THE OBAMA CAMP’S DISINGENUOUS DENIALS ON FISA SURVEILLANCE OF TRUMP

by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY, NATIONAL REVIEW,  March 5, 2017 

President Trump’s early Saturday morning tweeting has exploded to the forefront an uncovered scandal I’ve been talking about since early January (including in this weekend’s column): The fact that the Obama Justice Department and the FBI investigated associates of Donald Trump, and likely Trump himself, in the heat of the presidential campaign.

To summarize, reporting indicates that, prior to June 2016, the Obama Justice Department and FBI considered a criminal investigation of Trump associates, and perhaps Trump himself, based on concerns about connections to Russian financial institutions. Preliminary poking around indicated that there was nothing criminal involved. Rather than shut the case down, though, the Obama Justice Department converted it into a national-security investigation under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA allows the government, if it gets court permission, to conduct electronic surveillance (which could include wiretapping, monitoring of e-mail, and the like) against those it alleges are “agents of a foreign power.”

FISA applications and the evidence garnered from them are classified – i.e., we would not know about any of this unless someone had leaked classified information to the media, a felony. In June, the Obama Justice Department submitted an application that apparently “named” Trump in addition to some of his associates.

As I have stressed, it is unclear whether “named” in this context indicates that Trump himself was cited as a person the Justice Department was alleging was a Russian agent whom it wanted to surveil. It could instead mean that Trump’s name was merely mentioned in an application that sought to conduct surveillance on other alleged Russian agents. President Trump’s tweets on Saturday claimed that “President Obama . . . tapp[ed] my phones[,]” which makes it more likely that Trump was targeted for surveillance, rather than merely mentioned in the application.

In any event, the FISA court reportedly turned down the Obama Justice Department’s request, which is notable: The FISA court is notoriously solicitous of government requests to conduct national-security surveillance (although, as I’ve noted over the years, the claim by many that it is a rubber-stamp is overblown).

Not taking no for an answer, the Obama Justice Department evidently returned to the FISA court in October 2016, the critical final weeks of the presidential campaign. This time, the Justice Department submitted a narrowly tailored application that did not mention Trump. The court apparently granted it, authorizing surveillance of some Trump associates.

It is unknown whether that surveillance is still underway, but the New York Times has identified – again, based on illegal leaks of classified information – at least three of its targets: Paul Manafort (the former Trump campaign chairman who was ousted in August), and two others whose connection to the Trump campaign was loose at best, Manafort’s former political-consulting business partner Roger Stone, and investor Carter Page.

The Times report (from mid-January) includes a lot of heavy breathing about potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia; but it ultimately concedes that the government’s FISA investigation may have nothing to do with Trump, the campaign, or alleged Russian efforts to interfere in the U.S. election by hacking e-mail accounts. Trump’s tweets on Saturday prompted some interesting “denials” from the Obama camp. These can be summarized in the statement put out by Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis:

A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice. As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.

This seems disingenuous on several levels. First, as Obama officials well know, under the FISA process, it is technically the FISA court that “orders” surveillance. And by statute, it is the Justice Department, not the White House, that represents the government in proceedings before the FISA court. So, the issue is not whether Obama or some member of his White House staff “ordered” surveillance of Trump and his associates.

The issues are (a) whether the Obama Justice Department sought such surveillance authorization from the FISA court, and (b) whether, if the Justice Department did that, the White House was aware of or complicit in the decision to do so. Personally, given the explosive and controversial nature of the surveillance request we are talking about – an application to wiretap the presidential candidate of the opposition party, and some of his associates, during the heat of the presidential campaign, based on the allegation that the candidate and his associates were acting as Russian agents – it seems to me that there is less than zero chance that could have happened without consultation between the Justice Department and the White House.

Second, the business about never ordering surveillance against American citizens is nonsense. Obama had American citizens killed in drone operations. Obviously, that was not done in the U.S. or through the FISA process; it was done overseas, under the president’s commander-in-chief and statutory authority during wartime.

But the notion that Obama would never have an American subject to surveillance is absurd. Third, that brings us to a related point: FISA national-security investigations are not like criminal investigations. They are more like covert intelligence operations – which presidents personally sign off on.

The intention is not to build a criminal case; it is to gather information about what foreign powers are up, particularly on U.S. soil. One of the points in FISA proceedings’ being classified is that they remain secret – the idea is not to prejudice an American citizen with publication of the fact that he has been subjected to surveillance even though he is not alleged to have engaged in criminal wrongdoing. Consequently, there is nothing wrong, in principle, with a president’s ordering national-security surveillance of a potential foreign agent who may be helping a foreign power threaten American security and interests.

