OCTOBER
18, 2019
NEWS
AND VIEWS
HERE
ARE EIGHT ARTICLES ON TRUMP’S LATEST VOTE-SEEKING EFFORTS AND INFORMATION ON SOME
OF THE OTHER PLAYERS INVOLVED, AS THEY COME FORWARD TO SPEAK ABOUT HIS LATEST PLOT
TO AGAIN PULL* THE STRINGS ON HIS PUPPETS – THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. I THINK PRESIDENT
TRUMP MAY HAVE STEPPED IN OVER HIS HEAD THIS TIME, ESPECIALLY AS IT IS ALMOST THE
VERY SAME SCHEME (HOW UNIMAGINATIVE) – TO GET A FOREIGN NATION TO GIVE POLITICAL
DIRT IN EXCHANGE FOR THEIR MILITARY AID, OR IN RUSSIA’S CASE, THE COVERT CONTROL
OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE USA. CHECKMATE.
THE
FACTS THAT WE HAD ALREADY PROMISED MILITARY HELP IN AN AGREEMENT WITH UKRAINE,
AND THAT THEY ARE AN ALLIED PEOPLE WHO ARE IMMINENTLY ENDANGERED BY AN
AGGRESSOR NATION, JUST DON’T MATTER TO HIM. THE FACT THAT A WIDE VARIETY OF
COUNTRIES ARE NO LONGER ABLE TO TRUST US DOESN’T MATTER EITHER, I GUESS, AS LONG
AS HE GETS HIS ELECTION FIX IN.
MULVANEY’S
COMMENT BELOW EXPLAINS IT ALL – “GET OVER IT.” MY PART OF THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY
AREN’T READY TO DO THAT. THE GROWING REACTION INCLUDING AMONG REPUBLICANS
AGAINST TRUMP, NOT JUST BECAUSE HE’S RIGHTIST, BUT BECAUSE HE IS TREACHEROUS, SHOWS
THAT. IN THE SOUTH THERE’S A WORD FOR THAT. HE’S A SNAKE IN THE GRASS.
Mulvaney
walks back his remarks that Trump held up Ukraine aid for political reasons
"Get
over it," he said earlier Thursday. "There’s going to be political
influence in foreign policy."
Oct.
17, 2019, 2:00 PM EDT / Updated Oct. 17, 2019, 6:23 PM EDT
By
Allan Smith
Image:
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney answers questions from
reporters in the briefing room Oct. 17, 2019.Leah Millis / Reuters
Acting
White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Thursday walked back comments he
made earlier in the day suggesting that President Donald Trump held up military
aid to Ukraine until it moved to investigate a conspiracy involving the 2016
U.S election.
"There
was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any
investigation into the 2016 election," he said in a statement,
contradicting remarks he made during an earlier press briefing.
"The
president never told me to withhold any money until the Ukrainians did anything
related to the server. The only reasons we were holding the money was because
of concern about lack of support from other nations and concerns over
corruption," he added.
Speaking
with reporters at the White House earlier Thursday, Mulvaney said part of the
reason the aid to Ukraine was held up was because the president had concerns
about corruption in Ukraine related to the 2016 election. Mulvaney said the
president also has a strong distaste for foreign aid and doesn't like
"spending money overseas."
Download
the NBC News app for breaking news and politics
"So
the demand for an investigation into the Democrats was part of the reason he
ordered to withhold funding to Ukraine?," ABC's Jonathan Karl asked.
"The
look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing he was worried
about in corruption with that nation, and that is absolutely appropriate,"
Mulvaney said.
Karl
pressed Mulvaney, saying, "To be clear: what you just described is a quid
pro quo. It is 'funding will not flow unless the investigation into the
Democratic server happened, as well.'"
"We
do that all the time with foreign policy," Mulvaney responded, adding that
the administration had also held up money to three Central American countries
so that they would change their immigration policies.
"Get
over it," he said. "There’s going to be political influence in
foreign policy."
'It
happens all the time': Mulvaney tells reporter to 'get over it' after quid pro
quo admission
OCT.
17, 201902:43
Mulvaney's
admission angered and confused allies of Trump inside and outside the
administration, according to two people familiar with the matter. One of them
called Mulvaney’s comments in the White House briefing room "an
unmitigated disaster."
Trump
and his allies have for the past month insisted no quid pro quo took place
regarding Ukraine. House Democrats opened an impeachment inquiry into the
president after a whistleblower filed a complaint over Trump's July 25 phone
conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the
administration's subsequent response.
In
a White House summary of the call, Trump asked Zelenskiy for a
"favor" shortly after the latter discussed U.S. military aid. That
favor included asking Zelesnkiy to probe a baseless conspiracy theory about a
Democratic National Committee email server being in Ukraine, as well as former
Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is spearheading
the impeachment inquiry, reacted to Mulvaney's Thursday comments by saying that
the situation has "gone from very, very bad to much, much worse."
Mulvaney
on Thursday insisted that the holdup had "absolutely nothing to do with
Biden."
"I
was involved with the process by which the money was held up temporarily,
OK?" Mulvaney said. "Three issues for that. The corruption in the
country, whether or not other countries were participating in the support of
the Ukraine, and whether or not they were cooperating in an ongoing
investigation with our Department of Justice. That's completely
legitimate."
A
senior Justice Department official said in response: "If the White House
was withholding aid from Ukraine with regard to any investigation by the
Justice Department, that’s news to us."
