After being blasted during Kompromat-Elect Drumpf’s first press conference in months as “Fake News” both CNN and Buzzfeed have been fighting back with facts.
First, CNN who really only reported that there was a two page summary of the ex-MI6 memos included in the classified Presidential briefings have had that report confirmed by Intel Chief James Clapper.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- In a statement released Wednesday evening, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper essentially confirmed the CNN report that Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer had derided as "fake news."
CNN had reported that President-elect Trump's last security briefing had included a two-page summary of a 35 page dossier making unverified claims that Russia had compromising financial and personal information on Trump.
CNN never reported details of what the accusations were because the claims were unverified. Hours after the CNN report was published, BuzzFeed published the entire 35 page dossier that had been compiled by a credible former MI6 agent who had spent his career working in Russia as a British spy.
For their part Buzzfeed was responding with the underlying document behind the CNN report while also noting the concerns and pushback from the Trump campaign, and they too have argued this was a matter of “transparency” — which when you think about how little vetting and pushback was included in everything that was released by Wiki-leaks, makes perfect sense.
It gets said a lot, but what were seeing here is truly unprecedented as we see the President-Elect rudely attacking a CNN reporter for having the temerity to try and ask a question after their report on the 2 page summary.
There is a substantive difference between what CNN and Buzzfeed reported and that should be kept in reasonable context, however to have the incoming Press Secretary Sean Spicer threaten to throw a CNN reporter out of the Press conference is rapidly approaching totalitarianism.
By contrast when a back-bench reporter badgered President Obama with bogus questions in the Rose garden, he handled it far, far better. He answered the question, Trump didn’t even answer it when another reporter asked it immediately after.
As you can see here from this contentious fight between Anderson Cooper and Kellyanne Conway the Trumpeteers are having a very difficult time with these reports and are clearly trying to tar and feather the messenger rather than admit and respond honestly to the facts.
Cooper said that at today’s press conference Sean Spicer said that both CNN and BuzzFeed ran with unsubstantiated claims. “That’s simply not true,” Cooper said. He clarified that CNN said it wouldn’t post the claims the way that BuzzFeed did, because there was no one to substantiate the claims.
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Conway took a condescending tone, “I know that CNN must be feeling the heat today.” She explained that the headline said that Trump was given the information and she said that Trump never received a briefing on this information. To be fair, Trump has refused to take briefings on many issues of national security.
“You can’t say you’re not reporting it if it’s on your website!” Conway shouted at Cooper.
“You can’t answer this question, what is inaccurate about the report,” Cooper demanded.
Conway tried to pivot to blame President Barack Obama for not doing enough to stop cyber hacking over the last eight years as president. Cooper wouldn’t let her get away.
“I know you like to pivot,” he told her.
“That’s actually real news! That actually happened!” Conway insisted.
“I guess what you still have not answered,” Cooper said, trying to talk over her. “What is inaccurate in our reporting? Because you said, you weren’t in the briefing. You don’t know if what we’re reporting is true or not. You weren’t in the briefing and I guess you haven’t heard anything about what was in the briefing from anyone who was there… How can you say it’s not true?”
There is nothing wrong or inaccurate in what CNN reported because no, they didn’t even report the details of what was alleged in the memos. Frankly, Buzzfeed didn’t report that either — they just provided the memo itself and most of their article was about the reaction to the memos, not the content of the memos themselves.
Contrary to Conway’s repeated claim, CNN actually didn’t link to the Buzzfeed report — they linked to another post on CNN that talked about Buzzfeed, in addition to the fact it wasn’t released until after the first CNN report went live.
Yesterday I reported the details of what was in the memo after reading Buzzfeed’s report because I felt it was important to know the specifics of what we were really talking about, but neither CNN or Buzzfeed did that.
Not that that stopped other Trumpsters like Andy Dean from making bogus claims about the reporting as shown here.
“Imagine if Hillary Clinton won, would we want an investigation of the Access Hollywood producers who helped release that tape,” Dean asked, calling the press’s reaction “liberal hypocrisy.”
“Russia didn’t influence any Americans, and to say they did … is insulting,” he argued.
Lemon tried to sort out Dean’s argument, to no avail. “Voting for Donald Trump and Russia influencing the election—what does one have to do with the other?” Lemon asked before pushing Dean on whether he agrees with the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia hacked the election.
After a back-and-forth, Dean confessed “Putin probably wanted Trump to win,” before arguing that Germany’s Angela Merkel and Britain’s Theresa May wanted Clinton to win.
Lemon once again asked Dean point-blank if he believes Russia meddled in the election.
“It’s not as cut and dry as that,” Dean insisted.
“Yes it is,” Lemon shot back.
Dean then launched into talking points rebuttal about Russian hacking. “Hacking could come from Russia, China hacks, there’s that 400 pound man in his bed who hacks, and the media wasn’t freaking out when the Chinese were doing it,” Dean said before launching into a nonsensical argument about Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.
“I have to laugh to keep from crying,” Lemon said, as Dean tried to talk over him. “You’re conflating a lot of things that have nothing to do with nothing.”
There actually is a legitimate point here about Chelsea Manning and what have you beyond Dean’s obvious attempt to muddy the waters. Chelsea was revealing the perpetration of a war crime, the murder of journalists by U.S. forces in Iraq which was classified largely to cover it up, not because there was a legitimate national security issue at stake.
Wiki-leaks didn’t vet or verify any of that. None. Zero. (The Washington Post, New York Times and Politico actually turned her down first before she ultimately went to Wik-leaks btw.) Similarly none of the DNC and Podesta hack information was vetted and verified and we don’t know how much mitigating information was deleted, changed or ignored by the Kremlin disinformation and influence campaign as it was laundered through RT and Sputnik News.
