The Bloomberg article also contains an on-the-record denial that the current Ukrainian prosecutor general has reopened the case into Burisma or Zlochevsky, which served as a lynchpin for the Times' Biden expose. (A spokesperson for the paper told Bloomberg it stood by its original Biden report.)
"The Times’ hand-in-glove arrangement with [Steven] Bannon's “Clinton Cash” project was one of the major press fiascoes of the 2016 cycle," former Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told Politico last week. "It is mind-blowing and journalistically reckless that the Times is going down this road again. The Times is making itself an accomplice to a scheme whereby Trump likely intends to put his potential Democratic opponent under federal investigation for partisan reasons.”
Schweizer said he did not speak to the Times about the Biden story, but that's not really the point. The point is that the Times, having already promoted Schweizer’s reckless and dishonest work in 2016, was back pushing the same anti-Democratic stories that the author has been hyping within the conservative ecosystem in recent months. And of course, the right-wing propagandist couldn't have been happier with the Times' spotlight on Biden, courtesy of a hollow GOP attack. "The Times’ coverage is likely to make this topic a centerpoint of the 2020 campaign," Schweizer told Politico.
Also thrilled were right-wing media, which feasted on the Times' handiwork and presented it as confirmation that Biden is corrupt. “NYT Confirms Hunter Biden Was Paid by Ukrainians While Father Was VP," blared a Breitbart headline, while Schweizer was quickly ushered onto Fox News to hype the Times report and spread more bogus claims about Biden.
All of this circles back to the Times' Clinton Cash fiasco, in which the country's most prestigious newspaper got into bed with a right-wing author who was peddling a patently dishonest book. Recall, it was the Times that trumpeted Clinton Cash as the "the most anticipated and feared book" of the 2016 campaign season. And it was the Times that forged an exclusive alliance with the Breitbart-backed book (published by a Rupert Murdoch-owned subsidiary), and used the factually erroneous tome as a guidepost for Hillary Clinton gotcha articles.
And make no mistake Clinton Cash was riddled with errors, as lots of outlets detailed. From ABC News: " An independent review of source material by ABC News uncovered errors in the book, including an instance where paid and unpaid speaking appearances were conflated." From FactCheck.org: "The author of "Clinton Cash" falsely claimed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State had "veto power" and "could have stopped" Russia from buying a company with extensive uranium mining operations in the U.S. In fact, only the president has such power." Meanwhile, Time noted that a central Clinton Cash claim was "based on little evidence," and even Fox News' Chris Wallace told Schweizer he didn't "have a single piece of evidence" to support his claim about Hillary Clinton changing U.S. policy based on donations to the Clinton Foundation.
Despite all of that fact-checking and public debunking during the 2016 campaign, the Times couldn't find the time or space to inform its readers that the GOP book the paper wildly hyped turned out to be a dishonest, partisan hit job. Now here we are in 2019, and the Times is doing Schweizer’s deceitful bidding once again.
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.
This post was written and reported through our Daily Kos freelance program.
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