him.

"I didn't find out that John was unhappy with me or opposed to me until he left [the administration]…I've known him for ten years," and claimed that "when I was being considered for Secretary of State, I told him I'd consider him for deputy."

===

--> IMPEACH

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/democrats-say-the-gops-attempt-to-smear-biden-accidentally-exposed-a-trump-officials-corrupt-scheme/

igor salon

the Republican report aimed at raising questions about the dealings of Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine appears to have accidentally implicated former Energy Secretary Rick Perry in an energy scheme in the foreign nation, according to the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.

Republicans led by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., released their much-hyped report on Hunter Biden’s role at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma on Wednesday. However, it found no evidence of actual wrongdoing and relied largely on debunked claims, old statements and narratives pushed as part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

But the report did find new evidence related to Perry’s actions in Ukraine while he served in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.

Amos Hochstein, a member of the supervisory board at the state-owned Ukrainian energy firm Naftogaz, told lawmakers that Perry “inappropriately pressured the Ukrainian government” to place Texas oil executive Robert Bensh on the board of the company while officials at the Department of Energy pressured the government to sign a deal with a “private business entity connected to Mr. Bensh,” according to a letter Wyden sent to Department of Energy Inspector General Teri Donaldson.

perry also pressured the Ukrainian government to place one of his longtime campaign supporters, Michael Bleyzer, on the board during a trip to Ukraine for President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inauguration in 2019, Wyden wrote. Bleyzer and his partner were later awarded a drilling contract in the country.

“Mr. Bleyzer’s contract that he was awarded was despite the fact that he was not the highest bidder in the process,” Hochstein told lawmakers. “Other . . . bids were higher, and therefore, Ukraine chose a bid that paid itself less.”

The heads of the state-owned Naftogaz conglomerate have since filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the contract, arguing that the Ukrainian government acted “illegally and with bias” in agreeing to the deal, Wyden noted.

“Witness testimony in this investigation has directly implicated former Secretary Rick Perry in alleged wrongdoing, and the department more broadly, in a scheme to undermine anti-corruption efforts that were implemented by Ukraine in partnership with the international community,” Wyden wrote.

Politico reported last year that Perry — who along with then-Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker were the “three amigos” who pushed a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine — played an active role in the Trump administration’s pressure on Zelensky, which ultimately led to thepresident’s impeachment.

ProPublica reported earlier this month that Perry repeatedly pushed deals that “were potentially worth billions of dollars to Perry’s friends and political donors” and could “stand to benefit” the secretary himself. Two of the deals, including one worth $20 billion, went to the Texas firm Energy Transfer. Perry served on the company’s board before and after his stint at the Energy Department and bought shares now worth about $800,000 three months after leaving his post, according to the report.

Ethics experts told the outlet that Perry’s efforts were violations of federal regulations. His actions also caught the attention of federal prosecutors, though he is reportedly not the target of any investigations.

The interview with Hochstein was part of the Senate Republicans’ investigation into whether Hunter Biden’s position at Burisma affected U.S. foreign policy. The report asserted that his position was “problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine.” However, it did not include any new evidence suggesting his role affected the Obama administration’s policy. It also acknowledged that “the extent to which Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board affected U.S. policy toward Ukraine is not clear.”

Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said the probe pushed “Russian disinformation.” He further described it as “an attempted political hit job facilitated by the State Department.”

A Finance Committee aide told Talking Points Memo that finding new evidence against the Trump administration “was certainly not Republicans’ goal.”

“While Republicans’ Ukraine investigation showed Vice President Biden did nothing wrong,” the aide said, “it succeeded in implicating former Secretary Perry in a corrupt scheme to pressure the Ukrainian government to change the board of Naftogaz.”

---

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/biden-ukraine-recordings-oan/612454/

many lnx

Is OAN the Leading Edge of Russian Misinformation?

The Biden campaign says Trump’s favorite TV network is peddling the Kremlin’s lies.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE

JUNE 11, 2020

In what appears to be a signal of intensifying political warfare ahead of the November election, One America News Network, the Trump-supporting cable channel that has been promoting anti-Biden conspiracies for several months, says it has obtained several hours of secret recordings of then–Vice President Biden’s conversations with Ukrainian officials. If such recordings exist, they’re likely linked to pro-Russian interests in Ukraine and a Russian intelligence operation, two former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine and a former ambassador to Russia told me. The OAN employee who claims to have the tapes would not say what was on them, other than suggesting that they will be revelatory.

In the audio that has been released elsewhere so far, Biden is heard dangling the promise of financial aid to Ukraine if its government ousted a prosecutor who was seen as corrupt—which Biden has previously said publicly was his goal, as part of a push for widespread reforms. Conspiracists have alleged that this was intended to help his son Hunter escape charges of corruption, but an audit by Ukraine’s former top prosecutor released last week found no evidence of illegal activity by Hunter in his capacity as an energy-company board member.

[MORE STORIES

Donald Trump

Democracy Versus Kleptocracy

FRANKLIN FOER

The Press Is Embracing False Equivalence—Again

JAMES FALLOWS

Rudy Giuliani: ‘You Should Be Happy for Your Country That I Uncovered This’

ELAINA PLOTT]

What is most remarkable here is that none of this is particularly surprising. Russian interference in the 2016 election has been closely studied over the past four years, and America’s vulnerabilities have only worsened in that time. As my colleague Franklin Foer wrote recently, “Russia’s interference in 2016 might be remembered as the experimental prelude that foreshadowed the attack of 2020.” That OAN is now a player in such interference suggests an escalation that the Biden campaign has been bracing for.

Indeed, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul—who has recalled being secretly recorded himself, among other forms of harassment, when he was posted in Moscow—told me, "There’s never been a moment like this in American history.”

[Read Putin is well on his way to stealing the next election

That includes 2016. McFaul said what he’s seeing now reminds him of tactics the Kremlin has used against its domestic political opponents. “It’s not to convince you of a different point of view. It’s to convince you that there is no truth,” he said. “When it feels like nobody’s telling the truth and there is no truth, the reaction to that is despondency and demobilization.”

