New York Times: New York Times is Fake News

The New York Times never ceases to amaze. Their recent article, F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims, is shaping up to be a doozy, based on just the title and the first few paragraphs. I'll be going through the whole article (or as much as I can stand) and giving some running commentary. Before we begin, I have to say that these people truly astound me. I remember when I was in fourth grade and I got caught lying to my teacher about some late homework. I felt so terrible I was sick to my stomach. How these people can blatantly peddle such nonsense and then show their faces outside, knowing someone may recognize them, is truly beyond me. At any rate, let's begin.

As a rule of thumb, if you are in some sort of debate, and your opponent resorts to pedantry, you've won. Picking at the particular syntax of a statement means they have no rebuttal to its content. So consider the title. Anyone who's seen a spy thriller or read a Tom Clancy novel knows that a covert adversary seeking intel is called a spy, while an ally doing the same is an agent, asset, or informant. This title is quibbling over whether the FBI asset used to penetrate Trump's campaign was a spy or an informant. Actually not even quibbling; they're straight up calling Trump a liar for his characterization of the ordeal. The title conveys no information but to illuminate the Time's complete lack of impartiality. There is no sort of nuance, that one man's informant is another man's spy. They say he was an informant and that's it. They proclaim the DOJ as an ally, and Trump as an adversary. Not that it's any surprise, except to see them so boldly demonstrating their allegiance.

This first paragraph goes:

President Trump accused the F.B.I. on Friday, without evidence, of sending a spy to secretly infiltrate his 2016 campaign “for political purposes” even before the bureau had any inkling of the “phony Russia hoax.”

Without evidence? This is clearly in response the Time's own reporting. Perhaps these writers didn't get all the way down to paragraph 40 of that article, where it cited former and senior and current senior DOJ officials as confirming that a secret informant was probing Trump's campaign staff. This follows on reporting last week by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, who were the first Fake News-tier outlet to break the story. The Post didn't engage in some in-depth journalism, weaving disparate threads together to assemble the full narrative. Devin Nunes was publicly fighting the DOJ to un-redact the name of an informant mentioned in the EC that was used to justify the FBI's investigation of the Trump campaign. The Post didn't so much break the story as they were the first to decide they couldn't ignore it forever so they might as well try to get in front of it. No evidence...well, it's certainly not the first time the NYT has abused that term.

In fact, F.B.I. agents sent an informant to talk to two campaign advisers only after they received evidence that the pair had suspicious contacts linked to Russia during the campaign.

In fact? A fact according to what source? What contacts were suspicious, and why? And does it matter if they were linked to Russia? Are they saying Hillary Clinton had no one linked to Russia on her foreign policy team? (She did.)

The informant, an American academic who teaches in Britain, made contact late that summer with one campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, according to people familiar with the matter.

Ah, the source is "people familiar with the matter." As opposed to people who have no clue what's going on. I'm familiar with the matter. Can I be a source too?

The New York Times has learned the source’s identity but typically does not name informants to preserve their safety.

Again, just jaw-dropping coming from the outlet that outed the CIA's top undercover operative in Iran. And this just underscores something that Nunes has complained about bitterly. Once again, the New York Times has access to information that the Congressional oversight committees do not. He has to issue subpoenas and threaten officials with contempt and impeachment to get the DOJ to release the same information that they already leaked to the press. We are living in crazy times.

Democrats say the Republicans’ real aim is to undermine the special counsel investigation.

If asking for the documents that launched the operation and established its scope is "undermining," that's a strong indication that there are some legality issues. It's like telling the policeman that asking for your license and registration is undermining your ability to get to work, only bigger, and stupider.

No evidence has emerged that the informant acted improperly...

Nor is there evidence he acted properly. It's an unknown, but highly suspicious. That's why the "mostly conservative outlets" are engaging in something called investigative journalism to piece together the timeline.