That is one of the president’s main jobs – there would be something wrong if a president, who truly believed the nation was threatened by a foreign power, failed to take action. Prior to FISA’s enactment in 1978, courts had no formal role in the surveillance of foreign agents for national-security purposes – it was a unilateral executive-branch function. Beginning with the Carter administration during FISA’s enactment, it has been the position of presidential administrations of both parties that, despite the enactment of the FISA process, the president maintains inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to order surveillance even in the absence of court authorization.

Of course, doing so is controversial, as President Bush learned after he directed the NSA to conduct warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists following the 9/11 attacks. Nevertheless, we should not allow the statements of Obama spokesmen to confuse us here. The Justice Department and FBI have two missions: (a) criminal law-enforcement and (b) national security. It would be scandalous (though probably not constitutional unconstitutional) for a president to interfere in the law-enforcement mission by ordering the Justice Department to prosecute someone outside its normal procedures.

But it would not be inappropriate  e–ven though civil libertarians would raise holy hell — for the president to direct warrantless surveillance against a target, even an American citizen, if the president truly believed that target was functioning as an agent of a foreign power threatening U.S. interests. To be clear, there does not seem to be any evidence, at least that I know of, to suggest that any surveillance or requests to conduct surveillance against then-candidate Donald Trump was done outside the FISA process.

Nevertheless, whether done inside or outside the FISA process, it would be a scandal of Watergate dimension if a presidential administration sought to conduct, or did conduct, national-security surveillance against the presidential candidate of the opposition party. Unless there was some powerful evidence that the candidate was actually acting as an agent of a foreign power, such activity would amount to a pretextual use of national-security power for political purposes. That is the kind of abuse that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation in lieu of impeachment.

Moreover, it cannot be glossed over that, at the very time it appears the Obama Justice Department was seeking to surveil Trump and/or his associates on the pretext that they were Russian agents, the Obama Justice Department was also actively undermining and ultimately closing without charges the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton despite significant evidence of felony misconduct that threatened national security. This appears to be extraordinary, politically motivated abuse of presidential power.  [I have updated the post, as indicated, to reflect that I meant “not unconstitutional” in a passage in which I erroneously said “not constitutional.]

 Democrats’ ‘Russian Hacking’ Conspiracy Theory Backfires  

By Joel B Pollak, BREITBART

Note that this article is posted for information/discussion only. The official position is: "no comment".

Democrats’ efforts to raise suspicions about alleged — and, thus far, imaginary — links between President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government may have backfired spectacularly.

The spotlight is now on President Barack Obama and his administration’s alleged surveillance of the Trump campaign, as well as his aides’ reported efforts to spread damaging information about Trump throughout government agencies to facilitate later investigations and, possibly, leaks to the media.

On Sunday morning, the White House released a statement indicating that the president would ask the congressional committees investigating Russian hacking theories to add the question of “whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016.”

Media outlets continued to repeat that the story was based on “no evidence,” though the evidence was plain.

President Donald Trump originally tweeted about the alleged surveillance — which radio host Mark Levin called a “silent coup” by Obama staffers keen to undermine the new administration — on Saturday. Levin’s claims, reported at Breitbart News early Friday, were in turn based on information largely from mainstream outlets, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. Heat Street was one non-mainstream source, but the BBC also reported similar information in January. So, too, did the UK Guardian, which is a mainstream source (albeit with a decidedly left-wing slant, hardly favorable to Trump).

All day Saturday, former Obama staffers tried to put out the fires. A spokesperson for President Obama responded — and Obama aide Valerie Jarrett tweeted:

A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice. As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.

As Breitbart News’ Matthew Boyle noted, however, it was a “non-denial denial.” It is worth examining the statement in detail.

“A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice.”

Note that this sentence does not dispute any of the key factual allegations at issue: that the DOJ approached the FISA court for permission to spy on Trump aides; that surveillance, once granted, continued after no evidence was found of wrongdoing; that the Obama administration relaxed National Security Agency rules to facilitate the dissemination of evidence through the government; and that Obama staffers allegedly did so, the better to leak damaging (and partial) information to the media.

In addition, there is reason to doubt the claim that the White House never “interfered”: the New York Times reported in January that “intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House.”

Moreover, the first part of the sentence raises doubts about Lewis’s entire statement. Lewis could simply have said: “No White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the DOJ.” That would have been a clear denial. Instead, he referred to a “cardinal rule” that supposedly existed.

All that does is create deniability for the rest of the White House in the event that evidence turns up that someone was, in fact, involved with a Department of Justice probe. (No doubt Obama will be outraged to find out if someone broke the “cardinal rule,” and will claim to have found out through the media, rather than directly.) The Obama communications operation is notoriously careful with the way denials are worded.

“As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen.”

This is a meaningless denial, since the FISA court deals with communications with foreigners, with U.S. citizens potentially swept up in the investigation. It would have been possible for the DOJ to approach the FISA court with a request to monitor foreign entities allegedly communicating with the Trump campaign, using those intercepts as a way to monitor the Trump campaign itself. According to news reports cited by Andrew McCarthy, that could have been precisely what happened.