It’s hard not to feel some déjà vu here. In 2016, Russian intelligence agents hacked the emails of Democratic National Committee staffers and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and delivered them to WikiLeaks, as a way to get them into the American media. Some outlets learned a lesson from that episode, and have treated new Biden recordings out of Ukraine with care. Others have not. Andriy Derkach, who released the Biden tapes that have already come out, is a former member of a pro-Russian political party who graduated from a KGB-run academy in Moscow. OAN lends his efforts a veneer, however thin, of journalistic legitimacy.

The person now claiming to have more tapes is OAN’s Chanel Rion, the on-air personality who went with Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, on his December trip to Ukraine in part to find information on Biden to help Trump. Rion, who has become famous for her conspiracy-inflected questions at White House briefings, emailed the Biden campaign May 29 claiming that she was working on an “in-depth report” aboutrecordings that appear to be of Biden speaking with Petro Poroshenko, then the president of Ukraine. “We have over five hours of these recordings (beyond what has been posted online by Nabu Leaks),” she wrote, referencing a Ukrainian website suspected of Russian links.

Derkach, a politician known as the “Ukrainian Putin,” has been a proponent of the conspiracy theory that Ukraine was really behind the interference in the 2016 election instead of Russia. And he has previously been eager to provide damaging material about Biden for Trump’s sake. Derkach released a batch of recordings three weeks ago, claiming that they had been made by Poroshenko and given to him by “investigative journalists.” (Poroshenko has said the audio is “fabricated.”) Most mainstream-media outlets have decided that the recordings that have emerged so far offer “little new insight into Biden’s actions in Ukraine,” as The Washington Post’s Carol Morello wrote after the recordings were first released.

Giuliani, reached by text, did not comment on suspicions that the recordings have ties to Russian interests or intelligence, or on whether he was involved in getting any of them to OAN.

Rion was until recently an illustrator. She has said she joined members of the Trump family in 2016 for the New Hampshire primary’s victory party; she has also tweeted a drawing of Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein with the hashtag #spiritcooking, which is often associated with the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. On her website, she describes herself as “a fierce foe of anything Clinton, of everything Obama, and as a total and unrelenting enemy of academic left-liberalism and political correctness anywhere.”

In March, she cited a “monitored source” on air who’d said that the coronavirus had been linked to a lab in North Carolina; that source turned out to be a person who’d tweeted at her. She has asked wild questions at White House briefings, including one about whether Trump would pardon Barack Obama for unspecified crimes, and another about whether Trump’s lawyers would like to depose Joe Scarborough, after Trump floated a baseless accusation that he’d murdered an aide.

Rion’s email, which the Biden campaign forwarded to me, suggests that OAN is “producing an in-depth report on these recordings for OAN's Special Investigates series.” In a phone call on Sunday, she told me that she now expects to acquire much more than the five hours of recordings she mentioned in her email. Rion said that Derkach was just one of the people who have been giving her material. She said she has verified, with the help of “a couple of sources on the ground,” and with sources in the U.S. as well, that the recordings have no ties to Russian intelligence or interests. She would not explain her verification process, saying, “I don't want to tip off anybody.”

It was once unusual for the public to gain access to top-secret government documents, let alone private conversations between the American vice president and a foreign leader. But as countries around the world increase their cyberwar capabilities and their willingness to interfere in one another’s domestic politics, and as the democratization of publishing allows for the rapid spread of misinformation, media leaks of hard-to-verify and potentially doctored documents and recordings of government officials are becoming commonplace.

“It is common practice for Russian intelligence to help put out information in skewed forms in Ukraine, and forensic experts have seen that this information is doctored,” said John Herbst, a former career Foreign Service officer who served as the American ambassador to Ukraine from 2003 to 2006.“The Kremlin is a master at this sort of practice, and the sources in Ukraine providing this sort of information are known to be well connected in Moscow.”

Herbst was one of seven former ambassadors to Ukraine who wrote an open letter to Ukrainians two weeks ago, prompted by the already-public recordings. They said they are “disheartened by efforts to involve Ukraine in America’s domestic politics as the 2020 US presidential election approaches.”

“This all just confirms what we knew,” said Steven Pifer, another former ambassador to Ukraine, who signed the letter.

David A. Graham: What happened in Ukraine?

Russia would love to “somehow inject Ukraine back into American politics,” Pifer said. “There will be people on the American side who play into it—OAN is one.”

The Biden campaign says OAN’s willingness to play along is exactly why the network received the recordings. “In 2016 and ever since, hostile foreign actors have perpetrated insidious efforts to disfigure and poison American democracy. Yesterday’s hacked emails are today’s bugged phones and deepfakes,” Andrew Bates, a campaign spokesperson, told me.

An OAN spokesperson, Krista McClelland, did not respond to a request for comment about the suggestion that the recordings have links to Russian intelligence. Nor did she respond to the Biden campaign’s charges.

Other countries are stepping up their own efforts to get involved in this year’s elections; Iran and China, for example, have been linked to attempts to hack Biden and Trump campaign computers. But Russia continues to lead the misinformation game. The day after Rion reached out to Biden’s team, Sputnik—the Kremlin-owned propaganda service, which American intelligence has accused of being involved in the 2016 misinformation efforts—ran an interview with a former Poroshenko aide who claimed that he was the one who’d made the recordings, and that he’d given them to his lawyers to give the Trump administration. “Because of the coronavirus,” he said,” they are waiting. But in September, closer to elections, they will begin to use them more.”

There’s no evidence to support this. But the Trump campaign doesn’t seem to have much interest in dampening ideas like it: The communications director, Tim Murtaugh, didn’t respond to multiple emailsI sent about whether the campaign has more materials from Ukraine featuring Biden, and neither did White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley.

Election Day is in five months. And the people best positioned to knock down the Russian misinformation apparatus seem most interested instead in propping it up

:{:{}:

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/russia-is-still-listening-democrats-take-aim-at-trump-after-report-uncovers-potential-new-election-help-from-the-kremlin/

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‘Russia is still listening’: Democrats take aim at Trump after report uncovers potential new election help from the Kremlin

Written by Cody Fenwick January 14, 2020

A new report for the New York Times about a Russian hack of the Ukrainian oil company Burisma is giving many a disturbing sense of history repeating itself.