Asked
about Mulvaney's remarks Thursday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said,
"You don’t hold up foreign aid that we had previously appropriated for a
political initiative. Period."
On
whether the admission amounted to evidence of impeachable conduct, Murkowski
said she would "need to look exactly to what" Mulvaney said.
Democrats
were swift to respond to Mulvaney's remarks. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif.,
tweeted that Mulvaney "co-signed" Trump's "confession to the
crime." Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., asked, "Since Mulvaney just
admitted there was a quid pro quo, what are all the Republicans who have been
pretending there wasn’t one going to do?"
"So
let’s follow up with those Republican members who went on the tv and said there
was no quid pro quo now that Mulvaney has enthusiastically admitted to
it," Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, tweeted. "What’s the new talking
point? My guess is 'Caravan! Emails! Jibber jabber! Cheeseburgers!'"
The
debunked DNC server conspiracy — known as "CrowdStrike" — seeks to
distance Russia from culpability in the hacking of Democratic National
Committee emails. CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity firm that investigated the
hacking, and the conspiracy theory paints its findings about Russia's hacking
efforts as suspect and politically motivated.
Last
month, Trump's former homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, told ABC's
"This Week" that the theory is "not only a conspiracy, it is
completely debunked," adding that "it has no validity."
"United
States government reached its conclusion on attributing to Russia the DNC hack
in 2016 before it even communicated it to the FBI, long before the FBI ever
knocked on the door at the DNC, he continued. "So a server inside the DNC
was not relevant to our determination to the attribution. It was made upfront
and beforehand."
"The
DNC server and that conspiracy theory has got to go, they have to stop with
that, it cannot continue to be repeated in our — in our discourse,"
Bossert added, saying that if Trump continues to focus on 2016, "it's
going to bring him down."
Image:
Allan Smith
Allan
Smith
Allan
Smith is a political reporter for NBC News.
Geoff
Bennett and Pete Williams contributed.
APOLOGIES
FOR MY PHRASEOLOGY:
“TO
AGAIN PULL”* THE STRINGS ON HIS PUPPET – THIS IS CALLED A SPLIT INFINITIVE,
AND IT WAS STRONGLY CRITICIZED WHEN I WAS YOUNG. IN SPEECH MORE THAN WRITING, SPLITS
ARE SO COMMONLY USED THAT IT SOUNDS POMPOUS AND EVEN SILLY TO ME TO USE THE
STILTED PHRASING THAT WILL AVOID THEM. BESIDES, IT MANY TIMES ADDS EMPHASIS,
POETIC RHYTHM AND DRAMA TO THE PHRASE WRITTEN IN THAT WAY. I OFTEN USE THEM. TO
DEFEND MYSELF ON THE MATTER I HAVE INCLUDED A COMMENT FROM THE VERY GOOD
WEBSITE, QDT, QUICK AND DIRTY TIPS, WHOSE WRITER STYLES HERSELF AS “GRAMMAR
GIRL.” SHE’S LITERATE, BUT SHE ISN’T A STICK IN THE MUD. IT’S A VERY ENTERTAINING
AND INFORMATIONAL ARTICLE. IF YOU’RE INTERESTED, GO TO https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/split-infinitives.
THE
FOLLOWING ARTICLE TELLS MORE ABOUT THE TRUMP CONSPIRACY THEORIES, OF WHICH I
UNDERSTAND THERE ARE MORE THAN ONE, “CROWDSTRIKE” BEING ONE OF THEM; THE IDEA
THAT PRESIDENT PUTIN OF RUSSIA DID NOT DO ANY INTERFERING WITH OUR ELECTIONS,
BUT RATHER WAS A VICTIM IS ANOTHER -- THE DNC FRAMED HIM. FINALLY, THERE IS THE
“INSURANCE POLICY,” WHICH IS ONE OF PRESIDENT TRUMP’S PARANOID THOUGHTS, THAT THE
DNC HAD PLANNED THE CURRENT IMPEACHMENT FROM EVEN BEFORE THE 2016 ELECTION,
BASED ON THE EMAIL EXCHANGES BETWEEN THE FBI AGENTS STRZOK AND LISA PAGE.
IF
YOU FEEL CONFUSED AFTER READING THIS ARTICLE, I THINK IT’S PARTLY BECAUSE
CONSPIRACY THEORIES ARE BY THEIR NATURE IRRATIONAL, CONFUSED AND COMPOSED OF
HINTS AND STATEMENTS WITHOUT FACTS TO BACK THEM UP. THESE THEORIES HAVE BEEN COMINGLED
LOOSELY BY THE TRUMP TEAM IN ORDER TO BLAME THE DEMOCRATS FOR CROWDSTRIKE* AND
HILLARY’S SUPPOSED “INSURANCE POLICY,” AND THEN MORE RECENTLY TO INCLUDE JOE
BIDEN IN ORDER TO THROW PUBLIC DOUBT ON HIM, AND MOST OF ALL, SHIFT THE CONSPIRACY
AWAY FROM RUSSIA. THEY DIDN’T DO IT. THE DEMOCRATS DID IT.
GO
TO https://www.npr.org/2019/09/25/764052120/read-transcript-of-president-trumps-call-with-ukraine-s-leader
TO READ A TRANSCRIPT OF TRUMP’S CALL TO THE UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT.