And, again, this sentence does not deny that someone in the Obama administration may have ordered such surveillance.

“Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”

What we have here is a blanket denial crafted to protect President Barack Obama himself, but allowing him to admit later — once the facts emerge — that his administration was, in fact, up to something. In addition, the Democrats have been adept at constructing elaborate chains of communication to create plausible deniability for higher-ups. That is how the “bird-dogging” scheme — through which left-wing activists instigated violence at Donald Trump’s rallies — was arranged for the Clinton campaign. (The organizer behind that scheme visited Obama’s White House 340 times, meeting Obama himself 45 times.)

As the New York Times — supposedly the paper of record — recently reported, there is “no evidence” that the “Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.” But there is ample evidence that the outgoing Obama administration could have used intelligence agencies to carry out a political agenda against Trump. The media, as Mark Levin pointed out again on Sunday’s Fox and Friends, simply refuse to report their own earlier reports.

Even without Trump’s more sensational accusations of wiretapping, it is, so far, undisputed that there have been many leaks of classified information to damage Trump, and that the Obama administration took steps that could have made such leaks more likely. (Charles Krauthammer — who is skeptical of “deep state” theories — called this the “Revenge of the Losers” on Friday.) Those are serious allegations that the former administration is likely going to have to explain to Congress.

But if the Obama administration did order surveillance of the Trump campaign during the election; and if Obama or any other White House officials knew about it (or created a “plausible deniability” scheme to allow such surveillance while preventing themselves from knowing about it directly); then there is an even bigger problem.

It would then seem that the “Russia hacking” story was concocted not just to explain away an embarrassing election defeat, but to cover up the real scandal.

*******

1.     The Obama administration allowed wiretapping Donald Trump, just as it allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to record Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by not telling the NSA, “do it” and also not saying, “don’t do it,” according to a senior official in the Obama White House.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=Td1fJyca4yo-

2.     .Mark Levin       https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=33&v=Dj3XTL8pJDw

 Excerpts from: 16 FAKE NEWS STORIES REPORTERS HAVE RUN SINCE TRUMP WON  Daniel Payne  2-6-17

Since Trump’s election, here’s just a small sampling of fake news that our media and our journalist class have propagated.

Early November: Spike in Transgender Suicide Rates

After Trump’s electoral victory on November 8, rumors began circulating that multiple transgender teenagers had killed themselves in response to the election results. There was no basis to these rumors. Nobody was able to confirm them at the time, and nobody has been able to confirm in the three months since Trump was elected.

Nevertheless, the claim spread far and wide: Guardian writer and editor-at-large of Out Zach Stafford tweeted the rumor, which was retweeted more than 13,000 times before he deleted it. He later posted a tweet explaining why he deleted his original viral tweet; his explanatory tweet was shared a total of seven times. Meanwhile, PinkNews writer Dominic Preston wrote a report on the rumors, which garnered more than 12,000 shares on Facebook.

At Mic, Matthew Rodriguez wrote about the unsubstantiated allegations. His article was shared more than 55,000 times on Facebook. Urban legend debunker website Snopes wrote a report on the rumors and listed them as “unconfirmed” (rather than “false”). Snopes’s sources were two Facebook posts, since deleted, that offered no helpful information regarding the location, identity, or circumstances of any of the suicides. The Snopes report was shared 19,000 times.

At Reason, writer Elizabeth Nolan Brown searched multiple online databases to try to determine the identities or even the existence of the allegedly suicidal youth. She found nothing. As she put it: “[T]eenagers in 2016 don’t just die without anyone who knew them so much as mentioning their death online for days afterward.”

She is right. Just the same, the stories hyping this idea garnered at least nearly 100,000 shares on Facebook alone, contributing to the fear and hysteria surrounding Trump’s win.

November 22: The Tri-State Election Hacking Conspiracy Theory

On November 22, Gabriel Sherman posted a bombshell report at New YorkMagazine claiming that “a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers” were demanding a recount in three separate states because of “persuasive evidence that [the election] results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked.” The evidence? Apparently, “in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots.”

The story went stratospherically viral. It was shared more than 145,000 times on Facebook alone. Sherman shared it on his Twitter feed several times, and people retweeted his links to the story nearly 9,000 times. Politico’s Eric Geller shared the story on Twitter as well. His tweet was retweeted just under 8,000 times. Dustin Volz from Reuters shared the link; he was retweeted nearly 2,000 times. MSNBC’s Joy Reid shared the story and was retweeted more than 4,000 times. New York Times opinion columnist Paul Krugman also shared the story and was retweeted about 1,600 times.

