IS IT ALL OF POLITICO OR IS IT JUST JACK SHAFER  THAT WE CANNOT TRUST?

Shafer writes : “The Times story demolishes Veselnitskaya’s claim that she was an independent actor in the Trump Tower saga, and makes a persuasive case that she was part of an official “synchronized information campaign.” Sort of smells like collusion when you nose your way around the entire story.”

In short,Veselnitskaya had given a copy of her allegations against a large Democratic donor to a Russian prosecutor who then gave them  to a  visiting Congressman. She also gave them to Donald Trump Junior whose reaction was: so what does this have to do with Hillary Clinton ?

HERE IS  (1)THE ANALYSIS AND (2(THE NY TIMES STORY…JUDGE SHAFER’S SPIN  

Friday, October 27, 2017

1.     FALSE NEWS FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES.

 In an attempt to bury the recent revelations that:  the allegations  made against Donald Trump in the so-called "Trump Dossier" were  paid for by Hillary Clinton in the Democratic National Committee; were obtained  from questionable Kremlin sources who are actually unknown to Christopher Steele ( since he “worked  through intermediaries" who paid for the "information" that Christopher Steele passed on); and were planted in the media by “leaks from  US intelligence agencies”, the following story was published on October 27, 2017 by the New York Times [Talking Points Brought to Trump Tower Meeting Were Shared With KremlinBy SHARON LaFRANIERE and ANDREW E. KRAMER ]. 

Buried deep in the story is  the most significant item: " By all accounts, the Trump campaign officials were unimpressed — even baffled — by her 20-minute presentation. “Some D.N.C. donors may have done something in Russia and they didn’t pay taxes,” Donald Trump Jr. said later. “I was, like, ‘What does this have to do with anything?’”

To summarize the article , after stripping away innuendo and the reporters’  editorial slants [linkage by placing statements near each other that are unrelated; citing individuals and generalizing what they say through such terms as "and other experts" or by incorporating their unfounded speculation as fact) we find the following: Natalia V. Veselnitskaya  represents a client who has been damaged by the active testimony of an individual. Veselnitskaya investigates and believes that she has uncovered evidence of criminal wrongdoing by this individual. She attempts to get action on this matter from the Russian legal system. She attempts to get  action on this matter from the American legal system.

 Like most practitioners in the lobbying world she tries to find a contact who will help her  carry  her accusations to someone who will take action.

 Since  those who have allegedly committed this fraud are large-scale Democratic Party donors and appear to be protected by the Democratic establishment, she seeks out an alternative route in which someone she knows might have a connection.

 Through a contact s he set up a meeting.She   goes to this meeting and presents the evidence that she has. As noted above the unanimously response at this meeting was: "some Democratic National Committee donors may have done something in Russia and they didn't pay taxes… What does that have to do with anything."

The article states: "In the past week, Ms. Veselnitskaya’s allegations — that major Democratic donors were guilty of financial fraud and tax evasion — have been embraced at the highest levels of the Russian government." These individuals  that Veselnitskaya has been complaining about have been anti-Kremlin. Certainly, Veselnitskaya’s  charges would resonate with the Kremlin. Their repetition by the Kremlin is to be expected. 

The article states as a fact :”The Trump Tower meeting is of keen interest to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as he investigates Russian efforts to help Mr. Trump’s campaign." What is is of keen interest to Robert Mueller is unknowable to the reporters.

The collusion of the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign with the Russians should be the top feature for this new cycle.

The featuring by the New York Times of this  major  length article full of innuendo leads to the suspicion that this is intentional cover-up.

********

2.Talking Points Brought to Trump Tower Meeting Were Shared With Kremlin

By SHARON LaFRANIERE and ANDREW E. KRAMER

NEW YORK TIMES OCT. 27, 2017

Natalia V. Veselnitskaya arrived at a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 hoping to interest top Trump campaign officials in the contents of a memo she believed contained information damaging to the Democratic Party and, by extension, Hillary Clinton. The material was the fruit of her research as a private lawyer, she has repeatedly said, and any suggestion that she was acting at the Kremlin’s behest that day is anti-Russia “hysteria.”

But interviews and records show that in the months before the meeting, Ms. Veselnitskaya had discussed the allegations with one of Russia’s most powerful officials, the prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika. And the memo she brought with her closely followed a document that Mr. Chaika’s office had given to an American congressman two months earlier, incorporating some paragraphs verbatim.

The coordination between the Trump Tower visitor and the Russian prosecutor general undercuts Ms. Veselnitskaya’s account that she was a purely independent actor when she sat down with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Paul J. Manafort, then the Trump campaign chairman. It also suggests that emails from an intermediary to the younger Mr. Trump promising that Ms. Veselnitskaya would arrive with information from Russian prosecutors were rooted at least partly in fact — not mere “puffery,” as the president’s son later said.

In the past week, Ms. Veselnitskaya’s allegations — that major Democratic donors were guilty of financial fraud and tax evasion — have been embraced at the highest levels of the Russian government. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia repeated her charges at length last week at an annual conference of Western academics. A state-run television network recently made them the subject of two special reports, featuring interviews with Ms. Veselnitskaya and Mr. Chaika.

