NY Times Does Yet Another Hit Piece On Hillary, Democrats

Once again, the New York Times has written another hit piece on Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. In this case, the story involves what everyone already knew, namely that the Democrats paid Fusion GPS for the Russian dossier information after Trump won the Republican nomination. The original funder of the dossier was actually a Republican opponent of Trump during the Republican primary, rumored to be Jeb Bush. The Times story was a follow up to a Washington Post story that only made news by identifying the specific Democratic operative associated with the DNC and the Clinton campaign that paid for the dossier

Maggie Haberman, who also contributed to the Times story bylined by Ken Vogel, tweeted that "Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year". Vogel said that Elias responded to his inquiries by saying "you (or your) sources are wrong", although what the sources were saying is not made clear. In fact, there is nothing in either the Post or the Times reports that support this allegation. The Times article only says that Elias denied having possession of the dossier and the Times article actually quotes a spokesman for Marc Elias, the Democratic operative, saying he "didn’t have and hadn’t seen the full document, nor was he involved in pitching it to reporters."

Needless to say, Donald Trump immediately jumped on Haberman's tweets today, accusing the DNC and Clinton of continually lying about finding what he calls the "fake" dossier. And the right wing propaganda machine is going into overdrive trying to turn the Russian collusion story into one about Hillary and the Democrats.

In addition, the Times article implies that Democrats paid over $12 million for work on the dossier. That is also misleading. In fact, according to the Washington Post, during the period they were funding the dossier, Democrats paid over $5 million to the firm doing the research, but that included activities beyond just the dossier.

But, as Josh Marshall, points out, the most damning part of the Times story is the important details it apparently purposely left out. There was no mention of the fact that the Democrats funding the dossier was not really news, that it had already been reported nearly a year ago. The only "news" was that the DNC and the Clinton campaign were definitively involved, as if that would be a surprise. Nor is it a surprise that politicians do opposition research.

More egregiously, the Times article leaves the impression that the Democrats were the only one to pay for the dossier. The articles specifically omits the fact that Republicans originally funded the dossier and only stopped when Trump won the nomination, for obvious reasons.

The article also fails to report something even more relevant, namely that the Democrats stopped paying for the dossier the day before the election. But by that time, the author of the dossier, Christopher Steele, had become so alarmed that he notified the FBI, which felt the information was credible enough to continue to pay for his research. Moreover, subsequent investigations have revealed that many of the points in the dossier have been confirmed and none of the document has been definitively refuted.

While leaving these important details out, the Times had no problems laying out the Republican propaganda on this issue, writing, "The revelation...is likely to fuel new partisan attacks over federal and congressional investigations into Russia’s attempts to disrupt last year’s election and whether any of Mr. Trump’s associates assisted in the effort. The president and his allies have argued for months that the investigations are politically motivated."

Of course, this article leaves the impression that the President might have a point when in fact all the evidence points otherwise. But, when it comes to the Times, we all know the "Clinton rules". After all, they invented them.