It wasn’t until the next day, November 23, that someone threw a little water on the fire. At FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver explained that it was “demographics, not hacking” that explained the curious voting numbers. “Anyone making allegations of a possible massive electoral hack should provide proof,” he wrote, “and we can’t find any.” Additionally, Silver pointed out that the New York Magazine article had misrepresented the argument of one of the computer scientists in question.

At that point, however, the damage had already been done: Sherman, along with his credulous tweeters and retweeters, had done a great deal to delegitimize the election results. Nobody was even listening to Silver, anyway: his post was shared a mere 380 times on Facebook, or about one-quarter of 1 percent as much as Sherman’s. This is how fake news works: the fake story always goes viral, while nobody reads or even hears about the correction.

December 1: The 27-Cent Foreclosure

At Politico on December 1, Lorraine Woellert published a shocking essay claiming that Trump’s pick for secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, had overseen a company that “foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman after a 27-cent payment error.” According to Woellert: “After confusion over insurance coverage, a OneWest subsidiary sent [Ossie] Lofton a bill for $423.30. She sent a check for $423. The bank sent another bill, for 30 cents. Lofton, 90, sent a check for three cents. In November 2014, the bank foreclosed.”

The story received widespread coverage, being shared nearly 17,000 times on Facebook. The New York Times’s Steven Rattner shared it on Twitter (1,300 retweets), as did NBC News’s Brad Jaffy (1,200 retweets), the AP’s David Beard (1,900 retweets) and many others.

The problem? The central scandalous claims of Woellert’s article were simply untrue. As the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Ted Frank pointed out, the woman in question was never foreclosed on, and never lost her home. Moreover, “It wasn’t Mnuchin’s bank that brought the suit.”

Politico eventually corrected these serious and glaring errors. But the damage was done: the story had been repeated by numerous media outlets including Huffington Post (shared 25,000 times on Facebook), the New York Post, Vanity Fair, and many others.

January 20: Nancy Sinatra’s Complaints about the Inaugural Ball

On the day of Trump’s inauguration, CNN claimed Nancy Sinatra was “not happy” with the fact that the president and first lady’s inaugural dance would be to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” The problem? Nancy Sinatra had never said any such thing. CNN later updated the article without explaining the mistake they had made.

January 20: The Nonexistent Climate Change Website ‘Purge’

Also on the day of the inauguration, New York Times writer Coral Davenport published an article on the Times’s website whose headline claimed that the Trump administration had “purged” any “climate change references” from the White House website. Within the article, Davenport acknowledged that the “purge” (or what she also called “online deletions”) was “not unexpected” but rather part of a routine turnover of digital authority between administrations.

To call this action a “purge” was thus at the height of intellectual dishonesty: Davenport was styling the whole thing as a kind of digital book-burn rather than a routine part of American government. But of course that was almost surely the point. The inflammatory headline was probably the only thing that most people read of the article, doubtlessly leading many readers (the article was shared nearly 50,000 times on Facebook) to believe something that simply wasn’t true.

January 20: The Great MLK Jr. Bust Controversy

On January 20, Time reporter Zeke Miller wrote that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the White House. This caused a flurry of controversy on social media until Miller issued a correction. As Time put it, Miller had apparently not even asked anyone in the White House if the bust had been removed. He simply assumed it had been because “he had looked for it and had not seen it.”

January 20: Betsy DeVos, Grizzly Fighter

During her confirmation hearing, education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos was asked whether schools should be able to have guns on their campuses. As NBC News reported, DeVos felt it was “best left to locales and states to decide.” She pointed out that one school in Wyoming had a fence around it to protect the students from wildlife. “I would imagine,” she said, “that there’s probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies.”

This was an utterly noncontroversial stance to take. DeVos was simply pointing out that different states and localities have different needs, and attempting to mandate a nationwide one-size-fits-all policy for every American school is imprudent.

How did the media run with it? By lying through their teeth. “Betsy DeVos Says Guns Should Be Allowed in Schools. They Might Be Needed to Shoot Grizzlies” (Slate). “Betsy DeVos: Schools May Need Guns to Fight Off Bears” (The Daily Beast). “Citing grizzlies, education nominee says states should determine school gun policies” (CNN). “Betsy DeVos says guns in schools may be necessary to protect students from grizzly bears” (ThinkProgress.) “Betsy DeVos says guns shouldn’t be banned in schools … because grizzly bears” (Vox). “Betsy DeVos tells Senate hearing she supports guns in schools because of grizzly bears” (The Week). “Trump’s Education Pick Cites ‘Potential Grizzlies’ As A Reason To Have Guns In Schools” (BuzzFeed).

The intellectual dishonesty at play here is hard to overstate. DeVos never said or even intimated that every American school or even very many of them might need to shoot bears. She merely used one school as an example of the necessity of federalism and as-local-as-possible control of the education system.