The matching messages point to a synchronized information campaign. Like some other Russian experts, Stephen Blank, a senior fellow with the nonprofit American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, said they indicate that Ms. Veselnitskaya’s actions “were coordinated from the very top.”

The Trump Tower meeting is of keen interest to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as he investigates Russian efforts to help Mr. Trump’s campaign. At least one participant at the meeting has already testified before a federal grand jury.

Ms. Veselnitskaya declined to be interviewed, saying in an email that The New York Times had published “lies and false claims.”

The memo that Ms. Veselnitskaya brought to the Trump Tower meeting alleged that Ziff Brothers Investments, an American firm, had illegally purchased shares in a Russian company and evaded tens of millions of dollars of Russian taxes. The company was the financial vehicle of three billionaire brothers, two of them major donors to Democratic candidates including Mrs. Clinton. By implication, Ms. Veselnitskaya, said, those political contributions were tainted by “stolen” money.

Kremlin officials viewed the charges as extremely significant. The Ziff brothers had invested in funds managed by William F. Browder, an American-born financier and fierce Kremlin foe. Mr. Browder was the driving force behind a 2012 law passed by Congress imposing sanctions on Russian officials for human rights abuses.

The law, known as the Magnitsky Act, froze Western bank accounts of officials on the sanctions list – including Mr. Chaika’s deputy — and banned them from entering the United States. It was named after Sergei L. Magnitsky, a tax lawyer who had worked for Mr. Browder and who died in a Moscow jail after exposing a massive fraud scheme involving Russian officials.

In his speech to Western academics at a Black Sea resort last week, Mr. Putin said that American authorities had ignored the allegations against Mr. Browder and his investors because the Ziff brothers were major political donors. “They protect themselves in this way,” he said.

A spokesman for Ziff Brothers Investments declined to comment. Mr. Browder said the charges were concocted to discredit him and to undermine the Magnitsky Act sanctions.

How Ms. Veselnitskaya’s allegations made their way to the upper reaches of the Russian government, and then to Trump campaign, is a tangled tale. A former prosecutor for the Moscow regional government, Ms. Veselnitskaya lives and works in Moscow but has traveled frequently to the United States in recent years, partly to lobby against the Magnitsky Act.

She was also the lead defense lawyer in a civil fraud lawsuit brought by the Justice Department against a Russian firm in New York. The firm, which ultimately settled the case for about $6 million without admitting fault, was accused of using real estate purchases to launder a portion of the profits from the tax fraud that Mr. Magnitsky had uncovered. Mr. Browder provided much of the prosecution’s evidence.

While investigating Mr. Browder and his investors, Ms. Veselnitskaya unearthed what she considered evidence of a financial and tax fraud scheme. In October 2015, she took her findings about Mr. Browder and the Ziff brothers directly to Mr. Chaika, Russia’s top prosecutor and a man whom she has said she knows personally.

Mr. Chaika was highly pleased with her report, according to a former colleague of Ms. Veselnitskaya who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions.

In April 2016, Ms. Veselnitskaya teamed with Mr. Chaika’s office to pass the accusations to an American congressional delegation visiting Moscow. An official with the Russian prosecutor general’s office gave a memo detailing the charges — stamped “confidential”— to Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who is considered to be one of the most pro-Russia lawmakers in Congress and who heads a subcommittee that helps oversee U.S. policy toward Russia.

Ms. Veselnitskaya handed a nearly identical memo to Representative French Hill, Republican of Arkansas. She has said she also met with Mr. Rohrabacher then, although he said that he does not recall the encounter.

The next month, Mr. Chaika’s office described the alleged scheme on the prosecutor general’s website.

Precisely how Ms. Veselnitskaya ended up at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting to present her findings remains in dispute. She asked Aras Agalarov, a well-connected Russian oligarch who knows the Trump family to help her share her allegations with the Trump campaign, according to Mr. Agalarov’s attorney, Scott Balber.

She may have told Mr. Agalarov that she had previously conveyed the same information to Mr. Chaika, Mr. Balber said. Mr. Agalarov’s son then enlisted his publicist, Rob Goldstone, to broker the meeting.

In emails to Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Goldstone wrote that a Russian prosecutor — an apparent reference to Mr. Chaika — had met with Mr. Agalarov and wanted to offer the Trump campaign official documents that would incriminate Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Goldstone described the proposed meeting as part of the Russian government’s effort to help Mr. Trump’s candidacy, and said a “government lawyer” would fly to New York to deliver the documents.

Donald Trump Jr. has dismissed Mr. Goldstone’s emails as “goosed-up.” Mr. Balber blamed miscommunication among those arranging the meeting. “Mr. Agalarov unequivocally, absolutely, never spoke to Mr. Chaika or his office about these issues,” he said.

Donald Trump Jr. enthusiastically accepted the offer of information that might damage the Clinton campaign. “I love it,” he wrote in an email agreeing to meet the Russian lawyer.