The company, which is at the center of the impeachment of President Donald Trump, was reportedly targeted by Russian military hackers. The Times explained:

…experts say the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens — the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment.

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter worked on the board of Burisma while his father was in office and conducting diplomacy with Ukraine, which raised concerns about conflicts of interest and influence peddling. However, there’s been no credible allegations or evidence put forward to indicate that the Bidens were engaged in wrongdoing, and the vice president’s efforts to root our corruption in Ukraine may have even cut against the interests of his son’s company. Nevertheless, Trump and other Republicans have tried to turn the matter — which was entirely overlooked until Biden became a formidable 2020 contender — into a massive scandal for the Democratic frontrunner.

Now, it looks like Russia is helping in the effort. This is hardly a wild accusation, given the extensive evidence that Russia intervened in 2016 to get opposition research on Trump’s opponent and to otherwise manipulate the election.

Democrats are casting a critical eye at the Trump administration following the publication of the report, noting that Trump has done far too little to curb Russian election interference and has, in fact, encouraged it.

“We only learned of this hacking through the press,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is one member of the Gang of Eight that is traditionally kept in the loop on significant intelligence matters. “Congress must be briefed on what the administration knows about this attack and why the president doesn’t have a plan to protect our elections.”

It’s not clear how much the administration knows about the cyberattack, though the Times’ report does indicate that one “American security official” was a source for information about the operation.

“Russia is still listening, Russia is still attacking,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee.

He was referencing Trump’s infamous proclamation during the 2016 campaign: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find [Hillary Clinton’s] 30,000 emails that are missing.” According to former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Russian hackers made their first attempts that same day as Trump’s request to obtain Clinton’s personal emails.

So it seemed that Russia was listening then, and it seems like Russia is following Trump’s lead now by targeting Burisma, the company he is so personally interested in. And he’s made it clear that, if Russia or anyone else wanted to offer him dirt on an election opponent, he would welcome it.

“I think I’d take it,” he told ABC News in June when asked about whether he’d accept opposition research from foreign governments. “I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening.” Though he equivocated, he suggested he might not inform the FBI if presented with such an offer, despite the obvious counterintelligence risks and potential for criminal activity.

“As far as I see it now, knowing that this president in the past, as Special Counsel Mueller said, invited, welcomed, and planned to benefit as a candidate from Russia’s help, if he does not condemn this, I and many other Americans will hold him as complicit in any attack on any candidate that seeks to benefit Donald Trump,” Swalwell told MSNBC.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/russia-is-still-listening-democrats-take-aim-at-trump-after-report-uncovers-potential-new-election-help-from-the-kremlin/

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‘Russia is still listening’: Democrats take aim at Trump after report uncovers potential new election help from the Kremlin

Written by Cody Fenwick January 14, 2020

A new report for the New York Times about a Russian hack of the Ukrainian oil company Burisma is giving many a disturbing sense of history repeating itself.

The company, which is at the center of the impeachment of President Donald Trump, was reportedly targeted by Russian military hackers. The Times explained:

“Russia is still listening, Russia is still attacking,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-a-right-wing-disinformation-network-keeps-republicans-steeped-in-lies/

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How a right-wing disinformation network keeps Republicans steeped in lies

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly December 30, 2019

While Democrats continue to wring their hands over the 2020 presidential primary, Donald Trump and his enablers decided a long time ago that the eventual nominee would be Joe Biden. That explains the pressure the president put on Ukraine to announce an investigation into the Bidens, a move that led to his impeachment.

But just as we saw with the attempts to smear Hillary Clinton in 2016, the disinformation campaign about the Bidens will continue unabated in an effort to drive up negative impressions of the former vice president. Nicholas Grosman has documented the origins of one of those campaigns that is underway.

Hunter Biden is currently involved in a paternity suit in Arkansas. The New York Post recently ran an article titled, “Private-eye firm claims Hunter Biden is linked to multiple criminal probes.” Here’s the lead paragraph.

Hunter Biden is the subject of multiple criminal investigations related to “fraud, money laundering and a counterfeiting scheme,” it’s claimed in court documents filed Monday in his Arkansas paternity case.

The documents they are referring to were filed by a Florida-based private-eye firm, D&A Investigations, and were almost immediately dismissed by the judge because they had nothing to do with the paternity case. Nowhere in the documents did D&A name the agencies behind the purported criminal probes of Biden.

Grossman did what the reporters at the New York Post apparently couldn’t be bothered to do: he googled D&A Investigations and found their web site. The home page lists “active investigations.”

D&A opened an independent investigation (Transparency) in August 2016 into Hillary R. Clinton (HRC), Jeffrey Epstein & the Democrat National Committee (DNC) claims of: Russia broke into the DNC.

At the time, William J. Clinton (WJC), HRC, John Podesta, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and John Kerry were in collusion with Rogue Officials in the British Isles, Hong Kong, Iran, Russia, the Ukraine, United States, et al, to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.

In other words, the firm is dedicated to spreading conspiracy theories—particularly those that originate as Russian propaganda.

Hunter Biden’s attorney, Brent Langdon, responded to the filings by saying that D&A was engaged in “a scheme by a non-party simply to make scandalous allegations in the pending suit to gain some quick media attention.” As confirmation, the charges were never substantiated and were almost immediately dismissed, and yet they’ve caught fire on right wing media.

Two days after the article in the Post, the story showed up on Fox News under the title, “Hunter Biden is subject of criminal probes, says PI firm hinting at more incriminating details.” Other than repeating what had already been reported and using the opportunity to rehash the claims about Burisma, they added that D&A told them “to expect an additional filing soon, and hinted that more incriminating details concerning Hunter Biden’s business dealings would soon come to light.”

The story was then picked up by OAN and made its way to RealClearPolitics. At this point, the title simply reads: “Court Filing Shows Hunter Biden Earned $156 Million From Ukraine Corruption.” We can assume that social media feeds are now inundated with these false claims.