Rather than report accurately on her stance, these media outlets created a fake news event to smear a reasonable woman’s perfectly reasonable opinion.

January 26: The ‘Resignations’ At the State Department

On January 26, the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin published what seemed to be a bombshell report declaring that “the State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned.” This resignation, according to Rogin, was “part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.” These resignations happened “suddenly” and “unexpectedly.” He styled it as a shocking shake-up of administrative protocol in the State Department, a kind of ad-hoc protest of the Trump administration.

The story immediately went sky-high viral. It was shared nearly 60,000 times on Facebook. Rogin himself tweeted the story out and was retweeted a staggering 11,000 times. Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum had it retweeted nearly 2,000 times; journalists and writers from Wired, The Guardian, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, ABC, Foreign Policy, and other publications tweeted the story out in shock.

There was just one problem: the story was more a load of bunk. As Vox pointed out, the headline of the piece was highly misleading: “the word ‘management’ strongly implied that all of America’s top diplomats were resigning, which was not the case.” (The Postlater changed the word “management” to “administrative” without noting the change, although it left the “management” language intact in the article itself).

More importantly, Mark Toner, the acting spokesman for the State Department, put out a press release noting that “As is standard with every transition, the outgoing administration, in coordination with the incoming one, requested all politically appointed officers submit letters of resignation.” According to CNN, the officials were actually asked to leave by the Trump administration rather than stay on for the customary transitional few months. The entire premise of Rogin’s article was essentially nonexistent.

As always, the correction received far less attention than the fake news itself: Vox’s article, for instance, was shared around 9,500 times on Facebook, less than one-sixth the rate of Rogin’s piece. To this day, Rogin’s piece remains uncorrected regarding its faulty presumptions.

January 27: The Photoshopped Hands Affair

On January 27, Observer writer Dana Schwartz tweeted out a screenshot of Trump that, in her eyes, proved President Trump had “photoshopped his hands bigger” for a White House photograph. Her tweet immediately went viral, being shared upwards of 25,000 times. A similar tweet by Disney animator Joaquin Baldwin was shared nearly 9,000 times as well.

The conspiracy theory was eventually debunked, but not before it had been shared thousands upon thousands of times. Meanwhile, Schwartz tweeted that she did “not know for sure whether or not the hands were shopped.” Her correction tweet was shared a grand total of…11 times.

January 29: The Reuters Account Hoax

Following the Quebec City mosque massacre, the Daily Beast published a story that purported to identify the two shooters who had perpetrated the crime. The problem? The story’s source was a Reuters parody account on Twitter. Incredibly, nobody at the Daily Beast thought to check the source to any appreciable degree.

January 31: The White House-SCOTUS Twitter Mistake

Leading up to Trump announcing his first Supreme Court nomination, CNN Senior White House Correspondent Jeff Zeleny announced that the White House was “setting up [the] Supreme Court announcement as a prime-time contest.” He pointed to a pair of recently created “identical Twitter pages” for a theoretical justices Neil Gorsuch and Thomas Hardiman, the two likeliest nominees for the court vacancy.

Zeleny’s sneering tweet—clearly meant to cast the Trump administration in an unflattering, circus-like light—was shared more than 1,100 times on Twitter. About 30 minutes later, however, he tweeted: “The Twitter accounts…were not set up by the White House, I’ve been told.” As always, the admission of mistake was shared far less than the original fake news: Zeleny’s correction was retweeted a paltry 159 times.

January 31: The Big Travel Ban Lie

On January 31, a Fox affiliate station out of Detroit reported that “A local business owner who flew to Iraq to bring his mother back home to the US for medical treatment said she was blocked from returning home under President Trump’s ban on immigration and travel from seven predominately Muslim nations. He said that while she was waiting for approval to fly home, she died from an illness.”

Like most other sensational news incidents, this one took off, big-time: it was shared countless times on Facebook, not just from the original article itself (123,000 shares) but via secondary reporting outlets such as the Huffington Post (nearly 9,000 shares). Credulous reporters and media personalities shared the story on Twitter to the tune of thousands and thousands of retweets, including: Christopher Hooks, Gideon Resnick, Daniel Dale, Sarah Silverman, Blake Hounshell, Brian Beutler, Garance Franke-Ruta, Keith Olbermann (he got 3,600 retweets on that one!), Matthew Yglesias, and Farhad Manjoo.

The story spread so far because it gratified all the biases of the liberal media elite: it proved that Trump’s “Muslim ban” was an evil, racist Hitler-esque mother-killer of an executive order.

There was just one problem: it was a lie. The man had lied about when his mother died. The Fox affiliate hadn’t bothered to do the necessary research to confirm or disprove the man’s account. The news station quietly corrected the story after giving rise to such wild, industrial-scale hysteria.