Ms. Veselnitskaya came to Trump Tower with a memo that closely resembled the document that prosecutors had given to Mr. Rohrabacher in Moscow two months earlier. Some paragraphs were incorporated verbatim, according to a comparison of both documents, which were provided to The Times.

By all accounts, the Trump campaign officials were unimpressed — even baffled — by her 20-minute presentation. “Some D.N.C. donors may have done something in Russia and they didn’t pay taxes,” Donald Trump Jr. said later. “I was, like, ‘What does this have to do with anything?’”

After the meeting came to light last summer, Ms. Veselnitskaya insisted it was “not related at all to the fact” that Donald Trump Jr. “was the son of the candidate.” But by last weekend, she was describing herself as a kind of whistle-blower who was trying to expose American political corruption.

Last week, she told Rossiya 24, the state television network: “Of course they don’t like it when somebody says, even in a friendly tone, ‘Guys, what is happening with you at home? Who is in charge of your politics? Who is paying these politicians, and for what?’”

In a follow-up television interview broadcast early this week, Mr. Chaika charged that Mr. Browder and the Ziffs had illegally used “Russian money” to lobby for the sanctions law.

Russian elites have been known to mount independent initiatives to curry favor with the Kremlin. But a number of well-known Russian analysts called it inconceivable that Ms. Veselnitskaya would have bypassed her own government to deliver what are now unmistakably official allegations to an American presidential campaign.

Said Gleb O. Pavlovsky, the president of the Fund for Effective Politics, a Moscow research institute: “She had guidance.”

FALSE NEWS FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES.

 In an attempt to bury the recent revelations that:  the allegations  made against Donald Trump in the so-called "Trump Dossier" were  paid for by Hillary Clinton in the Democratic National Committee; were obtained  from questionable Kremlin sources who are actually unknown to Christopher Steele ( since he “worked  through intermediaries" who paid for the "information" that Christopher Steele passed on); and were planted in the media by “leaks from  US intelligence agencies”, the following story was published on October 27, 2017 by the New York Times [Talking Points Brought to Trump Tower Meeting Were Shared With KremlinBy SHARON LaFRANIERE and ANDREW E. KRAMER ]. 

Buried deep in the story is  the most significant item: " By all accounts, the Trump campaign officials were unimpressed — even baffled — by her 20-minute presentation. “Some D.N.C. donors may have done something in Russia and they didn’t pay taxes,” Donald Trump Jr. said later. “I was, like, ‘What does this have to do with anything?’”

To summarize the article , after stripping away innuendo and the reporters’  editorial slants [linkage by placing statements near each other that are unrelated; citing individuals and generalizing what they say through such terms as "and other experts" or by incorporating their unfounded speculation as fact) we find the following: Natalia V. Veselnitskaya  represents a client who has been damaged by the active testimony of an individual. Veselnitskaya investigates and believes that she has uncovered evidence of criminal wrongdoing by this individual. She attempts to get action on this matter from the Russian legal system. She attempts to get  action on this matter from the American legal system.

 Like most practitioners in the lobbying world she tries to find a contact who will help her  carry  her accusations to someone who will take action.

 Since  those who have allegedly committed this fraud are large-scale Democratic Party donors and appear to be protected by the Democratic establishment, she seeks out an alternative route in which someone she knows might have a connection.

 Through a contact s he set up a meeting.She   goes to this meeting and presents the evidence that she has. As noted above the unanimously response at this meeting was: "some Democratic National Committee donors may have done something in Russia and they didn't pay taxes… What does that have to do with anything."

The article states: "In the past week, Ms. Veselnitskaya’s allegations — that major Democratic donors were guilty of financial fraud and tax evasion — have been embraced at the highest levels of the Russian government." These individuals  that Veselnitskaya has been complaining about have been anti-Kremlin. Certainly, Veselnitskaya’s  charges would resonate with the Kremlin. Their repetition by the Kremlin is to be expected. 

The article states as a fact :”The Trump Tower meeting is of keen interest to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as he investigates Russian efforts to help Mr. Trump’s campaign." What is is of keen interest to Robert Mueller is unknowable to the reporters.

The collusion of the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign with the Russians should be the top feature for this new cycle.

The featuring by the New York Times of this  major  length article full of innuendo leads to the suspicion that this is intentional cover-up.

********

Talking Points Brought to Trump Tower Meeting Were Shared With Kremlin

By SHARON LaFRANIERE and ANDREW E. KRAMER

NEW YORK TIMES OCT. 27, 2017

Natalia V. Veselnitskaya arrived at a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 hoping to interest top Trump campaign officials in the contents of a memo she believed contained information damaging to the Democratic Party and, by extension, Hillary Clinton. The material was the fruit of her research as a private lawyer, she has repeatedly said, and any suggestion that she was acting at the Kremlin’s behest that day is anti-Russia “hysteria.”

But interviews and records show that in the months before the meeting, Ms. Veselnitskaya had discussed the allegations with one of Russia’s most powerful officials, the prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika. And the memo she brought with her closely followed a document that Mr. Chaika’s office had given to an American congressman two months earlier, incorporating some paragraphs verbatim.