It is worth noting that this attempt to spread disinformation is so blatant that reputable news organizations are simply ignoring it. But as Grossman writes, “to figure out what to do about disinformation, first we need understand how it works.” This case gives us an example of how that happens. Either news organizations like the New York Post, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics are complicit with a firm like D&A Investigations or they aren’t interested in verifying information when it reinforces their biases. As a result, they spread disinformation and lies.

That is how Trump is able to maintain his 40+ percent support in the polls. Republicans have a propaganda network that keeps them steeped in lies. Back in 2016, mainstream media gave credence to those lies about Hillary Clinton in the name of balance.Beyond offering a mea culpa for their complicity, reporters should do their part to expose the propaganda network for what it is. This story would be a good place to start.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/trump-impeachment-inquiry/far-right-trump-defenders-blast-russia-aligned-ukrainian-lawmakers

as testimony was underway during the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, far-right defenders of the president rapidly spread false and unsubstantiated information in an attempt to bolster a Republican-backed conspiracy theory about Hunter Biden and Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that previously had Biden on its board of directors.

On November 20, Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified before the House Intelligence Committee and provided further support for the central premise of the impeachment inquiry. Sondland confirmed that he believed Trump directed an effort to hold up security assistance to Ukraine unless the country announced an investigation into his political adversaries. Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and others close to the president have repeatedly pushed the evidence-free claim that, as vice president, Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor because that prosecutor was investigating Burisma, where his son worked at the time. (In fact, the prosecutor in question was corrupt, and no Burisma investigation was being carried out at the time when Biden was tasked with advancing the broadly held Western foreign policy goal of pressuring Ukraine to fire the prosecutor.)

While the hearing was underway, conspiracy theory website ZeroHedge published an article claiming that Burisma founder Nikolai Zlochevsky had been indicted by Ukraine’s prosecutor general, and that evidence indicated that Hunter Biden and other Burisma board members had received money embezzled by Burisma from Ukrainian citizens.NBC News reported that the claims in the ZeroHedge article were “incorrect,” as Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky has not been indicted, but that “didn’t stop allies of President Donald Trump from widely disseminating the false account of an indictment, seizing on some truthful elements while wildly extrapolating others.” According to a report from Reuters, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, did announce on November 20 an escalation into his investigation of Zlochevsky to include suspicion of embezzlement, but he “did not provide evidence or details” or mention Biden. Reuters added that the investigation is “is effectively on hold” because “the Ukrainian authorities cannot determine Zlochevsky’s whereabouts.”

According to NBC News, the claim that Burisma’s founder had been indicted was shared by tens of thousands of users on Twitter during the first hour after it was published. Social media analysis tool CrowdTangle showed that by the morning of November 21, the ZeroHedge story had been shared on Facebook pages with a total of nearly 5.5 million followers. The story also began to trend on Reddit’s toxic “r/The_Donald” subreddit. In particular, the story was initially popularized on Twitter by an account purporting to be a news organization, @BreakingNLive, that was suspended from the platform later in the day.

The false story reached Trump’s inner circle on Twitter, with Donald Trump Jr. liking a tweet promoting the ZeroHedge article sent by Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec. (Posobiec appears to have subsequently deleted the tweet.) On YouTube, the indictment claim is being promoted by Red Pill News, a channel verified by YouTube that has 176,000 subscribers, and a channel belonging to far-right congressional candidate Joey Saladino, which has 252,000 subscribers.

Beyond Posobiec, the ZeroHedge claims were pushed on social media by other prominent far-right conspiracy theorists including Jerome Corsi, Bill Mitchell, and cartoonist Ben Garrison. Proponents of the far-right pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory were also behind the social media push. As NBC News reported, “One minute before the ZeroHedge article was published, the anonymous account that inspired the QAnon conspiracy theory — generally known as 'Q' — linked to the same” article that formed the basis of the claims promoted at ZeroHedge. Major QAnon accounts, including @Jordan_Sather_ and @EyesOnQ subsequently promoted the ZeroHedge article. NBC’s Ben Collins reported that “Q” later made a post complaining about the suspension of @BreakingNLive.

Beyond social media, the claims first popularized by ZeroHedge were also featured on disreputable right-wing conspiracy theory websites Infowars and The Gateway Pundit as well as smaller such platforms including The Federalist Papers, WayneDupree.com, [your]News, The Daily Coin, and MAGA Daily Report. (Hannity and Fox “straight news” program Fox News @ Night later covered the Reuters report as well, while featuring pictures and a discussion of Hunter Biden.)

The source of ZeroHedge’s story appears to be an article from Interfax-Ukraine that repeated unsubstantiated claims about illegal payments from Burisma to Biden made by Ukrainian Members of ParliamentAndriy Derkach and Oleksandr Dubinsky at a press conference they held at the news agency, where they did not offer evidence to back their claims. Interfax-Ukraine’s parent company is a Russian business, Interfax, that was recently praised by Vladmir Putin as making “a major contribution to strengthening the authority and prestige of journalism.” Derkach’s claim about the payments isn’t new. As Time reported, in recent months Derkach has repeatedly made public statements alleging improper payments from Burisma to Biden. Those statements failed to catch on in the way the statements made at the press conference on Wednesday did. Other Ukrainian lawmakers have accused Derkach -- who does not belong to a political party and, according to Time, “studied in the early 1990s at Russia’s top intelligence academy” -- of advancing the interests of Russia, which is currently waging a war against Ukraine. According to Kyiv Post, Derkach has made separate accusations about Biden receiving improper payments in an offshore account while providing “no evidence to support these accusations.” According to Ukraine experts interviewed by NBC News, Derkach and Dubinsky are “not credible” and likely held the press conference to boost Trump.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/new-trove-of-ukraine-docs-exposes-clear-paper-trail-from-rudy-giuliani-to-the-oval-office-to-secretary-pompeo

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New trove of Ukraine docs exposes ‘clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo’

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams November 24, 2019

A trove of State Department documents obtained late Friday by watchdog group American Oversight provided new details on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s involvement in the White House effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate President Donald Trump’s political rivals.