After opening the Russia inquiry about a month later, they took steps, those officials said, to ensure that details of the inquiry were more closely held than even in a typical national security investigation, including the use of the informant to suss out information from the unsuspecting targets.

This is the timeline they are promoting. The informant was deployed in response to the investigation. We don't yet know what the timeline really was, but it may have been the other way. If that is the case, it will turn the Time's reporting on its head. (It's okay, they're used to it.)

F.B.I. officials concluded they had the legal authority to open the investigation after receiving information that Mr. Papadopoulos was told that Moscow had compromising information on Mrs. Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” months before WikiLeaks released stolen messages from Democratic officials.

Note the language here. After he was told. Not after he told someone else. (Wasn't that the story up until now?) Expect more developments on this in the coming days. Everyone who is a real journalist will be wanting to ask Mr Papadopoulos, who told you about the emails and when?

Details about the informant’s relationship with the F.B.I. remain scant. It is not clear how long the relationship existed and whether the F.B.I. paid the source or assigned the person to other cases.

Gee, if only there was someone in Congress trying to obtain that information (and being obstructed to the fullest extent possible...)

The real substance of the article is this:

Over drinks and dinner one evening at a high-end London hotel, the F.B.I. informant raised the subject of the hacked Democratic National Committee emails that had spilled into public view earlier that summer, according to a person familiar with the conversation. The source noted how helpful they had been to the Trump campaign, and asked Mr. Papadopoulos whether he knew anything about Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Mr. Papadopoulos replied that he had no insight into the Russian campaign — despite being told months earlier that the Russians had dirt on Mrs. Clinton in the form of thousands of her emails. His response clearly annoyed the informant, who tried to press Mr. Papadopoulos about what he might know about the Russian effort, according to the person.

The assistant also raised the subject of Russia and the Clinton emails during a separate conversation over drinks with Mr. Papadopoulos, and again he denied he knew anything about Russian attempts to disrupt the election.

According to someone familiar with the conversation. It's becoming evident that their source is Halper himself. Am I missing something, or is this a bombshell report that the whole narrative about Papadopoulos is false? The sinister claim put forward in those three paragraphs is that he was asked about the emails and said he didn't know anything, even though he was previously told about them, to the annoyance of the informant. How did the informant know that he was told about the emails in the first place? (The obvious answer is likely to be the correct answer.) It's like the police showing up and telling there's a body under the bridge, and then using that evidence against you so they can wiretap you, leak your information freely to the press, cause you to run up legal bills, and convince half the town that you are a murderer.

Note that there is no mention of what was previously the official story: that Papadopoulos drunkenly spilled the beans to an Australian diplomat, which was ultimately forwarded to the FBI. Are they backing off that claim entirely? The thing is they really can't, as that was already the official justification given for launching the FBI investigation against Trump. Nunes has stated he can't find any evidence of that intel trail, and the DOJ has offered no evidence to contradict him. Is it starting to make sense why they are refusing to provide him the unredacted EC that allegedly started the whole affair?

This new piece is shaped a lot like Wednesday's big article. The title and most of the text is slanted to a desired narrative. In this case, they are crafted to make Trump look like a liar. But quietly buried down in the bowels is the real story. On Wednesday the story was that Trump was indeed spied on, and that the investigation revealed no evidence of collusion. In this article the story is that Papadopoulos told the informant nothing, and in fact it's starting to look like the informant told him about Russians having emails. The headlines and first few paragraphs are all that most people read. Typical readers (liberals like Lisa Page) just read that Trump is a liar, Trump is a criminal, Republicans are attacking the special counsel, etc. But obscured within is the real story. That way, when the facts really break open, the New York Times can say, oh, we already reported that. Se we aren't fake news. And all their acolytes will say yeah that was already reported and no one cared. Why are you making such a big deal about it? Must be your bias. But the truth is that the obfuscation of fact and the amplification of political messaging are done very intentionally. To anyone out there who believes that the New York Times does not primarily serve as political propaganda, I'd have to ask: just what do you think propaganda would look like?