Trump
seized on a conspiracy theory called the 'insurance policy.' Now, it's at the
center of an impeachment investigation.
Just
months after Trump’s inauguration, conspiracy theorists pushed a fanciful
and unsubstantiated narrative in which the DNC framed Russia for election
interference.
Oct.
3, 2019, 4:07 PM EDT
By
Ben Collins
Photograph
-- An effort to combine three fringe web conspiracies consumed the president's
inner-circle. Their connection? They all absolved Russia. Chelsea Stahl
/ NBC News; AP; Getty Images
An
anonymous post from March 2017 on the far-right 4chan message board
teased a conspiracy theory that would eventually make its way to the White
House.
“Russia
could not have been the source of leaked Democrat emails released by
Wikileaks,” the post teased, not citing any evidence for the assertion.
The
post baselessly insinuated that CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that
worked with the Democratic National Committee and had been contracted to
investigate a hack of its servers, fabricated a forensics report to frame
Russia for election interference. The 4chan post was published three
days before then-FBI Director James Comey testified before Congress about
Russian interference in the 2016 election.
And
that was how it started. That post is the first known written evidence of this
unfounded conspiracy theory to exonerate Russia from meddling in the 2016
election, which more than two years later would make its way into the telephone
call that may get President Donald Trump impeached. (Federal law enforcement
officials have repeatedly made it clear that Russia unquestionably did meddle
in the election.)
In
the years that followed the original 4chan post, at least three different but
related conspiracy theories would warp and combine on the fringes of the internet,
eventually coalescing around Ukraine’s supposed role in helping Trump’s 2016
opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Ukraine
wasn’t originally part of the theory, but in July, Trump floated CrowdStrike’s
name during a call with the president of Ukraine as just one piece of a
convoluted conspiracy accusation. That phone call is now at the center of a
congressional investigation and impeachment inquiry into whether the president
abused his power for political gain.
Video
-- Trump: Ukraine and China 'should investigate' the Bidens
OCT.
3, 201901:17
“I
would like to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine,
they say CrowdStrike … ” Trump said on the call, according to a White House
summary. “I guess you have one of your wealthy people. ... The server, they
say Ukraine has it.”
To
even people who have followed these theories closely, Trump’s call felt
detached from any sense of logic.
“It’s
a whole new mountain of nonsense,” said Duncan Campbell, a British digital
forensics expert who investigated the original claim about CrowdStrike.
This
omnibus conspiracy theory has been frequently referred to on far-right blogs,
Fox News and recently by the president as the Democrats’ “insurance policy,” a
reference to the supposed setup as a way to impeach the president if Trump were
to win the election.
Though
all the individual theories have been debunked, each has contributed elements
that have been cited by the president, as well as his personal lawyer, Rudy
Giuliani.
Beginning
months after Trump’s inauguration, conspiracy theorists have pushed this
fanciful and unsubstantiated narrative in which the Democratic National
Committee framed Russia for its election interference in 2016 and later covered
up its false accusation with help from then-Vice President Joe Biden and
officials in Ukraine.
In
the conspiracy theory, impeachment proceedings recently pursued by House
Democrats were always the DNC’s endgame, effectively a cash-out on the
“insurance policy.”
Trump
has repeatedly referred to the “insurance policy” by name in tweets and in remarks
on the White House’s South Lawn.
“This
is a study of Russia. Why didn’t they invest in the insurance policy? In other
words, should Hillary Clinton lose, we’ve got an insurance policy,” Trump
said in front of the White House on May 30. “Guess what? What we’re in
right now is the insurance policy.”
Although
Trump has often brought up various conspiracy theories, there had been
little indication that the president had taken aggressive action on them. That
changed last month, when the White House released the summary of a call with
Ukraine. The subsequent release of a whistleblower complaint further confirmed
that the ardently pro-Trump conspiracy theories that have percolated on the far
right for years had reached the highest echelons of power — and influenced the
decision-making of the president.
NBC
News tracked these various threads in an attempt to understand how they
evolved and how they eventually reached the president.
CrowdStrike
Campbell,
the digital forensics expert, helped debunk the theory that CrowdStrike framed
Russia for the DNC in 2018. He analyzed the data and the origin of
documents that had been published on a blog two months after the 4chan post,
which purported to contain proof that Russia couldn’t have hacked the DNC.
Campbell
investigated the claims and found that the documents were fake, with
metadata on the files offering proof that they were illegitimate. Campbell also
tracked the source of the documents to a 39-year-old British internet troll working
under a fake name who had frequently pushed pro-Russian conspiracy theories
under various aliases.
But
the fake documents proved effective in perpetuating the CrowdStrike theory. The
fake documents found their way to a group of former intelligence officials
called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity led by William Binney, a
whistleblower who used to work at the National Security Agency. Binney pushed
the conspiracy theory several times on Fox News and, at the request of Trump,
met with then-CIA Director and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to
discuss the theory. Binney has since disavowed the veracity of the documents
after viewing the files’ metadata.
Video
-- Debunking the CrowdStrike theory in the Ukraine call
OCT.
2, 2019 03:48
Two
years later, in June, former Trump adviser Roger Stone revived the debunked
CrowdStrike conspiracy theory as part of his defense. Stone has been charged
with witness tampering and five counts of making false statements to the
special counsel.
One
month and 11 days after that, Trump brought up CrowdStrike in a call with
Ukraine’s president.