The documents, which the State Department turned over in compliance with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, showed that Pompeo spoke to Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani by phone at least twice earlier this year as Giuliani was pressing Ukraine to probe former Vice President Joe Biden. At least one of the calls was arranged by Trump assistant Madeleine Westerhout, the documents showed.

Giuliani in March was also orchestrating a smear campaign against former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who Trump removed from her post in May.

In April, following his calls with Giuliani, Pompeo also called Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who has been implicated in the effort to dig up dirt on Biden.

American Oversight

@weareoversight

Nov 23, 2019

Replying to @weareoversight

This was just the first production of documents from our first lawsuit seeking the public release of Trump administration Ukraine records. There will be more.

We also have active lawsuits for records from Perry, Mulvaney, Sondland, DOD, and more. https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/the-trump-administrations-contacts-with-ukraine …

The Trump Administration’s Contacts with Ukraine - American Oversight

American Oversight is investigating the extent of the administration’s troubling efforts to coerce a foreign government into helping to attack the president’s perceived political enemies.

americanoversight.org

American Oversight

@weareoversight

We can see why Secretary Pompeo refused to release these documents to Congress: the paper trail connects him to Giuliani, showing a March 2019 call right before a call to Rep. Nunes. https://www.americanoversight.org/state-department-releases-ukraine-documents-to-american-oversight …

View image on Twitter

Pompeo, who admitted last month that he was on the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has refused to cooperate with the House impeachment inquiry into Trump.

Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, said the newly released documents shed light on the reasons behind Pompeo’s reluctance to testify or hand over information requested by impeachment investigators.

“We can see why Mike Pompeo has refused to release this information to Congress,” Evers said in a statement. “It reveals a clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo to facilitate Giuliani’s smear campaign against a U.S. ambassador.”

“The evidence is only going to get worse for the administration as its stonewall strategy collapses in the face of court orders,” added Evers. “That American Oversight could obtain these documents establishes that there is no legal basis for the administration to withhold them from Congress. That conclusively shows that the administration is engaged in obstruction of justice.”

In an interview with the New York Times last month, Giuliani acknowledged that he spoke with Pompeo about Ukraine in late March.

As the Times reported late Saturday:

In connection with one such conversation, Mr. Giuliani said he provided Mr. Pompeo a timeline listing what he considered to be key events implicating targets of Mr. Trump, including theBidens, Ms. Yovanovitch and Ukrainians whom Mr. Giuliani said had disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.

Shortly after, Mr. Pompeo “called and said, ‘Do you have any backup?'” Mr. Giuliani said in the interview.

In response, Mr. Giuliani said, he had someone hand-deliver to Mr. Pompeo’s office an envelope containing a series of memos detailing claims made by a pair of Ukrainian prosecutors in interviews conducted by Mr. Giuliani and his associates in January.

The State Department documents come just days after U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified before the House Intelligence Committee that “everyone was in the loop” on Trump’s effort to press Ukraine for an investigation into Biden.

In an interview on MSNBC Saturday, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the American Oversight documents confirm Sondland’s testimony.

“These documents show that Giuliani was not freelancing, that he was essentially talking to Secretary Pompeo,” said Lieu. “Everybody was on the same page.”

PoliticusUSA

@politicususa

Rep. @tedlieu says newly released State Department documents show that "everybody was on the same page" regarding Trump's extortion scheme. #ctl #p2

Embedded video

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/a-gop-picked-witness-just-buried-republicans-bogus-conspiracy-theories-about-joe-biden

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A GOP-picked witness just buried Republicans’ bogus conspiracy theories about Joe Biden

Written by Cody Fenwick November 19, 2019

Throughout the impeachment proceedings into President Donald Trump, Republicans have tried to distract from the central allegations by casting aspersions and floating conspiracy theories about Vice President Joe Biden.

But on Tuesday, one of the key witnesses that the Republicans themselves requested to appear in the public hearings dramatically undercut their efforts to smear Biden.

Former U.S. envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, one of the key people in the Trump administration’s efforts to induce the country to announced investigations into the president’s political rivals, dismissed the allegations against Biden. He said that, while he was involved in the push to get Ukraine to announce in the investigation into Burisma — the oil company where Biden’s son Hunter served on the board — he did not at the time link the company to the former vice president. He said that, in retrospect, he should have realized that there was a connection. Had he realized the connection, he said, “I would have raised my own objections.”

He also emphasized that the investigation of the Bidens would have been “unacceptable” and baseless.

“I have known Vice President Biden for 24 years,” Volker said. “He is an honorable man and I hold him in the highest regard.”

“The allegations against Joe Biden are self-serving and not credible,” he added.

He said the concerns Republicans — and particularly Rudy Giuliani — have raised about the former vice president and his son Hunter Biden, that the father somehow used his office to protect his son, were “conspiracy theories, circulated by the Ukrainians.”

Watch the clip below:

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Replying to @atrupar

Volker portrays Sondland and Giuliani -- but not himself -- as the ones who were interested in leveraging Ukraine to investigate the Bidens

"I have known Vice President Biden for 24 years. He is an honorable man and I hold him in the highest regard."

Embedded video

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How the firing of Marie Yovanovitch exposed a second layer to Trump’s Ukraine racket

PBS NewsHour

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly November 15, 2019

Republicans have made a big deal out of the fact that a president has the right to fire an ambassador. During her testimony on Friday, Marie Yovanovitch agreed. She said,”I have always understood that I served at the pleasure of the President.” The issue under review is not the fact that Trump fired Yovanovitch. Rather, it is the reason he did so. As Yovanovitch’s testimony made clear, she became an obstacle to the president’s attempt to exploit corruption in Ukraine.

Here is how Yovanovitch described the situation in Ukraine.