The coordination between the Trump Tower visitor and the Russian prosecutor general undercuts Ms. Veselnitskaya’s account that she was a purely independent actor when she sat down with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Paul J. Manafort, then the Trump campaign chairman. It also suggests that emails from an intermediary to the younger Mr. Trump promising that Ms. Veselnitskaya would arrive with information from Russian prosecutors were rooted at least partly in fact — not mere “puffery,” as the president’s son later said.

In the past week, Ms. Veselnitskaya’s allegations — that major Democratic donors were guilty of financial fraud and tax evasion — have been embraced at the highest levels of the Russian government. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia repeated her charges at length last week at an annual conference of Western academics. A state-run television network recently made them the subject of two special reports, featuring interviews with Ms. Veselnitskaya and Mr. Chaika.

The matching messages point to a synchronized information campaign. Like some other Russian experts, Stephen Blank, a senior fellow with the nonprofit American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, said they indicate that Ms. Veselnitskaya’s actions “were coordinated from the very top.”

The Trump Tower meeting is of keen interest to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as he investigates Russian efforts to help Mr. Trump’s campaign. At least one participant at the meeting has already testified before a federal grand jury.

Ms. Veselnitskaya declined to be interviewed, saying in an email that The New York Times had published “lies and false claims.”

The memo that Ms. Veselnitskaya brought to the Trump Tower meeting alleged that Ziff Brothers Investments, an American firm, had illegally purchased shares in a Russian company and evaded tens of millions of dollars of Russian taxes. The company was the financial vehicle of three billionaire brothers, two of them major donors to Democratic candidates including Mrs. Clinton. By implication, Ms. Veselnitskaya, said, those political contributions were tainted by “stolen” money.

Kremlin officials viewed the charges as extremely significant. The Ziff brothers had invested in funds managed by William F. Browder, an American-born financier and fierce Kremlin foe. Mr. Browder was the driving force behind a 2012 law passed by Congress imposing sanctions on Russian officials for human rights abuses.

The law, known as the Magnitsky Act, froze Western bank accounts of officials on the sanctions list – including Mr. Chaika’s deputy — and banned them from entering the United States. It was named after Sergei L. Magnitsky, a tax lawyer who had worked for Mr. Browder and who died in a Moscow jail after exposing a massive fraud scheme involving Russian officials.

In his speech to Western academics at a Black Sea resort last week, Mr. Putin said that American authorities had ignored the allegations against Mr. Browder and his investors because the Ziff brothers were major political donors. “They protect themselves in this way,” he said.

A spokesman for Ziff Brothers Investments declined to comment. Mr. Browder said the charges were concocted to discredit him and to undermine the Magnitsky Act sanctions.

How Ms. Veselnitskaya’s allegations made their way to the upper reaches of the Russian government, and then to Trump campaign, is a tangled tale. A former prosecutor for the Moscow regional government, Ms. Veselnitskaya lives and works in Moscow but has traveled frequently to the United States in recent years, partly to lobby against the Magnitsky Act.

She was also the lead defense lawyer in a civil fraud lawsuit brought by the Justice Department against a Russian firm in New York. The firm, which ultimately settled the case for about $6 million without admitting fault, was accused of using real estate purchases to launder a portion of the profits from the tax fraud that Mr. Magnitsky had uncovered. Mr. Browder provided much of the prosecution’s evidence.

While investigating Mr. Browder and his investors, Ms. Veselnitskaya unearthed what she considered evidence of a financial and tax fraud scheme. In October 2015, she took her findings about Mr. Browder and the Ziff brothers directly to Mr. Chaika, Russia’s top prosecutor and a man whom she has said she knows personally.

Mr. Chaika was highly pleased with her report, according to a former colleague of Ms. Veselnitskaya who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions.

In April 2016, Ms. Veselnitskaya teamed with Mr. Chaika’s office to pass the accusations to an American congressional delegation visiting Moscow. An official with the Russian prosecutor general’s office gave a memo detailing the charges — stamped “confidential”— to Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who is considered to be one of the most pro-Russia lawmakers in Congress and who heads a subcommittee that helps oversee U.S. policy toward Russia.

Ms. Veselnitskaya handed a nearly identical memo to Representative French Hill, Republican of Arkansas. She has said she also met with Mr. Rohrabacher then, although he said that he does not recall the encounter.

The next month, Mr. Chaika’s office described the alleged scheme on the prosecutor general’s website.

Precisely how Ms. Veselnitskaya ended up at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting to present her findings remains in dispute. She asked Aras Agalarov, a well-connected Russian oligarch who knows the Trump family to help her share her allegations with the Trump campaign, according to Mr. Agalarov’s attorney, Scott Balber.

She may have told Mr. Agalarov that she had previously conveyed the same information to Mr. Chaika, Mr. Balber said. Mr. Agalarov’s son then enlisted his publicist, Rob Goldstone, to broker the meeting.