February 1: POTUS Threatens to Invade Mexico

On February 1, Yahoo News published an Associated Press report about a phone call President Trump shared with Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto. The report strongly implied that President Trump was considering “send[ing] U.S. troops” to curb Mexico’s “bad hombre” problem, although it acknowledged that the Mexican government disagreed with that interpretation. The White House later re-affirmed that Trump did not have any plan to “invade Mexico.”

Nevertheless, Jon Passantino, the deputy news director of BuzzFeed, shared this story on Twitter with the exclamation “WOW.” He was retweeted 2,700 times. Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama, also shared the story, declaring: “I’m sorry, did our president just threaten to invade Mexico today??” Favreau was retweeted more than 8,000 times.

Meanwhile, the Yahoo News AP post was shared more than 17,000 times on Facebook; Time’s post of the misleading report was shared more than 66,000 times; ABC News posted the story and it was shared more than 20,000 times. On Twitter, the report—with the false implication that Trump’s comment was serious—was shared by media types such as ThinkProgress’s Judd Legum, the BBC’s Anthony Zurcher, Vox’s Matt Yglesias, Politico’s Shane Goldmacher, comedian Michael Ian Black, and many others.

February 2: Easing the Russian Sanctions

Last week, NBC News national correspondent Peter Alexander tweeted out the following: “BREAKING: US Treasury Dept easing Obama admin sanctions to allow companies to do transactions with Russia’s FSB, successor org to KGB.” His tweet immediately went viral, as it implied that the Trump administration was cozying up to Russia.

A short while later, Alexander posted another tweet: “Source familiar [with] sanctions says it’s a technical fix, planned under Obama, to avoid unintended consequences of cybersanctions.” As of this writing, Alexander’s fake news tweet has approximately 6,500 retweets; his clarifying tweet has fewer than 250.

At CNBC, Jacob Pramuk styled the change this way: “Trump administration modifies sanctions against Russian intelligence service.” The article makes it clear that, per Alexander’s source, “the change was a technical fix that was planned under Obama.” Nonetheless, the impetus was placed on the Trump 

adminsitration. CBS News wrote the story up in the same way. So did the New York Daily News.

In the end, unable to pin this (rather unremarkable) policy tweak on the Trump administration, the media have mostly moved on. As the Chicago Tribune put it, the whole affair was yet again an example of how “in the hyperactive Age of Trump, something that initially appeared to be a major change in policy turned into a nothing-burger.”

February 2: Renaming Black History Month

At the start of February, which is Black History Month in the United States, Trump proclaimed the month “National African American History Month.” Many outlets tried to spin the story in a bizarre way: TMZ claimed that a “senior administration official” said that Trump believed the term “black” to be outdated. “Every U.S. president since 1976 has designated February as Black History Month,” wrote TMZ. BET wrote the same thing.

The problem? It’s just not true. President Obama, for example, declared February “National African American History Month” as well. TMZ quickly updated their piece to fix their embarrassing error.

February 2: The House of Representatives’ Gun Control Measures

On February 2, the Associated Press touched off a political and media firestorm by tweeting: “BREAKING: House votes to roll back Obama rule on background checks for gun ownership.” The AP was retweeted a staggering 12,000 times.

The headlines that followed were legion: “House votes to rescind Obama gun background check rule” (Kyle Cheney, Politico); “House GOP aims to scrap Obama rule on gun background checks” (CNBC); “House scraps background check regulation” (Yahoo News); “House rolls back Obama gun background check rule” (CNN); “House votes to roll back Obama rule on background checks for gun ownership” (Washington Post).

Some headlines were more specific about the actual House vote but no less misleading; “House votes to end rule that prevents people with mental illness from buying guns” (the Independent); “Congress ends background checks for some gun buyers with mental illness” (the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette); “House Votes to Overturn Obama Rule Restricting Gun Sales to the Severely Mentally Ill” (NPR).

The hysteria was far-reaching and frenetic. As you might have guessed, all of it was baseless. The House was actually voting to repeal a narrowly tailored rule from the Obama era. This rule mandated that the names of certain individuals who receive Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income and who use a representative to help manage these benefits due to a mental impairment be forwarded to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

If that sounds confusing, it essentially means that if someone who receives SSDI or SSI needs a third party to manage these benefits due to some sort of mental handicap, then—under the Obama rule—they may have been barred from purchasing a firearm. (It is thus incredibly misleading to suggest that the rule applied in some specific way to the “severely mentally ill.”)

As National Review’s Charlie Cooke pointed out, the Obama rule was opposed by the American Association of People With Disabilities; the ACLU; the Arc of the United States; the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network; the Consortium of Citizens With Disabilities; the National Coalition of Mental Health Recovery; and many, many other disability advocacy organizations and networks.

