When The New York Times Helped Trump By Putting The Brakes On The Russian Hacking Story

[MelissaB]

When The New York Times Helped Trump By Putting The Brakes On The Russian Hacking Story

Talk about strange bedfellows joining forces to produce an unlikely media alliance.

That’s what happened when The New York Times reported on October 31, 2016, that FBI officials had not been able to uncover any evidence that Russian operatives, through allegedly hacking Democratic emails, were trying to help elect Donald Trump.

“Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia,” read the October 31 Times headline which relied on unnamed “law enforcement officials.”

Acting as an almost unofficial time-out, and one that came with the Times’ seal of approval, the article helped put the media brakes on the unfolding Russian hacking story; the same Russian hacking story that has now morphed into a full-scale Trump scandal.

The message on October 31 from the Times’ sources was unmistakable: There’s no conclusive connection between Trump and the Russians, and the Russians’ efforts were “aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.” (Question: How do you not pick sides in a two-person election if you only undermine one of the candidates, the way Russian hackers only undermined the Democrat?)

Lots more here.

[sharedvalues]

1. Media Matters is doing God's work

[MelissaB]

3. Amen!

[shraby]

2. It's possible the alphabet soup wanted to lull the perps into a false sense of security.

Instead of hiding what they were doing, they would go full speed ahead and therefore hang themselves on their own yardarm.

[LaydeeBug]

4. This is so important because a lot of was written and forgotten in the fog of the coup

and we really need all of that insight now that we're in the midst of it.

[dalton99a]

5. Kick.

[wishstar]

6. Media who had access, sat on the explosive Steele dossier too, while hammering on Comey email story

There were several people tweeting that a huge damaging expose was in possession of several media outlets and predicted it would be an October surprise against Trump, but instead all we got was the Comey letter as a damaging October surprise against Hillary

[still_one]

7. Not defending the NY Times, but they are not quite putting the brakes on the Russian hacking story.

What they are doing though is saying this is what they are being told by the FBI, which was indicated in the NY Times headline:

"Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia"

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-trump.html

"Mr. Comey would not even confirm the existence of any investigation of Mr. Trump’s aides when asked during an appearance in September before Congress. In the Obama administration’s internal deliberations over identifying the Russians as the source of the hacks, Mr. Comey also argued against doing so and succeeded in keeping the F.B.I.’s imprimatur off the formal findings, a law enforcement official said. His stance was first reported by CNBC.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader, responded angrily on Sunday with a letter accusing the F.B.I. of not being forthcoming about Mr. Trump’s alleged ties with Moscow.

“It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity,” Mr. Reid wrote. “The public has a right to know this information.”

F.B.I. officials declined to comment on Monday. Intelligence officials have said in interviews over the last six weeks that apparent connections between some of Mr. Trump’s aides and Moscow originally compelled them to open a broad investigation into possible links between the Russian government and the Republican presidential candidate. Still, they have said that Mr. Trump himself has not become a target. And no evidence has emerged that would link him or anyone else in his business or political circle directly to Russia’s election operations.

At least one part of the investigation has involved Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman for much of the year. Mr. Manafort, a veteran Republican political strategist, has had extensive business ties in Russia and other former Soviet states, especially Ukraine, where he served as an adviser to that country’s ousted president, Viktor F. Yanukovych."

The problem is of course is in their presentation of the story, where they are giving the Trump campaign an extreme benefit of the doubt, as evidenced by there last sentence in the article:

"Mr. Stone derided the accusations and those raised by Michael J. Morell, a former C.I.A. director and a Clinton supporter, who has called Mr. Trump “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.” In an article on the conservative news site Breitbart, Mr. Stone denied having links to Russians and called the accusations “the new McCarthyism.”

What I also find interesting is that defenders of trump against any Russian connection like to banter the word "McCarthyism" around whenever anyone makes reference to connections between the two. Glenn Greenwald and Jill Stein are two examples who have been very critical of anyone who associates some kind of Russian connection with trump. That is not McCarthyism, that is pointing out what has been happening.