In emails to Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Goldstone wrote that a Russian prosecutor — an apparent reference to Mr. Chaika — had met with Mr. Agalarov and wanted to offer the Trump campaign official documents that would incriminate Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Goldstone described the proposed meeting as part of the Russian government’s effort to help Mr. Trump’s candidacy, and said a “government lawyer” would fly to New York to deliver the documents.

Donald Trump Jr. has dismissed Mr. Goldstone’s emails as “goosed-up.” Mr. Balber blamed miscommunication among those arranging the meeting. “Mr. Agalarov unequivocally, absolutely, never spoke to Mr. Chaika or his office about these issues,” he said.

Donald Trump Jr. enthusiastically accepted the offer of information that might damage the Clinton campaign. “I love it,” he wrote in an email agreeing to meet the Russian lawyer.

Ms. Veselnitskaya came to Trump Tower with a memo that closely resembled the document that prosecutors had given to Mr. Rohrabacher in Moscow two months earlier. Some paragraphs were incorporated verbatim, according to a comparison of both documents, which were provided to The Times.

By all accounts, the Trump campaign officials were unimpressed — even baffled — by her 20-minute presentation. “Some D.N.C. donors may have done something in Russia and they didn’t pay taxes,” Donald Trump Jr. said later. “I was, like, ‘What does this have to do with anything?’”

After the meeting came to light last summer, Ms. Veselnitskaya insisted it was “not related at all to the fact” that Donald Trump Jr. “was the son of the candidate.” But by last weekend, she was describing herself as a kind of whistle-blower who was trying to expose American political corruption.

Last week, she told Rossiya 24, the state television network: “Of course they don’t like it when somebody says, even in a friendly tone, ‘Guys, what is happening with you at home? Who is in charge of your politics? Who is paying these politicians, and for what?’”

In a follow-up television interview broadcast early this week, Mr. Chaika charged that Mr. Browder and the Ziffs had illegally used “Russian money” to lobby for the sanctions law.

Russian elites have been known to mount independent initiatives to curry favor with the Kremlin. But a number of well-known Russian analysts called it inconceivable that Ms. Veselnitskaya would have bypassed her own government to deliver what are now unmistakably official allegations to an American presidential campaign.

Said Gleb O. Pavlovsky, the president of the Fund for Effective Politics, a Moscow research institute: “She had guidance.”

A Guard Dog, a Ghoulish Clown, a Warrior, and Remembering Sergeant La David Johnson

Shawn Mitchell

In the sadly contentious matter of remembering Sergeant La David Johnson, the villain turns out to be Congresswoman Fredericka Wilson, more of a ghoulish clown, really. President Trump plays the role of a loyal guard dog who doth bark too much, and General John Kelly comes off as a brave knight with a scratch in his armor.  The sudden frenzy already is old news and much picked over, but maybe insufficiently considered.

The flurry happened fast. President Trump called Myeshia Johnson, the widow of a soldier fallen in a raid in Niger to express his condolences. The next day, news reported that Congresswoman Wilson claimed Trump told the bereaved woman: “He knew what he signed up for.” Trump denied that was his message. The family said “Yeah, that’s about what he said.”Suddenly, the national food fight commenced over the president remembering a fallen soldier. Partisans of different stripes variously condemned Trump’s crassness, defended  his intent and the fair meaning of the contested phrase, or, condemned Trump for bullying and debating a Gold Star family. Trump’s Chief of Staff, former Marine General John Kelly, a Gold Star parent himself, held a press conference and offered a magisterial and moving account of the way America treats its fallen soldiers, the debt we owe such men and women, and his own experience in the loss of a son. 

He described his discussion with the president about how to speak to the families. He recalled the words of comfort his own best friend gave him: “He said, Kel, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining that 1 percent. He knew what the possibilities were because we’re at war.”

As a relevant digression, the phrases are not unlike the tone and framing of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who, in testimony before Congress, described the service of Ambassador Chris Stevens, killed in Libya: 

"Chris Stevens understood that diplomats must operate in many places where our soldiers do not, where there are no other boots on the ground, and safety is far from guaranteed. In fact, he volunteered for just those assignments. 

He also understood we will never prevent every act of terrorism or achieve perfect security, and that we inevitably must accept a level of risk to protect our country and advance our interests and values.

. . .

Nobody knew the dangers of Libya better -- a weak government, extremist groups, rampant instability. But Chris chose to go to Benghazi because he understood America had to be represented there at that pivotal time."

At the press conference, General Kelly concluded his remarks by expressing regret bordering on lamentation that anyone like Congresswoman Wilson would degrade the solemnity of the president’s call by “listening in” and politicizing it. (Rep. Wilson later protested she “hadn’t listened in” at all. She was in a car and listened to the conversation on a speaker phone. Well. That clarifies things.)

Kelly described an earlier event, the dedication of a federal building in Florida, named for three fallen FBI agents. He said FBI Director James Comey had given a magnificent memorial, and then Wilson delivered a hyped political speech, bragging about how she secured the money to pay for the federal building. Kelly expressed his disappointment in the empty barrel making loud and inappropriate noise.

