Here we go again.
From this morning’s front page story in the New York Times:
Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.
The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.
Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign.
There is no evidence to suggest that the promised damaging information was related to Russian government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails. The meeting took place less than a week before it was widely reported that Russian hackers had infiltrated the committee’s servers.
But the email is likely to be of keen interest to the Justice Department and congressional investigators, who are examining whether any of President Trump’s associates colluded with the Russian government to disrupt last year’s election. American intelligence agencies have determined that the Russian government tried to sway the election in favor of Mr. Trump.
OK, that should take down the Trump administration by, oh, noon tomorrow.
Except…
The Times has not seen the email it has written this breathless front-page attack-story about. It was described to the Times by three people.
That’s it? second-hand information by “three people” who the Times either cannot or chooses not to identify?
Did one of them by any chance have a soupbowl haircut, one have wild hair and the other one go “nyuk nyuk nyuk” a lot?
This is followed by the “there is no evidence” paragraph, and the “keen interest” paragraphs, with the now-requisite “American intelligence agencies have determined that the Russian government tried to sway the election in favor of Mr. Trump.” No mention that the “American intelligence agencies” claim is based, entirely, on the comments by a few Obama appointed people, or that the Times had to retract it’s oft-stated claim about 17 agencies making this conclusion.
Then we have a Today Show-reported interview with the woman who was supposedly going to provide this information. She says she has no connection to the Russian government, was meeting about another matter, and that, in any event, Jared Kushner left the meeting 7-10 minutes after it started.
And for that, we didn’t need three unnamed people who listened to her, we have the video tape.
But wait, there’s more.
As Joel B. Pollak points out in his article for breitbart.com:
Rob Goldstone, the purported author of the email, is not exactly a highly-placed source, or a reliable one. He is described as “a publicist and former British tabloid reporter,” and his oddball selfies are all over social media.
If those are the characters through which the Russian government tries to influence foreign elections, the Kremlin suffers from a serious recruitment problem.
How desperate have these people become to tack something – anything – on Trump and his people?
If you have to ask that question, I suggest you reread the above blog.
I’ll end by posting a point made by one of the commenters at breitbart.com, using the screen name 3stepsahead, which sums this up nicely, by comparing media interest in the still-unevidenced collusion fantasy with the fact – not fantasy, but fact – that a phony dossier was created by a British operative working for the Clinton campaign:
Meeting with a lawyer from Russia because they say they may have information of a crime between Russia and Clinton. BAD.
PAYING an ex-british agent to meet with Russian officials to make up allegations against Trump. Perfectly acceptable.
These people are a joke…
Well said.