The media hysteria surrounding the repeal of this rule—the wildly misleading and deceitful headlines, the confused outrage over a vote that nobody understood—was a public disservice.

As Cooke wrote: “It is a rare day indeed on which the NRA, the GOP, the ACLU, and America’s mental health groups find themselves in agreement on a question of public policy, but when it happens it should at the very least prompt Americans to ask, ‘Why?’ That so many mainstream outlets tried to cheat them of the opportunity does not bode well for the future.”

Maybe It’s Time to Stop Reading Fake News

Surely more incidents have happened since Trump was elected; doubtlessly there are many more to come. To be sure, some of these incidents are larger and more shameful than others, and some are smaller and more mundane.

Typos in the names of BBC reporter Anthony Zurcher and Politico’s Lorraine Woellert have been corrected since publication.

Daniel Payne is a senior contributor at The Federalist. He currently runs the blog Trial of the Century, and lives in Virginia.

https://thefederalist.com/2017/02/06/16-fake-news-stories-reporters-have-run-since-trump-won/

The Politics of Oil: How Russia Pursues Its Energy Dream in the Middle East

By Yuri Barman, AL SHARQ FORUM

The Politics

Against the backdrop of instability in the global energy industry, Moscow is seeking to consolidate its share of the oil and gas markets as well as ensure that its revenue stream from the oil trade does not thin out. With that in mind, Russia pursues a policy of engaging its natural rivals in the industry from the Middle East with the aim of dividing up the markets fairly and on mutually beneficial principles. Moscow negotiated an almost-impossible deal with Saudi Arabia to cut oil output and made peace with Turkey against all odds in order to protect its interests in the European gas market. These steps show that despite remaining ‘frenemies’ Russia and its regional counterparts find ways to maintain a balance in the global energy market.

In May 2009, Russian authorities released a new edition of their National Security Strategy,[1] which mentioned the issue of energy for the first time, elaborating on the opportunities and challenges it presented. The Strategy seems outdated only eight years later given the set of new threats that have emerged for Moscow in the meantime, but it does name the challenge of the increased delivery of energy from the Middle East to Europe as a major threat to Russia. This statement does not appear in any other Russian official document, including the 2030 Energy Strategy of the Russian Federation.[2] It draws the contours of the strategy that Moscow has chosen for engaging its regional partners. The saying “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” is probably the best way to describe the Kremlin’s energy strategy in the Middle East.

Increasing domestic production of oil in the U.S. and the resulting reduction in imports of crude from the Gulf is changing the landscape of the energy industry in the Middle East. With instability in the oil markets, producers have become more pro-active in search of new customers, which presents a threat to Russia by challenging its oil and gas monopoly in Europe. But Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran are all also looking for stability in this troubled industry and are more willing to negotiate to divide up the energy market, something on which they are beginning to agree with Moscow. Massive oil and gas revenues allowed Russia to create a financial cushion of reserve funds in the 2000s that are proving to be extremely handy during crises such as the one it is experiencing at the moment. These reserves are depleting fast, however, with some estimates saying that one of the funds may run out by the end of 2017.[3] Moscow is therefore seeking to restore oil prices as well as create a predictable global energy market that would allow it to make long-term financial plans.

Energy as a Foreign Policy Tool

The 2015 oil glut exposed the perceived threat of Middle Eastern energy giants for Russia and intensified the competition for clients in Europe and Asia. Over the last two years, competitors from the Middle East have demonstrated their ambitions to increase deliveries of oil to Europe. There are several factors that have allowed these countries to start taking a larger share of Russia’s traditional market there. First of all, the low price of crude has made it economically unviable to store the resources, and incentivizing companies to sell it all sometimes means undercutting competitors. Second, the transportation of oil by sea is now extremely cheap, meaning that producers in the Middle East are more willing to fight for a share of the European market.

The European Union, whose 28 members make up the world’s largest natural gas imports market, has historically been among Russia’s most stable clients, importing up to 40 percent[4] of its gas and 36 percent[5] of crude from the country. The Baltic countries, as well as some states in Central Europe, until very recently imported all of their gas from Russia, making them fully dependent on its supplies and the political expectations attached. Following the crisis in Ukraine, the EU imposed several rounds of sanctions against Moscow and embarked on a plan to break its dependence on Russian energy resources by diversifying its portfolio of suppliers.

In 2015, Saudi Aramco was welcomed at Poland’s port at Gdansk to deliver its first-ever shipment of oil to the country in an attempt to contest Russia’s energy monopoly in Europe. This was followed by the signing of a permanent contract in May 2016.[6] After the partial lifting of sanctions against Iran, the country also moved on to exploring new opportunities in Europe by delivering 2 million barrels of crude to the newly-opened terminal in Gdansk. Elsewhere in Europe, Hungary, Russia’s fourth largest oil export market, increased its oil imports from Iraqi Kurdistan.