It was a bravura performance that brought tears to many eyes and a temporary halt to partisan sniping. But, in America today, all such halts are very temporary. Critics returned to the theme that Trump should not have contradicted a bereaved family. Shortly, video of the Congresswoman’s speech at the dedication surfaced. It turns out she had not bragged about bringing home the appropriations bacon, rather, she had bragged about pushing through the administrative process to name a federal building in record time. 

This is a distinction without a difference. Wilson had given a political rah rah speech at a solemn occasion. But, the opportunity was there for partisan media to pounce on Kelly. “Video proves John Kelly lied about Rep. Wilson” brayed MSNBC. Other outlets piled on. 

And so, not many days after the death of a brave man in a far away place the brawl continues over whether the president disrespected him in paying condolences. Another Gold Star widow, Natasha De Alencar, distraught by the politicization released the recording of the president’s respectful and “heartfelt” call to her after her husband was killed in Afghanistan. 

It is worth summing up the roles of the major players here. President Trump wanted to comfort Myeshia Johnson on the loss of her husband. He sought counsel from his Chief of Staff, a man better positioned to give that counsel than anyone. He made the call.

Someone, it is a safe bet not the grieving widow, invited Fredericka Wilson to listen into the call and the next day, she was slamming the president to the media, politicizing a family’s tragedy. There is no benign explanation for Wilson listening in. If she was included because she was close to the family, she should have been there with them. Her participation was an obvious set up. She played her role and rained ugly controversy all over the suffering of Myeshia Johnson. 

Trump took the bait, and escalated the rhetoric with a tweet that the Congresswoman had “fabricated” her account. More likely she had distorted and maligned his sincere respect. Truly he doth bark too much.

General Kelly did a masterful and gracious job putting things in context and directing the nation’s attention where it belongs, on the heroism and sacrifice of America’s fighting men and women. But, he botched an insignificant detail which invited the partisan jackals to keep barking.

And tonight, in far away places, thousands America’s finest young people stand guard, protecting the peace and security of a nation that may or may not deserve them. 

INTERNET GIANTS SHOW POWER TO SHAPE POLITICS

By Jeff Mordock - The Washington Times - Monday, October 23, 2017

Algorithms have become a modern-day Cronkite deciding what news reaches the eyes and ears of many Americans

Robert Epstein tried a simple experiment in the run-up to the presidential election: running searches on Google and Yahoo for political topics.

The results were stunning. Google searches returned twice as many pro-Hillary Clinton news articles as Yahoo searches.

Perhaps even more stunning was that men and blue-state residents saw more than double the number of pro-Clinton articles than women and people living in red states, Mr. Epstein, of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, and Robert E. Robertson, a professor at Northeastern University, argued in a report this year.

Mr. Epstein said he is still studying what caused the bias but worries that Google’s search algorithm — a form of artificial intelligence that chooses what results a searcher is looking for — ranked pro-Clinton articles ahead of positive articles about her opponent, Donald Trump.

Those algorithms have become the modern-day Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow, deciding what news reaches the eyes and ears of Americans in an increasingly Google-Facebook-Twitter media environment.

In recent months, the focus has been on whether the companies were able to be manipulated by Russian-connected operatives who attempted to sow “chaos” in the U.S. surrounding last year’s elections.

But the power of the companies to shape American politics goes well beyond that.

“The social media companies are the gatekeepers,” said Frank Foer, a writer at The Atlantic and former editor of the New Republic who has authored a book on social media’s power. “Whatever choices these companies make to elevate or bury information is very powerful and will have a big impact on what people read.”

Conservatives say they have long suspected that some of the internet giants discriminate against them and their content. They point to whistleblowers who have acknowledged they were pushed to treat conservatives differently.

The companies have denied the claims. They insist the algorithms are designed to capture the most-read news stories across the political spectrum. A computer program cannot distinguish between liberal and conservative, they say.

Mr. Foer, who says he is concerned about the level of power wielded by the algorithms the tech companies use, dismisses accusations of a liberal bias as “conservative paranoia.”

Studies allege bias

But an emerging set of studies suggests there is something to the concerns.

Mr. Epstein and Mr. Robertson, in their research, looked at 4,045 election-related searches on Google and Yahoo during a 25-day period from mid-October through Election Day. They found that the pro-Clinton articles swamped pro-Trump news.

“The algorithms are not programmed with an equal time rule,” said Mr. Epstein, a vocal Clinton supporter. “They are programmed to put one thing ahead of another in a way that is highly secret and ever-changing.”

He said his experiments show the power of news searches to affect politics and has found that he could boost support for a candidate by as much as 63 percent after just one Google search session. That is based on five experiments Mr. Epstein ran in two countries in which study participants changed their opinions of a candidate based on a manipulated search engine. He has dubbed this the “search engine manipulation effect.”

A separate study by Nicholas Diakopoulos, now at Northwestern University, analyzed the Google search results on Dec. 1, 2015. He searched for the names of all 16 presidential candidates and discovered Democrats, on average, had seven favorable search results among Google’s top 10. Republican candidates, meanwhile, had only 5.9 positive articles in the top 10.

