Friday, November 3, 2017

New York Times  AGAIN caught red-handed peddling "false news."

The the New York Times is  the  newspaper that actively conspired  to  conceal Stalin's brutal communist regime from the American public.

 The New York Times is the newspaper that knowingly withheld information from the American public  concerning the Nazi Holocaust in Europe 

The New York Times is the newspaper that repeatedly claimed that Fidel Castro was simply "an agrarian  reformer" and actively covered up Castro's communist background and the brutal activities of Castro's regime.

The New York Times is the newspaper that willingly participated with Ben Rhodes in creating the echo chamber of false information in order to help sell Obama's Iranian nuclear deal and then provided Ben Rhodes with the platform to publicly brag about his success in conning the media, the American public, and Congress while also explaining away the hundreds of millions of dollars given to Iran to further Iran's international terrorist operations.

Now, that Robert Mueller has published his court documents for all to see, the New York Times uses sleight-of-hand sneaky verbiage in their attempt to convince the American public that  some attempted [failed] contact attempts by basically outside opportunists [who desired to insert themselves into the campaign and achieve recognition and status] are proof that  the 
previous denials  made by the Trump Campaign  of Democratic Party accusations of “Trump campaign collusion with Russia to subvert the outcome of the 2016 election  in favor of Donald Trump“ are actually a confession of guilt.  ["Despite denials by President Trump and Jeff Sessions about the campaign’s contacts with Russians, documents and interviews suggest otherwise” Thursday, November 2, 2017 By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, MATT APUZZO and SCOTT SHANE, NEW YORK TIMES].

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NOTE: for your information misleading and/or erroneous statements in the article are underlined or commented on  within brackets.[  ]

Trump and Sessions Denied Knowing About Russian Contacts. Records Suggest Otherwise.
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, MATT APUZZO and SCOTT SHANE      NEW YORK TIMES  NOV. 2, 2017

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Trump stated in early 2017 that no campaign advisers had contact with Russians. However, new court documents show that a foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, had contacts that he told them about in 2016.
By A.J. CHAVAR and MARK MAZZETTI on November 2, 2017. Photo by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times. Watch in Times Video »]


WASHINGTON — Standing before reporters in February, President Trump said unequivocally that he knew of nobody from his campaign [obviously  he   could  address only  those in authority] who was in contact with Russians  [representatives of the Kremlin]during the election. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has told the Senate the same thing.

Court documents unsealed this week cast doubt on both statements and raised the possibility that Mr. Sessions could be called back to Congress for further questioning. [The documents didn’t raise the possibility… The Democrats raised the possibility and that would take committee action.]

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, unsealed his first charges Monday in a wide-ranging investigation into [allegations that the Kremlin had attempted to actively interfere in favor of Donald Trump]  Russian attempts to disrupt the presidential election and whether anyone close to Mr. Trump was involved. Records in that case show that George Papadopoulos, a [volunteer] foreign policy[advisory panel member] adviser, had frequent discussions with Russians in 2016 and trumpeted his connections in front of Mr. Trump and Mr. Sessions. [ Papadopoulos attended only one meeting.Papdopoulos  said that he raised the idea of contacts. He did not report receiving approval and/or encouragement from the president, Atty. Gen. Sessions or from the Trump campaign manager.]


For months, journalists have revealed evidence that associates of Mr. Trump met with Russians during the campaign and the presidential transition. [the one meeting in Trump Tower to discuss the relief of sanctions is the only one that we can find]

But the court documents represent the first concrete evidence that Mr. Trump was personally told [there is no evidence of this in these court documents] about ties between a campaign adviser and Russian officials.

At a March 31, 2016, meeting between Mr. Trump and his foreign policy team, Mr. Papadopoulos introduced himself and said “that he had connections that could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President Putin,” according to court records. [the writers should have said that according to Mr.Papadopoulos. Using the words “court records” gives the false  illusion of sworn and documented testimony.]

“He went into the pitch right away,” said J. D. Gordon, a campaign adviser who attended the meeting. “He said he had a friend in London, the Russian ambassador, who could help set up a meeting with Putin.” [Since the statement by Papadopoulos that his friend was the Russian ambassador… And that obviously was not true… This leads more to questioning of Mr.Papadopoulos’ honesty and motivation than as a direct  statement of facts .]


Mr. Trump listened with interest. [this  obviously is a self-serving conclusion/observation.]

 Mr. Sessions vehemently opposed the idea, Mr. Gordon recalled. “And he said that no one should talk about it,” because Mr. Sessions thought it was a bad idea that he did not want associated with the campaign, he said. [if anything, this is direct proof of the exact opposite of what the New York Times reporters claim to prove.]