Even
after months of investigating the origins of the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory,
Campbell said he doesn’t believe even the president has a full grasp of what
the theory is meant to insinuate.
Campbell
also said that CrowdStrike examined many servers as part of its investigation
into how the DNC was hacked, whereas the president wondered on the phone with
Ukraine’s president if a single server might be in Ukraine. The company also
recently clarified that it had taken no servers into its possession as part of
its DNC investigation.
Campbell
said Trump may have mixed up even another conspiracy theory in a news
conference last week, conflating Hillary Clinton’s email server with the DNC
servers examined by CrowdStrike.
At
Trump’s direction, the State Department has recently reignited a probe to find
the contents of a private email server Clinton held when she was secretary of
state. When asked by a reporter if he believes some of Clinton’s deleted emails
could be in Ukraine, Trump replied, “I think they could be.”
“Trump’s
comments seem to me to be incoherent, even in the context of this conspiracy
theory,” Campbell said.
Recommended
WHITE
HOUSE -- Trump escapes impeachment onslaught to give Texas Republicans a boost
IMPEACHMENT
INQUIRY -- Energy Sec. Rick Perry, embroiled in Ukraine affair, to resign
Nina
Jankowicz, a former advisor to Ukraine’s foreign ministry, also said she
was surprised when Trump mentioned CrowdStrike in conjunction with Ukraine.
“I
was in Ukraine when the first conspiracies about ‘Ukrainian collusion’ was
coming about,” Jankowicz said. “It was all this murky narrative about how
maybe the Ukrainians wanted Hillary.”
Jankowicz
said that while various conspiracy theories had swirled around Ukraine, none to
her knowledge had touched on CrowdStrike. That company was part of a
separate conspiracy theory that posited that the location of Clinton emails
were hidden as part of a cover-up.
“Never
was there any mention in 2016 of the DNC servers being in Ukraine,” said
Jankowicz, who is now a fellow at the Wilson Center studying disinformation.
“The whole CrowdStrike thing blows my mind.”
Theories
collide
Conspiracy
theorists were eager to tie CrowdStrike to yet another theory focused on one of
the president’s political rivals: Joe Biden.
In
March, John Solomon, a conservative opinion contributor to the politics-focused
news website The Hill, began to gain traction with conservative media
publications for a series of articles insinuating that the Biden family had
been involved with a cover-up that included the vice president pressuring
Ukraine’s president to fire a prosecutor who wanted to investigate the Biden
family’s business connections in the country.
The
theory has been widely debunked. While Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, did work
with a Ukrainian energy company, an investigation into his business
relationships was later closed, and the investigator who was fired was the
focus of international pressure due to a lack of corruption enforcement.
But
the notion of a Biden-led cover-up dovetailed nicely with what Trump
and many conspiracy theorists were working to prove — that Russia hadn’t hacked
the election.
While
it’s not clear how the CrowdStrike portion of the conspiracy theory reached
Trump, outside of Binney’s meeting years before, Giuliani seized on the Ukraine
thread publicly, while privately beginning to pursue an investigation.
In
April, Masha Yovanovitch, then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, was recalled to
Washington. Yovanovitch had been mentioned by Solomon* in his articles as
denigrating Trump to Ukrainian officials, a claim that was echoed on Fox News.
“The
idea was to make it look like Ambassador Yovanovitch was doing Clinton and
Obama’s bidding,” Jankowicz said.
Image:
Joe Biden, Hunter BidenJoeand Hunter Biden in the Old Senate Chamber on Capitol
Hill on Jan. 6, 2009.Charles Dharapak / AP file
Looking
to combine the two theories, online conspiracy theorists began pushing
baseless rumors that CrowdStrike’s chief technology officer and co-founder,
Dmitri Alperovitch, who is Russian-American, was simultaneously working for
Ukraine. There is no evidence to support that claim.
The
conspiracy theory about Biden wound up being repeated three times in Trump’s
phone call with Ukraine’s president. The Hill’s columns were later explicitly
mentioned in the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s interactions with
Ukraine’s president that was released to Congress last week.
The
Ukraine element fit particularly well with the “insurance policy” narrative
that suggested any attempt to investigate the president was actually part of a
Democratic conspiracy.
The
phrase refers to a text sent from then-FBI agent Peter Strzok to FBI attorney
Lisa Page, with whom he was having an affair. Strzok, who was investigating
Russia’s interference into the 2016 election for the FBI, was texting with Page
about internal debates about how publicized and prioritized the probe, which
had not yet been made public, should be.
“It’s
like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before 40,” Strzok wrote
in a text, referring to the investigation. Transcripts of 16 months of
texts between Strzok and Page were released by the Justice Department in
December 2017.
Trump
and conservative media have since taken the text to mean Strzok and members
of what the president termed the “deep state” at the FBI were part of what he
called a “coup” to remove him from office, even before he was elected.
For
this conspiracy theory, Jankowicz said, the more anecdotes, the better — even
if they don’t make sense when they’re all put together.
“That’s
all the proof that any conspiracy theorist needs. Don’t look at the timeline at
all. You just need a simple narrative to stick to,” Jankowicz said. “The
more complicated you make it, the harder it is to figure out. And sometimes
that’s the point.”