Mrs. Clinton had five positive search results but only one negative on the first page, according to the study. Mr. Trump had four positive and three negative search results on the first page. Sen. Bernard Sanders, another Democratic candidate, had nine positive results without a single negative, and Republican candidate Sen. Ted Cruz had no positive results.

Mr. Diakopoulos ran a second study during the summer before the election and found the vast majority of sources selected for Google’s news box were left-leaning outlets. The New York Times, CNN and The Washington Post accounted for nearly 50 percent of Google news sources. Articles from Fox News, the only conservative news source among the 113 featured by Google during Mr. Diakopoulos’ study, appeared about 1 percent of the time.

Google eliminated the news box in November. Company spokeswoman Maggie Shiels said the box’s algorithm picked up news across the internet.

“There are several hundred signals that go into surfacing an answer,” she said. “The algorithm does not focus on political party or ideology.”

The company is secretive about the algorithm and insists it is constantly tinkering with the formula. But it says it promotes articles based on “freshness, location, relevance and diversity.”

“As a result, stories are sorted without regard to political viewpoint or ideology and you can choose from a wide variety of perspectives on any given story,” the company says on its online explainer.

Analysts have caught some deeper glimpses over the years, based on testing and on information gleaned from patent applications Google has filed, saying Google judges trustworthiness and importance of a news site, how much content it produces and even length of stories to gauge whether to elevate a site’s content.

News operations, just like other website owners, invest a lot of time and money trying to figure out Google’s system, and an entire industry known as search engine optimization, or SEO, claims to offer shortcuts to earn more eyeballs.

Patents suggest search engines may be increasingly tailoring results to the individual’s history, promoting websites or story themes the searcher seems to select the most.

Mr. Diakopoulos said someone who searches for positive news about Trump is more likely to get exposed to conservative news, while someone who searches for left-leaning topics will receive more liberal news.

And then there is the issue of the press itself.

“If 70 percent of the news media is liberal, you can expect there to be some unequal results to come from a search engine,” Mr. Diakopoulos said.

That means the social media may not be biased, but instead is a reflection of the bias perceived in traditional media, said S. Robert. Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University.

“If you are getting a certain perspective from the major news outlets, that is going to be passed on through social media, which is the last link in the chain,” he said.

But Mr. Epstein said the concern about who is creating the algorithm is just as concerning as the program itself.

“When accused of a liberal bias, these companies say, ‘It’s not us; it’s the algorithm,” he said. “That is so hilarious because they programmed the algorithm.”

Facebook workers raise questions

Accusations of an indirect bias may not carry as much weight if not accompanied by accusations of direct bias by the social media companies.

In May 2016, a group of several former Facebook workers told technology blog Gizmodo that they routinely suppressed news about prominent conservatives, including Mitt Romney, Rand Paul and the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference. The employees, who worked as ‘news curators,’ also said stories reported by conservative outlets such as Brietbart and Newsmax were dismissed unless The New York Times, BBC or CNN covered the same article.

Facebook denied the accusations and said an internal study found virtually identical rates of liberal and conservative new topics. The company did concede bias could have occurred through improper human actions and it would take steps to prevent it from happening in the future. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg invited 16 conservative leaders to the company’s headquarters for a meeting.

Mr. Zuckerberg opened the meeting acknowledging that both he and Facebook are liberal and that he knows little about the conservative movement, according those who attended. But Mr. Zuckerburg conceded that if Facebook wants to be an open marketplace of ideas, then it must be open to conservative viewpoints.

“The meeting opened on a positive, honest note and went that way throughout the whole meeting,” said Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center.

Mr. Bozell said Facebook has made a sincere effort since the meeting to include conservative voices.

“We’ve never had a serious problem with Facebook,” he said. “Does that make us the exception to the rule? I don’t know.”

Zachary Moffatt, CEO of Targeted Victory, a Republican political strategy group, agreed that Mr. Zuckerberg was sincere and concerned about the perception of a liberal bias. Mr. Moffatt, who is working with Facebook ahead of the Senate hearings on the Russian ad buy, said Mr. Zuckerberg’s staff has followed up since the meeting.

“I think Facebook is doing more to address the unconscious structural bias than other partners in this space,” he said.

Conservative commentator Steven Crowder was among the voices blocked by the former Facebook workers. He said a social media bias against conservatives is real but sometimes gets obscured by conservatives claiming censorship when, in fact, they violated a site’s rules by spreading fake news or using a copyrighted image or song without permission.

“There are too many conservatives screaming censorship, but they need to make sure they are not embarrassing Facebook with false stories or too many pop-ups,” Mr. Crowder said. “That does a disservice to everyone who has been harmed by some of these practices. It does happen, but, unfortunately, the people it happens to are not the ones who scream the loudest.”

Mr. Crowder won a settlement with Facebook after filing a legal action seeking more information about the company’s advertising practices. He claimed Facebook refused to acknowledge his advertising payments. Mr. Crowder said he could not discuss whether the issue came from bias or mismanagement by Facebook’s advertising team because of the settlement agreement.

