I’m not sure if anyone else saw this, but I want to highlight an editorial from Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Enquirer calls out the shitty coverage that the NYT did on the 2016 Election, specifically their hit pieces on Hillary Clinton and an article about “Nothing to see here!” with regards to Russian meddling into the 2016 Election to help Trump. Bunch points out how wrong the NYT was, and also, why they have not issued an apology or tried to clear up all the questions now raised by former FBI agent Charles McGonigal’s arrest.
It was arguably the most consequential “October Surprise” in the history of American presidential elections. In the waning days of the 2016 race, with polls showing Hillary Clinton clinging to a lead over Donald Trump, two last-minute stories broke that rekindled on-the-fence voters’ ethical doubts about Democrat Clinton and quashed a budding scandal around her GOP rival.
Except the “October Surprise” was no surprise to one key player: Rudolph Giuliani, the ex-New York mayor and Trump insider who later became the 45th president’s attorney. Late that month, Giuliani told Fox News that the trailing Republican nominee had “a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.”
Just two days later, then-FBI director James Comey revealed the bureau had reopened its probe into Clinton’s emails, based on the possible discovery of new communications on a laptop belonging to disgraced New York politico Anthony Weiner. The news jolted the campaign with a particularly strong boost from the New York Times, which devoted two-thirds of its front page to the story — and the notion it was a major blow to Clinton’s prospects.
The gist is that Comey couldn’t control the highly partisan New York FBI Branch from leaking to the media, specifically the NYT. Therefore, Comey decided to publicly “open” a new investigation. And that big “scoop” about Anthony Weiner’s laptop? Do most people realize that all that was on the laptop was duplicate emails that the FBI had seen previously? Nope.
And here is how the NYT decided to cover the Hillary Clinton “email scandal.”
And what about Trump and the Russians? The NYT published an article where the FBI cleared Trump of any collusion with the Russians. “Nothing to see here!”
And we know that was not true.
The supposed bombshell — it turned out there was nothing incriminating or particularly new on the laptop — wasn’t the only FBI-related story that boosted Trump in the homestretch of the 2016 campaign. On Oct. 31, citing unnamed “intelligence sources,” the Times reported, “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.” That article defused a budding scandal about the GOP White House hopeful — at least until after Trump’s shock election on Nov. 8, 2016. In the coming days and weeks, the basis of that Times article would melt, but by then the most unlikely POTUS in U.S. history was ensconced in the Oval Office.
Bunch brings up a very, very good point about the “intelligence sources.” It was obviously someone from the FBI who leaked that bogus report to the NYT. Was it someone in the New York FBI Branch? Probably. Was it maybe James McGonigal? It does seem like a coincidence that McGonigal was at that branch, and McGonigal is now charged for working for Oleg Deripaska. It’s a good question. What about it NYT?
Silence.
Bunch brings up the point that if you are burned by one of our sources, a journalist has no responsibility to protect said source. In fact, it’s in the journalist’s interest to tell us, “This is the asshole who told me a pack of lies.” But once again, we get silence from the NYT.
The government allegations against the former G-man Charles McGonigal (also accused of taking a large foreign payment while still on the FBI payroll) and the outsized American influence of the sanctioned-and-later-indicted Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska — also tied to U.S. pols from Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell — should make us also look again at what was really up with the FBI in 2016.
How coordinated was the effort in that New York field office to pump up the ultimate nothingburger about Clinton’s emails while poo-pooing the very real evidence of Russian interference on Trump’s behalf, and who were the agents behind it? What was the role, if any, of McGonigal and his international web of intrigue? Was the now-tainted McGonigal a source who told the New York Times that fateful October that Russia was not trying to help Trump win the election — before the U.S. intelligence community determined the exact opposite? If not McGonigal, just who was intentionally misleading America’s most influential news org, and why?
Too many coincidences here. But the NYT cannot be bothered to have a mea culpa let alone start asking hard questions about we know about the Russians and Trump. Accoring to Bunch, there was an FBI inspector general investigation that took four years to find NOTHING. The FBI cannot find the leakers!
I think it is a good read.