The
Hill and Fox News
On
March 23, Giuliani’s Twitter account hit “like” on a tweet featuring a video
clip from Sean Hannity’s Fox News primetime show. In it, frequent guest
commentator Joe DiGenova alleged that Ukrainian officials tried to help Hillary
Clinton during the 2016 U.S. elections, referring to one of Solomon’s articles
in The Hill.
That
“like” by Giuliani is the earliest known public evidence of how this conspiracy
theory reached the president’s personal lawyer, according to records of
Giuliani’s social media activity preserved by NBC News.
Image:
Rudy GiulianiRudy Giuliani speaks at an event in Ashraf-3 camp in Manza,
Albania, on July 13, 2019.Florion Goga / Reuters file
In
the six months since the Twitter interaction, Giuliani has tweeted numerous
times in reference to the Ukraine theory, including falsely stating in April
that “now Ukraine is investigating Hillary campaign and DNC conspiracy with
foreign operatives including Ukrainian and others to affect 2016 election.”
Ukraine is not investigating the Clinton campaign.
Other
members of Trump’s inner circle have also promoted various accusations leveled
against Biden that coincided with Giuliani’s efforts to dig up dirt on him. Legitimate
concerns about Biden’s son and his business deal with the Ukrainian energy
company Burisma have been folded into the conspiracy theory, conflating
real-life conflict of interest questions with allegations of a fantastical
conspiracy by a global cabal.
On
Monday, Giuliani was subpoenaed for his involvement in the White House
effort to dig up incriminating evidence on Biden; the article that was
mentioned in the Fox News segment ended up as a part of a whistleblower
complaint filed against the president; and Solomon’s main source has walked
back some of the claims that helped fuel the article that reached Fox News.
The
president now faces an impeachment inquiry into whether his attempts to pressure
the president of Ukraine to investigate the conspiracy theory constitutes an
abuse of power and if the president’s staff then tried to cover up the
president’s actions.
Ben
Collins
Ben
Collins covers disinformation, extremism and the internet for NBC News.
THE
ARTICLE ABOVE FAILED TO MENTION WHO “SOLOMON” IS. SEE MOTHER JONES, THE DAILY
BEAST AND OTHERS ON THIS PERSONAGE. ALL THIS MATERIAL ON THE NAME “SOLOMON”
SHOWS ME THAT I MUST INDEED BE BIASED AGAINST “CONSERVATIVE” SOURCES. I’M JUST
NOT WATCHING ENOUGH FOX NEWS INTERVIEWS. HE IS LIKE CHER AND AOC – OH, YES, AND
BERNIE. THERE IS ONLY ONE.
POLITICS
OCTOBER
6, 2019
Columnist
at the Center of Ukraine Scandal Joins Fox News
John
Solomon’s stories were part of the whistleblower complaint that sparked the
impeachment inquiry.
Pema
Levy
PEMA
LEVY
Reporter
Bio
| Follow
SCREEN
SHOT -- Conservative columnist John Solomon appearing on Sean Hannity's Fox
News show on August 20, 2019.Fox News
For
months, opinion columnist John Solomon has played a central role in stoking
right-wing conspiracies about Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election and Joe
Biden’s involvement with the country as vice president. Now, Solomon is
making his alliance with pro-Trump forces official by joining Fox News as a
contributor, according to the Washington Examiner and Mediaite.
Solomon,
who was a columnist at the Hill until last week, was already making frequent
appearances on Fox show, including Trump friend Sean Hannity’s show, where he pushed
the pro-Trump Ukraine narrative. Those appearances have helped Trump’s theories
about Ukraine gain credence on the right and made Solomon a figure of interest
in the impeachment inquiry.
The
whistleblower, who’s complaint set off the current impeachment inquiry,
included Solomon’s work in the complaint. “Beginning in late March 2019, a
series of articles appeared in an online publication called The Hill,” one
section of the complaint begins. Those articles gave voice to false narratives,
including the debunked claim that Biden used his power as vice president to
quash an investigation into a gas company where his son Hunter was a
board-member, a now-retracted allegation that the former ambassador to Ukraine
gave a Ukrainian prosecutor a list of people not to prosecute, and that the US
embassy in Kiev had blocked Ukrainian prosecutors from delivering “evidence” about
2016 to US officials.
Throughout
the spring, Solomon became part of a campaign by Trump and Giuliani to gin up
the Ukraine conspiracies. A main source for him was then the prosecutor general
of Ukraine, Yuriy Lutsenko, who was also sharing information with Rudy
Giuliani, Trump’s private attorney and the lead instigator of Trump’s Ukraine-related
conspiracies. Lutsenko was known as an untrustworthy opportunist whose contacts
with Giuliani and Solomon came as Ukrainian elections put his own career at risk.
Solomon would discuss his stories on Fox, where they were picked up and trumpeted
by the president, Donald Trump Jr., and Giuliani.
Donald
J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
“John
Solomon: As Russia Collusion fades, Ukrainian plot to help Clinton emerges.”
@seanhannity @FoxNews
81.9K
10:40
PM - Mar 20, 2019
Twitter
Ads info and privacy
43.5K
people are talking about this
Solomon
began his career as an investigative reporter, including stints at the
Washington Post. But in recent years, his work at the Hill has made him a
favorite of the right while the rest of the media has noted his inaccuracies
and tendency to push false narratives. Solomon produced multiple stories about
the debunked Uranium One scandal. In 2017, he co-authored a story about
attorney Lisa Bloom trying to secure payments for women considering coming
forward to accuse Trump of assault that portrayed the women as out for money,
which prompted a complaint from his colleagues to management. The Daily Beast
described Solomon as a “one-man conservative investigative unit.”