It’s not just Facebook and Google. Earlier this month, Twitter blocked a campaign ad by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, claiming it included “an inflammatory statement that is likely to evoke a strong reaction.” In the ad, Ms. Blackburn said she helped stop Planned Parenthood from selling baby body parts.

Twitter initially said it would air the ad for Ms. Blackburn, who is running for U.S. Senate, if the line about the sale of baby body parts is removed. After the congresswoman went public, the social media site backtracked and allowed the ad to run.

“The damage being done to conservatives is almost incalculable,” said Seton Motley, a technology policy specialist and president of Less Government, a conservative organization dedicated to reducing government power. “If network television media bias can give a candidate a 4- to 6-point advantage and social media giants have more power than the networks, can we even quantify a number?”

Google insists there is no truth to Mr. Epstein’s hypothesis that it could secretly influence an election outcome.

“Claims that Google News is biased or favors one political point of view over another are just not true,” Ms. Shiels said. “The whole ethos of the product is to give people access to a rich and diverse world of news, views and perspectives. We are able to do that thanks to the more than 80,000 publications from around the globe that are part of the corpus.”

Companies are politically active

The companies’ denials are complicated by their executives’ perceived political leanings.

Employees and affiliates of Alphabet Inc., a Google holding company, donated nearly $1.6 million to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential aspirations and about $359,000 to her Democratic primary opponent Mr. Sanders, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, received roughly $23,000 from the company.

In fact, the top 16 candidates who received contributions from Alphabet employees were all Democrats. The top Republican was Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, who received just over $23,000.

Mr. Walden is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is reviewing net neutrality legislation. Net neutrality, if imposed, would block internet providers from charging for or blocking online content.

Google and other social media companies have opposed such measures.

In total, 63 percent of Alphabet contributions in last year’s election went to Democrats and 22 percent went to Republicans — even though Republicans dominate elected offices at the national and state levels. The remaining 12 percent went to support independent candidates.

Ms. Shiels declined to comment on the donations.

Facebook also donated heavily to the Democratic Party. Of the nearly $4.6 million Facebook employees and affiliates spent on last year’s election, 67 percent went toward Democrats and 32 percent went to Republican candidates. Mrs. Clinton received $478,000 from Facebook, while Mr. Trump received about $4,665.

“These companies are shockingly political,” said Scott Cleland, who has authored a book about Google. “They are the gatekeepers of all the world’s information, and everything they do has a political angle to it.”

The relationships were also personal.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg was one of those in email communication with John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, according to messages released by WikiLeaks.

“I want HRC to win badly,” Ms. Sandberg said in one missive. In a later email, she told Mr. Podesta she was looking forward to working with him “to elect the first woman President of the United States” and she was “thrilled” by the progress Mrs. Clinton was making.

A representative for Ms. Sandberg declined to comment.

The leaked Podesta emails also showed that Google had loaned its jet to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign staff on several occasions. Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, publicly supported Mrs. Clinton, and the Clinton campaign’s chief technology officer, Stephanie Hannon, and chief product officer, Osi Imeokparia, were former Google executives.

The Obama administration also built deep links with Google, where 22 former White House officials worked, while 31 Google executives went to work for the White House or were appointed to federal advisory boards, including the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology and the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, according to a study by the Campaign for Accountability.

In total, nearly 250 people shuttled from government service to Google or vice versa during the Obama administration.

The same study found that Google representatives attended White House meetings more than once a week, on average, from the start of the Obama presidency through October 2015. During that same period, Google lobbyists visited the White House 128 times, the most of any lobbyist during that time.

“What Google and Facebook lost with a Trump victory is cronyism,” Mr. Motley said.

Google and Facebook have increased their lobbying efforts over the past few months as Congress scrutinizes their power. Facebook spent $285 million on lobbyists from July through September, a 41 percent increase over the same period last year. Google spent $417 million during those three months, including hiring Republican lobbyists Jochum Shore & Trossevin PC to fight a bill that would penalize tech companies for content that promotes sex trafficking. The companies are fighting the bill because it weakens some of their legal protections.

Both Republicans and Democrats have come to respect the power and reach of the tech giants. Although Mr. Trump’s Twitter account gets the most attention, his campaign said it was Facebook that helped them win the presidential election.

Brad Parscale, who ran Mr. Trump’s digital team, said in a recent interview with CBS’s “60 minutes” that he asked Facebook employees to be “embedded inside our offices” to help craft carefully tailored ads he said reached voters they never could have with television ads.

“I think Donald Trump won, but I think Facebook was the method — it was the highway in which his car drove on,” he told CBS.

Patrick Hynes, an adviser to the 2008 McCain and 2012 Romney Republican presidential campaigns, said he expects social media companies to double down on their support for Democrats in the 2020 election. He predicted efforts to silence Mr. Trump and others, similar to Twitter’s attempt to ban Ms. Blackburn’s ad.

“The social media companies will engage in full-scale censorship with the approval or rejection of advertising content in the next presidential election,” he said. “Trump’s advertising will be critiqued in a way that they will not do to the Democrats.”