It was— and remains—a top U.S. priority to help Ukraine fight corruption. Significant progress has been made since the 2014 Revolution of Dignity. Unfortunately, as the past couple of months have underlined, not all Ukrainians embraced our anti-corruption work. Thus, perhaps, it was not surprising, that when our anti-corruption efforts got in the way of a desire for profit or power, Ukrainians who preferred to play by the old, corrupt rules sought to remove me. What continues to amaze me is that they found Americans willing to partner with them and, working together, they apparently succeeded in orchestrating the removal of a U.S. Ambassador.

As George Kent said during Wednesday’s hearing, “You can’t promote principled anti-corruption action without pissing off corrupt people.” It’s clear that Ambassador Yovanovitch pissed off some corrupt people and they launched a smear campaign in order to get her fired.

We know that on the Ukrainian end, those people included two corrupt former prosecutors Viktor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko. It appears that the role of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman was to connect people like that to Rudy Giuliani, as well as reporters like John Solomon. That’s the nexus between Yovanovitch and Trump’s attempt to bribe the Ukrainian government in order to get dirt on his political opponent. There were actually three groups of actors in this drama.

Trump wanted dirt on Joe Biden, as well as affirmation of his conspiracy theory about Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election to help Clinton.

Zelensky wanted U.S. support, both in the form of a White House meeting and military aid.

Corrupt Ukranians wanted to upend the anti-corruption efforts of career professionals like Yovanovitch.

The Ukrainians fed dirt on Yovanovitch to both Giuliani and Solomon, which eventually got her fired. At the same time, they dished out lies about the Bidens and the 2016 election, which Giuliani took back to Trump and Solomon published in his articles. Trump used those lies to pressure Zelensky into making a public statement about opening investigations into the Bidens and the 2016 election—holding out a White House meeting and military aid as the payoff. Everyone was going to get what they wanted, until the whistleblower exposed the whole racket.

That is why I nearly jumped out of my seat on Wednesday when Representative Jim Himes said that “President Trump wasn’t trying to end corruption in Ukraine, I think he was trying to aim corruption in Ukraine at Vice-President Biden and at the 2020 election.” There were actually two quid pro quos that were part of this whole deal. In addition to the one Trump was using against Zelensky, the corrupt prosecutors were willing to dish up dirt on the president’s political opponents in exchange for an end to U.S. anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.

This is where Bill Taylor’s testimony about the two diplomatic channels that were at work in Ukraine—the regular and the irregular—comes into play. Amidst their efforts to get dirt on Trump’s political opponents, the irregular channel, led by Rudy Giuliani, was working to undermine the anti-corruption efforts of the regular channel. The smears against Yovanovich and her eventual firing were part of that effort.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/why-is-the-media-cheering-trump-for-his-campaign-of-lies/

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Why is the media cheering Trump for his campaign of lies?

Written by Eric Boehlert / Daily Kos November 4, 2019

It’s gone from bad to worse: After spending years refusing to call Donald Trump a liar, the press is now toasting his reelection campaign, which is built on lies.

“That campaigns are now being fought largely online is hardly a revelation, yet only one political party seems to have gotten the message,” The New York Times recently reported in a major story on Trump’s reelection run. “While the Trump campaign has put its digital operation firmly at the center of the president’s re-election effort, Democrats are struggling to internalize the lessons of the 2016 race and adapt to a political landscape shaped by social media.” The message the Times presented was unmistakable: Trump’s reelection campaign is trouncing Democrats online. (Trump had gotten “the message.”) Separately, the Times in another piece announced, “The technical superiority and sophistication of the president’s digital campaign is a hidden advantage of incumbency.”

What did the Times almost completely ignore in its flattering reports about Trump’s “web operation”? His reelection campaign is built around spreading lies online. Somehow, that unprecedented presidential campaign strategy wasn’t considered to be the newsworthy one.

“His 2020 campaign, flush with cash, is poised to dominate online again, according to experts on both ends of the political spectrum, independent researchers and tech executives,” the newspaper reported. That was the key angle. Also, Trump isn’t necessarily pushing lies online. Instead, he’s creating “emotionally charged content” and “provocative ads” featuring “divisive themes” and touting an “angry partisan approach,” the paper reported.

If a Democratic candidate such as Joe Biden unleashed a torrent of fabricated and outlandish claims via Facebook campaign ads, it’s highly doubtful that the Times would marvel at how savvy Biden was being and how he was outsmarting Republicans with a digital strategy that relied on constant bouts of purposeful misinformation. Instead, Biden’s constant lies would be the Times’ obvious area of focus. And the brazen untruths wouldn’t be gently referred to as “provocative content.”

Yet with the Trump coverage, the fact that his campaign is wallowing in aggressive misinformation isn’t presented as the most newsworthy element. Instead, Trump’s lies are depicted as being part of a formidable, winning online formula that has desperate, overwhelmed Democrats trying to catch up.

“The campaign under Mr. [Brad] Parscale is focused on pushing its product—Mr. Trump—by churning out targeted ads, aggressively testing the content and collecting data to further refine its messages,” the Times marveled.

At least a recent Washington Post report gently noted so many of Trump’s online ads aren’t true:“Some of the ads accused the freshman [Democratic] lawmakers of making “pro-terrorist remarks,” which they have not done.” But that salient fact garnered just a passing mention.

When the press touts his online reelection campaign as a masterful stroke of marketing and largely ignores the fact that it’s built on a mountain of falsehoods, this all amounts to another way that Trump’s signature lies get normalized. Has the press become so numb to Trump’s torrent of untruths that news outlets are prepared to shrug their collective shoulders when blatant lies emerge as the driving force of a U.S. presidential campaign? That’s stunning, considering that just a few years ago the same news outlets manned fact-checking teams to put campaign ads under a microscope in search of misleading information.

It’s the same type of normalizing Facebook now does when it throws up its hands and says politicians in the Trump era are allowed to lie in their ads, knowing full well there’s only one party that traffics in lies incessantly: the Republican Party.

One Trump ad clearly has been labeled false by the press, in part because it became the centerpiece of a campaign battle over Facebook’s porous policy retarding the truth. The clip from the Trump campaign erroneously claimed that Joe Biden offered the Ukraine government $1 billion in U.S. aid if it stopped an investigation into a company tied to his son.The preposterous claims had already been debunked, and CNN refused to play the ad. But Facebook rejected the Biden campaign’s demand the ad be taken down. The lie-riddled Trump video has been viewed well over 5 million times.