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HERE
IS THE DAILY BEAST TRASHING SOLOMON, TOO. HE IS NOT POPULAR FOR HIS HONESTY AND
FAIRNESS.
SOLOMONIC...WISDOM?
Water
Finds Its Level as Fox News Hires Dictator-Loving, Deep State-Loathing John
Solomon
Journalism’s
leading conspiracy theorist has finally found his natural home. But he was a
fact-masseuse long before Trump came along.
Casey
Michel
Updated
10.14.19 11:40AM ET / Published 10.13.19 5:17AM ET
Image
Of John Solomon Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty
OPINION
Over
the weekend, Fox News announced that it had made a new hire: John Solomon,
the self-proclaimed journalist at the heart of the unfolding scandal involving
Ukraine, Rudy Giuliani, and the impending impeachment of Donald Trump. It’s
not hard to see why Fox executives may have wanted to bring him aboard. Solomon’s
work has underpinned the entire cascade of lies the White House and Trump in
particular have pushed over the past few weeks.
Solomon’s
writings—including those most recently at The Hill, where he worked until last
month—are drenched in innuendo and mischaracterizations, all in service of
attacking Trump’s political opponents. Solomon is already a regular Fox
News fixture. He appeared on Fox News’s The Story show last week to claim
that he was being victimized by “McCarthy-like” attacks. As Mother Jones noted
on Solomon’s hiring—which coincided with Giuliani claiming that the man
deserves a Pulitzer—Solomon’s “alliance with pro-Trump forces” is now
“official.”
‘I
AM DISTURBED’
Leaked
Memo: Colleagues Unload on Journo Behind Ukraine Mess
Maxwell
Tani,
Justin
Baragona
For
many, Solomon remains far from a household name: a relatively obscure
journalist who worked until recently at a relatively obscure outlet pushing
relatively obscure stories about relatively obscure countries. But for those
who’ve followed his work (which includes a long-ago stint at Newsweek and The
Daily Beast), his role in the entire unfolding national nightmare—and the fact
that he provided a willing platform to lies and half-truths coming out of
Ukraine—wasn’t a surprise.
This
is a man, after all, about whom the Columbia Journalism Review wrote not one,
not two, but three separate takedowns. (One headline: “John Solomon Gives Us
Less Than Meets the Eye — Again”). The most recent topped out at nearly 5,000
words, highlighting Solomon’s “history of bending the truth to his storyline,”
as well as his “hyping [of] petty stories” and his outsized habit of “massaging
facts to conjure phantom scandals.”
Complaints
from colleagues tailed Solomon wherever he went; as one former co-worker said
about Solomon’s work, “Facts be damned.” Small wonder that, as The Daily Beast
reported last week, staffers at The Hill were “enraged” by his presence at the
publication.
But
there was one kind of friend on whom Solomon could always count, and who could
always count on Solomon’s support in return: post-Soviet officials, oligarchs,
and lobbyists looking to launder their image and spin their narrative.
We’ve
seen this most clearly over the past few months, as Solomon’s coverage of
Ukraine has gained a national audience—and completely fallen apart under the
most basic scrutiny. To take one example, Solomon’s writing lent credence
to the notion that the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch,
had given a Ukrainian prosecutor a “do-not-prosecute” list. One problem:
there’s no evidence the list ever existed, and the prosecutor himself
eventually walked back the claim entirely.
But
the damage was already done: The White House this year canned the ambassador,
who’s since been personally targeted by Trump as some kind of henchman in
former Vice President Joe Biden’s machinations. (For good measure, Solomon this
weekend described Ukraine’s successful 2014 revolution to oust corrupt
strongman Viktor Yanukovych as a “coup.”)
But
Ukraine was far from the only post-Soviet state where crooked actors and dirty
money looked for, and found, help from Solomon.
A
couple years ago, while I was a graduate student at Columbia University’s
Harriman Institute, focusing on post-Soviet affairs, I patched together a
Master’s thesis on how post-Soviet kleptocrats whitewash their reputations for
American audiences. And there, in the middle of a lobbyist-led campaign to
clean up the image of Azerbaijan—one of the most heinous, most kleptocratic
governments in the world—sat none other than John Solomon.
In
2015, Solomon was an editor at The Washington Times. His tenure there just so
happened to coincide with the paper becoming one of the go-to outlets for
Azerbaijan’s lobbyists to lie about the brutal Azeri regime’s supposed
graces—including pieces that failed to disclose that the authors were on the
Azeri dole, like one column by former GOP Congressman Dan Burton, written while
he was lobbying for Azerbaijan.
“Solomon
is still massaging facts, and he’s still conjuring phantom scandals.”
Solomon
took some responsibility in that case when contacted by The Washington Post,
claiming the lack of disclosure was just an oversight. And when I spoke with
Solomon in the context of my research, telling him that one of the pieces—which
claimed that “few places in the world… are as welcoming to Americans as
Azerbaijan”—still didn’t note it was written by a pro-Azeri lobbyist, he told
me that he’d add the disclaimer in. But four years later, the article remains
unchanged—and anyone reading it would think the author was simply interested in
the pleasures and pastimes of Azerbaijan, and not that he was a paid-off hack.