Several of Mr. Trump’s campaign advisers attended the March 2016 meeting, and at least two of those advisers are now in the White House: Hope Hicks, the communications director, and Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser. [And Mr.Papadopoulos never attended another meeting.]

After Mr. Trump was sworn in, he could not escape questions about Russia.

 At a Feb. 16, 2017, White House news conference, a reporter asked Mr. Trump, “Can you say whether you are aware that anyone who advised your campaign had contacts with Russia during the course of the election?”

“No,” Mr. Trump said. “Nobody that I know of. Nobody.”[As a point of information ,I provided actual advice to both the Trump and the Clinton campaigns. By no stretch of the imagination could I be considered an advisor. There are many hundreds of people like me who make inputs and suggestions.]


The White House has sought to portray Mr. Papadopoulos as an insignificant figure in the campaign. ["Sought to portray" is the kind of sneaky language that you are taught  in journalism school not to use in a news report, which presumably this article is supposed to be.]

Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer dealing with matters related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, said the White House stood behind the president’s comments.

“The media’s willingness to inflate Papadopoulos, a young unpaid volunteer and supposed energy expert, into an important thought leader in the campaign or Russian operative is ludicrous,” Mr. Cobb said. “The evidence so far suggests he attended one meeting, said something about Russia and was immediately shut down by everyone in the room. It’s very important to remember that he is not a criminal now because of anything he did for the campaign — he is a criminal because he initially lied to the F.B.I.”[This is a key statement that should have appeared much higher in this article .]

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Another member of the foreign policy team, Carter Page, said on Thursday that he told Mr. Sessions in passing in June 2016 that he planned to travel to Russia for a trip “completely unrelated” to his volunteer role in the campaign. “Understandably, it was as irrelevant then as it is now,” Mr. Page said. Mr. Page traveled twice to Russia in 2016.[For an honest account ,the following from the House of Representatives hearing should have been included at this point:
 At the televised March hearing with then-FBI Director James B. Comey. Mr. Schiff read into the hearing record unverified allegations against Mr. Page from former British spy and dossier writer Christopher Steele.
MR. STEELE, WHO PAID RUSSIAN SOURCES WITH DEMOCRATIC PARTY MONEY, MADE ALLEGATIONS THAT MR. PAGE:
  • While on a publicized speaking appearance in Moscow in July 2016, met with two Kremlin connected figures who have been sanctioned by the U.S.
  • Agreed to a brokerage fee in exchange for pushing the end of U.S. sanctions.
  • Told an “ethnic Russian” he was working to swing Bernie Sanders voters to Mr. Trump’s side.
  • Worked hand-in-hand with then-campaign manager Paul Manafort to have Russia interfere in the 2016 election, including hacking Democratic Party computers.
 Carter Page on Thursday began his scheduled testimony before the House Intelligence Committee with his  opening statement :MR. PAGE  SAID THE CHARGES ARE FICTION.
  • He never met the two men in Moscow;
  • He did not discuss or receive a brokerage fee; 
  • He did not have a discussion about Mr. Sanders; 
  • He has never met Mr. Manafort.
  • “He never was asked to obtain nor was he provided negative information about anyone, including Mrs. Hillary Clinton, by any Russian person or entity.”
  • He  never worked  with anyone  to have Russia interfere in the 2016 election, including hacking Democratic Party computers.
Democrats in the Senate said on Thursday that they would push to have Mr. Sessions return to the Judiciary Committee for further questioning.
“He now needs to come back before the committee, in person, under oath, to explain why he cannot seem to provide truthful, complete answers to these important and relevant questions,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, who is on the Judiciary Committee. [Until Sen. Leahy provides documentation for his accusations ,he should have no more credibility in this article than does representative Adam Schiff.]

Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, another Democrat on the committee, pointed out that Mr. Sessions’s testimony was under oath and “wasn’t just some random comment he made in passing on the street.” [YES,it was under oath. On the other hand Sen. Blumenthal’s repeated and changing accusations are not only NOT UNDER OATH , they are privileged and exempt from charges of slander that you or I would face  had we made   these identical accusations .]

Mr. Sessions faced similar questions in January before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, asked him about contacts between the campaign and Russia. “I’m not aware of any of those activities,” Mr. Sessions said. He denied having any such contacts himself. [This is a far cry from the accusations of collusion that was so freely and publicly made by Sen. Franken and the other Democrats.]

Democrats condemned those remarks as misleading when it was revealed that Mr. Sessions held meetings with the Russian ambassador during the campaign. [All contacts have been fully explained. Is the duty of the authors to fully report here similar to the Page hearing above, rather than to use unsubstantiated and out of context quotations to carry the story.] 

Last month, Mr. Franken renewed his questioning.
“You don’t believe that surrogates from the Trump campaign had communications with the Russians?” he asked. [by no stretch could Mr.Papadopoulos be considered a “surrogate”.] 