Meanwhile, also being quietly set aside by the press in its mostly positive reporting on Trump’s online reelection machinery is the fact there’s no proof yet that any of it is working. For instance, the Times noted that in an attempt to change the narrative, the GOP campaign quickly spent more than $10 million in the wake of Democrats launching the impeachment inquiry one month ago. “The biggest political crisis of Trump’s presidency is translated into an “impeachment defense task force” to fire up supporters and tap their wallets,” the paper reported, clearly impressed. (Trump’s impeachment-related ads have been viewed tens of millions of times on Facebook.) Because spending more money automatically means success, apparently.

Yet since that time, the percentage of Americans in favor of impeachment and of removing Trump from office has only increased. Overall, there’s been no improvement in Trump’s reelection chances since his campaign started spending tens of millions of dollars on Facebook ads. Doesn’t that suggest Trump’s team is flushing away a lot of money online? Doesn’t that suggest the Trump campaign might not be so savvy and that Democrats might not actually be in disarray?

Recently, Axios touted the fact that online, “Trump attracted three times the attention of all the Democratic candidates combined, underscoring how he consumes the social media conversation.” But again, there’s no evidence that people talking online about Trump more often than they’re talking about Democratic candidates means good news for him, since it’s obvious that lots of people online hate Trump and that’s why they talk about him.

Trump’s online reelection campaign is unlike any in American history, simply because it’s willfully detached from facts and the truth. It’s stunning that the Beltway press looks at something that reckless and labels it super savvy.

Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus. You can follow him on Twitter @EricBoehlert.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/sean-hannity-denies-discussing-ambassador-with-pompeo-after-testimony-release/

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Sean Hannity denies discussing ambassador with Pompeo after testimony release

Written by Matthew Rozsa / Salon November 6, 2019

Fox News host Sean Hannity denied ever speaking with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about alleged efforts by conservative news outlets to smear a former American ambassador to Ukraine perceived as unsympathetic to the goal of soliciting dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.

Claiming that he had been in contact with Pompeo, Hannity decried the diplomat’s testimony as “fake news,” which had been “obsessively, compulsively reported on fake news CNN and other outlets.”

“The ambassador was barely ever mentioned on our show,” Hannity said Monday evening on his primetime program. “We went back and looked. I don’t know anything about this woman, to be honest. Her name came up a few times on the show. She was an Obama holdover. I did ask one question about a news report — if she was involved in something. It was a question. We do news here.”

He repeated, “I never talked to Secretary Pompeo about Ukraine. I never talked to anyone at the State Department about this ambassador. Sorry to burst your fake news bubble.”

Hannity then insisted that the real story was the “obvious Biden family corruption” in Ukraine.

The Fox News host expressed similar thoughts on Twitter on Monday, writing: “Breaking fake news! Never ever talked to Secy Pompeo about Ukraine PERIOD! Fake News CNN trying to boost their ratings by showing me. Biased Zucker needs to start paying me.”

In the transcript of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch’s testimony before Congress last month, the former State Department official was asked whether Pompeo had made any attempts to defend her as she was being attacked by the president’s layer, Rudy Giuliani, and his son, Don Jr.

“What I was told by Phil Reeker was that the secretary or perhaps somebody around him was going to place a call to Mr. Hannity on Fox News to say, ‘You know, what is going on? I mean, do you have proof of these kinds of allegations or not? And if you have proof, you know, telI me, and if not, stop,’” Yovanovitch told Congress.

She added, “And I understand that that call was made. I don’t know whether it was the secretary or somebody else in his inner circle. And for a time, you know, things kind of simmered down.”

Despite Hannity insisting otherwise, there is no evidence that Biden committed any wrongdoing in his dealings with Ukraine. Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was removed from power because groups such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the Obama administration government felt he was not doing enough to root out corruption in the country.

A whistleblower complaint alleging that Trump had attempted to solicit Ukraine to provide him with dirt on Biden in exchange for military aid triggered an impeachment inquiry.

Matthew Rozsa is a breaking news writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History from Rutgers University-Newark and is ABD in his PhD program in History at Lehigh University. His work has appeared in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.

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fox bs

bossie has no lnx to back up any of this (link to solomon artl]

no lnx

Bossie: The media need to investigate Joe Biden and his Ukraine dealings

David N. Bossie By David N. Bossie | Fox News

Are media going easy on Biden?

For the past 12 days, the political media has been focused on “handsy” and “creepy” former Vice President Joe Biden and his penchant for making unwanted contact with women seemingly wherever he is. While these allegations deserve their fair share of attention, the mainstream media may be missing -- or more likely ignoring -- the real Biden story that’s staring them in the face.

When I served as the chief investigator for the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight during the Clinton Administration, I regularly worked with journalists on investigations they were covering for weeks and even months. But 20 years later, those types of stories are few and far between.

BIDEN FACES SCRUTINY FOR DEMANDING OUTSTER OF UKRAINE OFFICIAL PROBING FIRM THAT EMPLOYED HIS SON

That being said, the media must do a deep-dive into Joe Biden and his family’s relationship with Ukraine, like the recent reports byaward-winning journalist John Solomon in his column at The Hill.

The biased media’s refusal to cover the Biden-Ukraine story to date is shameful. President Trump never receives such favorable treatment. In fact, the vast majority of liberal journalists out there today hate President Trump and cover him and his administration with a presumption of guilt.

When it comes to the Biden’s and Ukraine, there’s an awful lot of smoke. Among other things, Solomon is reporting that in 2016 during his tenure as Barack Obama’s Vice President, Biden threatened to pull $1 billion dollars in loans to Ukraine if its President Petro Poroshenko didn’t fire the country’s prosecutor general.

The catch? The prosecutor was allegedly knee-deep in a corruption probe of Burisma Holdings, a firm that featured Biden’s son Hunter as a board member.