In
the years since, I—like many familiar with his work—have looked askance at
anything that Solomon has published, never taking it at face value. And
rightfully so, as we’ve recently seen out of Ukraine. Solomon is still
massaging facts, and he’s still conjuring phantom scandals. And now he’s been
hired by Fox News for his efforts.
And
federal filings may provide a hint of who Solomon might help whitewash next.
According to documents filed with the Department of Justice’s Foreign Agents
Registration Act (FARA) database, Solomon’s 2015 push to include a raft of
pro-Azeri material in The Washington Times just so happened to coincide with
his meetings with Azeri lobbyists. (The subject of those 2015 meetings:
“Azerbaijan public relations.”) Fast-forward to 2019, and as FARA further
outlines, Solomon was also in contact with Lanny Davis—a man who, until
recently, was working on behalf of Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash.
Accused
by American authorities of massive bribery and described by the DOJ as an
alleged “upper-echelon [associate] of Russian organized crime,” Firtash is
currently fighting extradition from Austria to the United States. For help,
Firtash recently hired conspiratorial pro-Trump lawyers Victoria Toensing and
Joe diGenova – both of whom have joined Rudy Giuliani in working to dig up
Ukrainian dirt on Biden. (Firtash also just so happens to publicly loathe
Biden.)
There
are no FARA filings yet listed on any communications between Toensing,
diGenova, and Solomon. But we already know that Solomon was emailing at least
some of his stories before publication at The Hill to Toensing and diGenova—as
well as to Lev Parnas, the now-arrested bagman and associate of Giuliani, who
also happens to be working for Firtash.
So
if you see Solomon, whom Politico recently described as an “all[y]” of the two
lawyers, beginning to spin Firtash as some kind of wronged businessman—someone
unfairly targeted by the Obama administration, perhaps—don’t be surprised.
After all, something like that would fit squarely within Solomon’s track record
as a kleptocrat’s favorite spin-man, no matter the cost—and no matter the
consequences.
“FREEDOM
IS THE RIGHT TO SAY 2 + 2 = 4.” WHERE DID THAT ORIGINATE? GOOGLE TELLS ME THAT
IT IS GEORGE ORWELL’S GREAT NOVEL, 1984. I’VE READ THE BOOK TWICE, BUT DIDN’T
REMEMBER WHERE I HAD SEEN THE QUOTATION. I REMEMBER ITS’ EMOTIONAL IMPACT, THOUGH,
AND I’VE THOUGHT OF IT SEVERAL TIMES SINCE A PRESIDENT TRUMP BECAME DAILY
REALITY.
THE
PURPOSEFUL ASSAULT ON TRUTH AND LOGIC THAT THIS PRESIDENT IS MAKING MAY BE THE VERY
WORST THING HE IS TRYING TO ACHIEVE, AND HE KNOWS FULL WELL THAT THERE ARE UNDER-EDUCATED
AND MENTALLY DISTURBED PEOPLE -- NOT “VERY
STABLE GENIUSES” -- WHO WILL FOLLOW HIM ANYWAY. SO, WHY SHOULD HE WORRY? I
THINK HE’S FINDING OUT WHY, AND FINDS IT FRIGHTENING. THAT’S WHY HIS OVERT
BEHAVIOR HAS BECOME EVEN MORE ERRATIC AND STRANGE. I HOPE HE DOESN’T BECOME
VIOLENT.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-bullshit-you-have-to-believe-to-be-a-republican-in-2019?ref=scroll
2+2=5
The Bullshit You Have to Believe to Be a Republican
in 2019
Yesterday, you believed in moral clarity.
Today, you believe in Trump.
Matt
Lewis
Senior
Columnist
Updated
10.18.19 11:10AM ET / Published 10.18.19 4:44AM ET
OPINION
Photo
Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
Being
a loyal Republican in 2019 requires accepting a few new things.
The
list has grown to include believing that Gen. James Mattis is "the world's
most overrated general," that Mitt Romney is a "Democrat secret
asset," that Nancy Pelosi is a "third-rate (or is it third-grade?)
politician," and that Donald Trump is a "stable genius."
Thursday, that expanded to believing it’s perfectly normal, and OK, to host
world leaders at a Trump resort in Miami.
In
other words, it requires gaslighting yourself.
MEET
THE AMBASSADOR GORDON SONDLAND
https://www.thedailybeast.com/gordon-sondland-the-weird-rise-of-trumps-ukraine-hatchet-man?ref=scroll
CHARGE
D’AFFAIRES BIDEN
The
Weird Rise of Trump’s Ukraine Hatchet Man
In
any normal administration, Gordon Sondland’s tenure as ambassador to the EU
might have been unremarkable. But we’re pretty far from normal.
Adam
Rawnsley
Updated
10.17.19 12:21PM ET / Published 10.07.19 8:30PM ET
PHOTOGRAPH
– Sondlon gesturing Daniel
Mihailescu/Getty
Trump’s
ambassador to the European Union is testifying about what he knew about the
president’s alleged attempt to shake down Ukraine for Biden dirt and when he
knew it. Over the past few weeks, Ambassador Gordon Sondland seemed like he was
toeing the Trump administration’s line, calling the president “crystal clear”
about Trump giving Ukraine “no quid pro quos of any kind” and obeying the White
House’s instruction
Now,
Sondland has disregarded the Trump administration’s instructions to stiff-arm
Congress and his open statement hints at some cracks in the otherwise united
front among Trump’s Ukraine point men. So who is Gordon Sondland and how did an
otherwise middle-of-the-road Republican take a plush job in Europe and turn it
into a starring role as hatchet man for a scheme that threatens to unravel the
Trump presidency?