Much of what Snowden released concerning NSA’s surveillance capabilities also went far beyond the law and what was being allowed by the FISA court and was vetted by the Guardian and Washington Post.
The China hacking — which was corporate espionage not governmental — absolutely was reported and the hackers were arrested and prosecuted by China so sanctions really weren’t necessary in that case, although sanctions were imposed on North Korea when their government hacked Sony. For some reason no one ever mentions any of this when the Trumpsters trot out this bogus “China hack” talking point.
As far as BuzzFeed goes they were attacked for presenting “Fake News” by Chuck Todd and argued back forcefully that this was ultimately an issue of “transparency.”
“You have to have a really strong argument to suppress a document — suppress information,” Smith said.
Todd wondered what should come first: “Truth or Transparency?”
Smith said that it is a luxury to choose but Todd refused to relent.
Smith explained that like many media outlets, BuzzFeed sat on these documents out of caution but when the story broke and people were discussing “this secret document with dark mysterious claims” they felt obligated to make the document live.
“This is the moment when responsible news organizations ought to say to their audience, ‘We can’t tell you to trust this, but this is what your betters are talking about and refusing to show you and we feel that we should share that with you,'” Smith said.
Smith makes the point that this memo was in the hands of the government — which had been discussed in the letter from Harry Reid to FBI Director Comey asking him to reveal this information before the election — and the press for months, all the way back to October, that it was being discussed behind the scenes for that entire time and at a certain point once the issue became more public (Thanks, CNN) they needed to let the public see the details of what was being discussed. In the same way that inaccurate claims were made, often, about the validity of President Obama’s birth certificate and the media continued to report and respond to those claims, these claims deserved to be brought to light. Pretending the information doesn’t exist, doesn’t make it not exist.
I have to say I fully agree with him on this. Reporting on a document isn’t automatically an endorsement of the content of that document and Smith stated that we have to trust the public to make their own decision as to what they choose to believe and what they don’t. Chuck Todd himself famously said it’s not his job to determine what’s true or not whether that came to claims about Obamacare or statements made by Donald Trump.
I guess he thinks that’s a job for Buzzfeed.
And on the veracity of the document itself the BBC has been reporting the former MI6 operative isn’t the only source of this information.
“The rumors or the allegations or whatever you want to call them have been circulating for a number of months now,” Wood explained. “I saw the report, compiled by the former British intelligence officer, back in October. He is not, and this is the crucial thing, the only source for this.”
Wood said that he had been told by a member of the U.S. intelligence community that at least one East European intelligence service was aware “that the Russians had kompromat or compromising material on Mr. Trump.”
“It’s very, very difficult, of course, to talk to US intelligence people. They’re breaking the law if they talk to you,” the BBC correspondent pointed out. “But I did ask somebody with connections in the CIA to pass a message to them, and I got a message back that there was allegedly more than one tape, not just video, but audio as well, on more than one date, in more than one place, in both Moscow and St. Petersburg.”
On top of this Trump has previously bragged about the “loose morals of Russian women” before and the subject was discussed on Howard Stern.
In audio of the program that was pointed out by Death and Taxes this week, Trump can be heard arguing with Benza over, Kara Young, a woman they had both dated.
“I assume A.J.’s clean,” Trump says. “I hope he’s clean.”
“Meanwhile, he bangs Russian people,” Benza fires back at Trump.
“Russian people?” Stern gasps.
“Who are you talking about, Russian people, A.J.?” Trump quips dismissively. “I don’t know anything.”
“He used to call me when I was a columnist and say, ‘I was just in Russia, the girls have no morals, you gotta get out there,'” Benza explains. “He’s out of his mind.”
The 2001 interview resurfaced the same week that a dossier prepared by a former British intelligence officer suggested that the Russian government had compromising videos of the president-elect with sex workers.
Going beyond Trump’s sex-life there there are 9 far more pressing allegations including the argument that Trump has made numerous shady and compromising international business deals — from illegally spending money in Casto’s Cuba in violation of the embargo to his business interests being potentially blackmailed by Turkey — which leaves him vulnerable to foreign leverage (which is confirmed), that Trump was fully aware of the Russian hacking and disinformation campaign long before the election, that it was being directed personally by Vladimir Putin (which is confirmed), that his people were in a ‘co-operative conspiracy” with agents of the Kremlin, meeting with them secretly during the campaign (which is confirmed), that Trump used Kremlin generated propaganda in his campaign (which is confirmed), that the only thing changed by Trump in the RNC platform was to weaken their stance on the Russian annexation of Crimea and the Ukraine (which is confirmed) and that he helped pay for the relocation of some of the hackers once some officials in the Kremlin grew nervous and disenchanted about the project.
Some things in the memos remain unconfirmed, but not really that much.
Look, Trump and his people have every right to push back on these reports and to criticize them. That’s fine. But to try and retaliate against a news organization for simply letting the public know what they know and allowing them to make up their own mind is in direct affront to the principles of the First Amendment and the crucial need for a free and independent press is chilling.
President Obama’s DOJ once charged a Fox reporter with espionage for reporting leaked information. How much further than that will Trump be willing to retaliate against an entire organization when he doesn’t like what they’ve reported?
Friday, Jan 13, 2017 · 2:08:36 AM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
Kellyanne Conway is still claiming that Trump wasn’t briefed verbally or with written materials on the Christopher Steele memos and then this came out.
Days after CNN’s report that intel chiefs presented President-elect Donald Trump with a two-page synopsis about unverified Russian information about him, the network now reports that FBI Director James Comey personally spoke to Trump one-on-one on the matter.
According to this new CNN report, multiple U.S. officials say that the four intelligence chiefs decided Comey would be the one to “handle the sensitive information” and speak with the president-elect.
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