“I did not, and I’m not aware of anyone else that did,” Mr. Sessions replied. “And I don’t believe it happened.”

He did not make any reference to Mr. Papadopoulos.

 Mr. Sessions has said he answered honestly because he was being questioned in the context of Russian officials continuously exchanging information with campaign advisers.

Mr. Gordon said that while the March 2016 meeting technically contradicted Mr. Sessions’s testimony, he defended the attorney general.

“This is something he heard way back in March from some young man who was not authorized to speak for the campaign,” he said. “I don’t blame Senator Sessions for not remembering that.” He said that only in the political “gotcha game” could the matter be considered significant.

The court documents in the Papadopoulos case represent the most explicit evidence yet that Mr. Trump’s campaign was eager to coordinate with Russian officials to undermine his rival, Hillary Clinton. 

Federal investigators suspected that Russian intelligence services used intermediaries to contact Mr. Papadopoulos to gain influence with the campaign, offering “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”[Having worked the Russian area, I find this reported conclusion to be nonsense. The Russian intelligence services are well-established in Washington DC. They would approach a vetted staff member, not some 29-year-old wanna-be. The Clinton emails were public knowledge by that time. So was her "server difficulty". If indeed federal investigators suspected anything it would be a felony  for them to discuss it with the media. So if this statement is true . then we know that a crime has been committed by the special prosecutor's office.]

Mr. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying about those contacts and is cooperating with the F.B.I.

On Thursday, as news of Mr. Papadopoulos’s Russian ties continued to ripple through Washington, Mr. Franken sent a stern letter to Mr. Sessions. “This is another example in an alarming pattern in which you, the nation’s top law enforcement official, apparently failed to tell the truth, under oath,” he wrote. [From these quotations coming from   the Democrats and their  utilization in this article, it is apparent that the writers for the New York Times are carrying  the water for the Democratic party chorus. The rest of this article demonstrates that the authors are  trying to pile on with quantity of accusations and innuendos.]

The case against Mr. Papadopoulos was unsealed at the same time as an unrelated indictment against two other former campaign advisers, Paul J. Manafort and Rick Gates. Taken together, the three charges sent a foreboding message to a fourth adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign, Michael T. Flynn.

White House officials and others in the case are bracing for charges against Mr. Flynn, a retired three-star general who had a short and tumultuous tenure as national security adviser.

 Mr. Mueller is investigating Mr. Flynn for not disclosing his Russian contacts or his foreign lobbying work.

Mr. Manafort was indicted on seldom-used charges of concealing foreign lobbying, as well as for lying on federal documents — the same activities for which Mr. Flynn is being investigated.

“It’s a bad sign,” said Paul Krieger, who until recently was the top federal fraud prosecutor in Manhattan. “It shows that the special counsel’s office will not hesitate to charge individuals connected to the administration or campaign with obstruction-like offenses.”

Mr. Flynn, one of the architects of Mr. Trump’s “America first” foreign policy, did not disclose payments from Russia-linked entities on financial disclosure documents. He did not mention a paid speech he gave in Moscow, and he belatedly disclosed, after leaving the White House, that the Turkish government had paid him more than $500,000 for lobbying services.

Charging people for not disclosing their foreign lobbying is extremely rare, a point that Mr. Manafort’s lawyers made in documents filed in court on Thursday. Since 1966, his lawyers wrote, only six such cases have been filed and only one person has been convicted. Such violations are typically handled administratively.

“It is far from clear what activity triggers a requirement to file a report as a foreign agent,” said Kevin M. Downing, Mr. Manafort’s lawyer.
Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates appeared in court briefly on Thursday. Lawyers discussed the conditions of their house arrest and the possibility of a trial in April.

White House officials have long been anticipating the indictments of Mr. Manafort and Mr. Flynn, and have tried to distance themselves from both men.

 They were caught by surprise, however, by Mr. Papadopoulos’s guilty plea and the fact that he had been cooperating with the F.B.I. since July.

That cooperation agreement fueled speculation that Mr. Papadopoulos had secretly recorded his conversations with White House officials this summer.

 But Mr. Cobb said he had seen no evidence that Mr. Papadopoulos had visited the White House or had recent conversations with staff members.

“We have no indication that this George Papadopoulos came to this White House,” Mr. Cobb said, adding that a different person with the same name had entered the White House this year.

Court documents do not explain the extent of Mr. Papadopoulos’s cooperation with Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but prosecutors said [Is this a criminal violation by the special prosecutor's office?]
they showed him emails, chat transcripts, text messages and other records “in an attempt to refresh his recollection” about his contacts with Russians and with members of the Trump campaign. [Is this an attempt to influence the testimony of a witness?]






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