Adam
Rawnsley
adam.rawnsley@thedailybeast.com
TO
READ AMBASSADOR SONLAND’S STATEMENT TO THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
GO TO THIS WEBSITE. SEE ALSO THE SECOND ARTICLE ABOUT HIM, INSERTED NEXT.
FLIPPED
Ambassador
Sondland Throws Trump Under the Bus
The
U.S. ambassador to the EU will tell Congress that he was effectively forced to
work with Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine by the president.
Betsy
Swan
Political
Reporter
Jamie
Ross
Reporter
Updated
10.18.19 12:18PM ET / Published 10.17.19 10:08AM ET
PHOTOGRAPH
– Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union REUTERS
Gordon
Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, will tell Congress that
President Donald Trump told him to help his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani
with his plan on Ukraine.
In
his opening statement, which was obtained by The Daily Beast, Sondland wrote
that any plot to encourage a foreign government to influence an American
election would have been “wrong.”
“I
did not understand, until much later, that Mr. Giuliani’s agenda might have
also included an effort to prompt the Ukrainians to investigate Vice President
Biden or his son or to involve Ukrainians, directly or indirectly, in the
President’s 2020 reelection campaign,” he will say, according to the written
version of his opening statement.
RELATED
-- CHARGE D’AFFAIRES BIDEN
The
Weird Rise of Trump’s Ukraine Hatchet Man
Adam
Rawnsley
Sondland's
role in the pressure campaign on the Ukrainian president was first revealed by
The Daily Beast. He and Giuliani encouraged President Volodymyr Zelensky to
publicly announce an investigation into the Bidens. It has been alleged that
there was a quid pro quo whereby Zelensky would be rewarded by the White House
with a meeting between the presidents in return for launching an investigation
into one of Trump's potential 2020 rivals.
“Please
know that I would not have recommended that Mr. Giuliani or any private citizen
be involved in these foreign policy matters. However, given the President’s
explicit direction, as well as the importance we attached to arranging a
White House meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, we agreed to do
as President Trump directed,” Sondland wrote.
“Based
on the President’s direction, we were faced with a choice: We could abandon the
goal of a White House meeting for President Zelensky, which we all believed was
crucial to strengthening U.S.-Ukrainian ties and furthering long-held U.S.
foreign policy goals in the region; or we could do as President Trump directed
and talk to Mr. Giuliani to address the President’s concerns.”
The
testimony describes how Trump's obsession with investigating his political
rival put on hold Sondland's efforts to strengthen U.S. ties with Ukraine.
Sondland will say he was “disappointed” that Trump wouldn't commit to a meeting
with Zelensky until he spoke to Giuliani.
“It
was apparent to all of us that the key to changing the President’s mind on
Ukraine was Mr. Giuliani,” the statement reads. “It is my understanding that
Energy Secretary Perry and Special Envoy Volker took the lead on reaching out
to Mr. Giuliani, as the President had directed.”
According
to the testimony, when he spoke to Giuliani it was made clear that Trump wanted
a public statement from Zelensky “committing Ukraine to look into
anticorruption issues.” Sondland will say: “Mr. Giuliani specifically mentioned
the 2016 election (including the DNC server) and Burisma as two anticorruption
investigatory topics of importance for the President.”
Burisma
was the energy firm where, for five years, Hunter Biden served on the board. Trump
has, with no evidence, repeatedly accused former Vice President Joe Biden of
acting improperly to protect his son by urging the removal of Ukraine’s former
general prosecutor, who was looking into money laundering allegations at
the company at the time.
Aspects
of Sondland’s opening statement raise questions about his candor. The former
hotelier portrays Giuliani as the lever to moving Trump on Ukraine policy,
something he describes in his statement as a priority of his ambassadorship. Yet
he also claims not to “recall having met with Mr. Giuliani in person” and only
communicating with him “a handful of times.”
Although
Sondland describes an investigation of Burisma as important to Trump, as
conveyed by Giuliani, Sondland claims not to have known about Hunter Biden’s
place on the company’s board.
Trump
Can Thank Giuliani’s War on Mueller for Ukraine Mess
Similarly,
Sondland presents his now-famous instruction, revealed in text messages
provided by former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, to cease texting about
a pressure campaign and to instead talk on the phone, as nothing more than a
communications preference, rather than a belated reluctance to create a
document of their conversation. “I simply prefer to talk rather than to text,” he
says in his statement.
Sondland
will testify that he was not on the Zelensky call and didn't see the transcript
until September, when a truncated transcript was publicly released by the White
House. Sondland will say that none of the summaries of the call he received
before then mentioned Burisma or Biden, or suggested that Trump had made “any
kind of request of President Zelensky.”
Sondland
will say, “Let me state clearly: Inviting a foreign government to undertake
investigations for the purpose of influencing an upcoming U.S. election would
be wrong. Withholding foreign aid in order to pressure a foreign government to
take such steps would be wrong.”
He'll
add, “I did not and would not ever participate in such undertakings.”
—with
additional reporting by Spencer Ackerman
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