Biden got his way and the blowhard former vice president even publicly bragged about the firing.A top official from the Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office confirmed to Solomon that they are currently investigating these troubling allegations.

As it turns out, Hunter Biden’s firm in America (Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC) was allegedly receiving six figures a month from Burisma and according to Solomon, the fired prosecutor told him that he was planning to question Hunter Biden and other Burisma board members before he was relieved of duty.

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Solomon links to court records indicating that over an 18-month period in 2014- 2015 “more than $3 million was paid out of Burisma accounts to an account linked to Biden’s … Rosemont Seneca firm.” This was happening at the same time that Joe Biden was running point for the Obama Administration on matters involving Ukraine.

Using high office to enrich oneself or family members is textbook corruption. It’s an example of crony capitalism at its worst; and it appears Joe Biden was alledgedlyinvolved in a big dose of it in Ukraine.

Citizens United has been working to uncover corruption in our government using Freedom of Information Act litigation against the State Department for years.Last month we filed suit in federal court to try and shed light on the overseas business activities of Hunter Biden and some of his associates after one year of State Department recalcitrance.

Some of the serious allegations involving the Biden’s and Ukraine were first uncovered by Peter Schweizer in his book “Secret Empires.” Once you learn about Hunter Biden’s business associations in Ukraine, it’s quite fitting that Joe Biden made his last foreign trip as Vice President there in January 2017.

According to Schweizer, “Four days before Biden arrived, Burisma made a dramatic announcement: the Ukrainian criminal investigations into the company and its founder had been ended by Ukrainian government prosecutors.”

If Biden were a Republican like President Trump, the mainstream mediawould be digging into these allegations in hopes of destroying him politically. But Biden is a Democratic ally and presidential frontrunner, so the liberal media has taken a pass on Ol’ Joe’s alleged Ukrainian mess so far.

During his visit to Ukraine in January of 2017, Biden made remarks about corruption in Ukraine that haven’t aged very well, knowing what we now know. Biden told Ukrainians to " ... keep demonstrating your commitment to the rule of law; keep fighting corruption; insist on transparency; investigate and prosecute government officials who siphon off public funds for their own enrichment.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

It’s time for former Vice President Biden to answer questions about the real story. There’s a lot we still don’t know about what happened in Ukraine.

David N. Bossie is president of Citizens United, a Fox News contributor, the 2016 deputy campaign manager for Donald Trump for President, and the former chief investigator for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform and Oversight during the Clinton administration. He is the co-author of "Let Trump Be Trump" and “Trump’s Enemies.”

https://www.axios.com/david-bossie-presidential-coalition-ceases-fundraising-721dde4b-42da-4cba-bbe9-2d917b367039.html

[graf]

former Trump campaign deputy manager David Bossie, who Axios recently exposed as milking donors by flaunting President Trump’s name, is trying to repair and revive his controversial fundraising operation.

The bottom line: Bossie suspended fundraising after Axios revealed that very little of the money he was raising was going to political campaigns. Trump was livid, forcing the Bossie retreat. Now, Bossie tells us he is making several changes — presumably to get back into Trump’s good graces and back into the fundraising business.

The impact: Bossie directed his political group, the Presidential Coalition, to cease all fundraising on May 7, 2 days after Axios published the findings of its investigation, done in collaboration with the Campaign Legal Center (CLC).

That's in part thanks to the president, who personally authorized the Trump campaign to issue a blistering statement, without naming Bossie, condemning "any organization that deceptively uses the president's name, likeness, trademarks, or branding and confuses voters," in the wake of our story.
"The president was pissed," a Trump campaign official told Axios. "He doesn’t like the idea that his supporters would be tricked into donating to things they thought were the campaign ... and he doesn’t like it when people benefit from using his name, especially financially."

The fallout: Bossie told Axios that the group is "currently redesigning our fundraising programs, because of my longstanding relationship with the president and because of my desire to only help the president and the administration."

The Presidential Coalition will no longer reference "The Trump Coalition" in its mailers and fundraising materials, Bossie said. He claims they were going to stop using that language after 2019 anyway, "due to the regulatory regime."
The group will also be far more clear that the Presidential Coalition is an affiliate of Citizens United: "We will print it in our mailers and on the envelopes to be even more transparent," Bossie said.
Despite these changes, Bossie still claims that he doesn't think "there was anything whatsoever that was done outside of the appropriate fundraising avenues."
Read Bossie's full response.

By the numbers: The Presidential Coalition's average daily contributions plunged from over $20,000 per day in early May to under $2,000 per day by the end of June, according to a new Axios/CLC analysis of the organization's latest IRS filing from the first half of 2019.

Worth noting: The majority of donations made to the Presidential Coalition (62%) in the first half of 2019 came from unitemized, small donors who gave less than $200 in a year — similar to the contributions from previous years. The dates of those small-donor contributions are not known, given IRS regulations.

The state of play: Despite the backlash it faced, the Presidential Coalition is still spending just a small percentage of its money on direct political activity, though the percentage is higher than that of 2017 and 2018:

The group spent $5.9 million in the first half of 2019, but devoted just $148,100 (or 2.5%) of its overall spending on political contributions. Another $325,000 was spent on "digital ad buys" that correspond to a July pro-Trump digital ad campaign, according to CLC's analysis.
Taken together, the Presidential Coalition dedicated nearly 8% of overall spending to direct political activity, up from 3% in 2017 and 2018.
As before, most of the Presidential Coalition's spending went toward more fundraising, as well as rent and payroll.
What to watch: Bossie said his group has also been building up a $4.3 million war chest, and that starting after Labor Day, the Presidential Coalition will spend $3 million — or $1 million per month — over September, October and November on ads supporting the president and state and local candidates.

Worth noting: Bossie, a Fox News contributor, was totally absent on the network for nearly 3 months after our story ran. However, he did appear on the network again on July 31 to defend Trump after his tweets attacking Baltimore Rep. Elijah Cummings. A Fox News spokesperson told Axios that Bossie is still a contributor.

The Trump campaign told Axios that it stands by its May statement.

Go deeper:

DAVID BOSSIE

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