These newly emerged supply routes demonstrate how the oil glut is reshaping the oil market and how European customers are ready to go to great lengths to cut their energy dependence on Russia. While logistical complications will hardly allow Iran and Saudi Arabia to squeeze Russia out of the European market, their attempts to offer clients lower prices have sent an unsettling signal to Moscow. With oil and gas exports making up 50% of Russian budget revenue and the country’s GDP dropping from $2.1 trillion in 2014 to $1.2 trillion in 2016, maintaining its client portfolio is becoming an imperative for the country. Despite political disagreements and continuing heated arguments with the EU, what Moscow is pursuing is a freeze on the status quo in which Russian suppliers are able to dictate their own terms to European customers, and they continue to fight relentlessly to maintain this situation. This is the reason why Russia seeks to impose boundaries for “external” energy supplier. However, instead of negotiating this with the EU due to worsening relations, Moscow has decided to make a deal with emerging competitors from the Middle East.

In this context, Russia’s so-called energy pivot to Asia is a two-fold strategy whose objective is to make the country’s long-term energy planning more sustainable and predictable. China is the key pillar of this concept in East Asia, but Turkey arguably plays a crucial role in allowing Russia to expand its energy ambitions not only in Europe but also in the Middle East.

The Turkish Stream project signed by President Putin and President Erdogan on December 1, 2014, is a demonstration of this policy. The project, a 1,100-kilometer pipeline linking Russia with Turkey, will carry up to 63 billion cubic meters of natural gas per annum, most of which could be later transported through Turkey to Greece. It was proposed in order to replace the South Stream pipeline with Bulgaria, which Vladimir Putin scrapped due to the EU’s alleged lobbying against the project as part of Western sanctions against Russia.[7] Turkey’s rising natural gas demands underpin Russia’s ambition to become the sole provider of energy for the country[8]. Iran, as the second largest supplier, also sees Turkey as a prospective transport hub for gas deliveries to Europe, potentially pitting Moscow and Tehran against each other in competition for the EU market. The centrality of Turkey in Russia’s energy equation for Europe to a large extent explains why despite a temporary breakdown in relations Putin and Erdogan managed to bring about a thaw and put the Turkish Stream project back on the rails.

In pursuing a gas pipeline project with Turkey, the Kremlin also raises the ante in relations with the EU. As of yet, European capitals have not voiced a unanimous position on the prospect of receiving Russian gas through Turkish Stream. Once the pipeline is fully operational, however, Russia intends to cut gas transfers to Europe through Ukraine, one of the key points of contention between the two sides. Equally important is the fact that engaging Ankara in Russia’s energy equation essentially renders a number of other alternative pipeline projects for carrying natural gas to Europe through Turkey, such as Nabucco and the Qatar-Turkey pipeline, infeasible. By killing rival projects and ridding the EU of options to break its dependence on Russian gas, Moscow hopes to impose its own rules of the game on the European energy market, and Turkey will play a pivotal role in this strategy.

Energy Diplomacy

Russia’s idea of energy diplomacy is based on a motivation to strengthen communication and promote cooperation as well as competition and jointly maintain world energy market stability with major exporting countries. The Russian leadership sees clearly that a turbulent energy market is a boat that it shares with OPEC, and hence its fair regulation is based on the mutually accepted rules of the game would allow all energy producers to get a share of this increasingly shrinking pie.

Russia has considerable weight in exercising control over the oil market, but it remains a non-member of OPEC, a dominant player in the global market. The two have historically had a love-hate relationship: Russia is regularly invited to attend the cartel’s meetings and has pledged many times to cooperate with it on production cuts, but more often than not Moscow has reneged on its promises. This relationship should be seen through the lens of the Russia-Saudi dynamic, which might explain why Moscow has for a long time sent mixed signals to OPEC.

Russia and Saudi Arabia are natural rivals, constantly competing to be the world’s leading producer of oil. For a long time Riyadh has been a champion, producing more oil than any other country, but in May 2016 Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia by output. By November Russia was producing 11.2 million barrels a day (levels unseen since the fall of the Soviet Union) as opposed to 10.6 million for KSA.[9] This development came about at a time when both countries were in crucial talks to slash oil output in order to stimulate the world crude price. Both countries were clearly ramping up production ahead of the anticipated oil deal. As a result, it is from these production levels that Russia and Saudi Arabia reduced their outputs by 300,000 and 486,000 barrels respectively as part of the deal.[10] Russia essentially outsmarted its regional partners by delaying the deal and agreeing to it at the precise moment when its commitment would allow Russian companies to produce oil at the rates at which they did when prices were lower than they are today and still make a profit.

Following the deal to cut oil output, many have suggested that Russia may join OPEC now that it is expected to deliver on this agreement, but becoming a member of the cartel is not something Moscow envisions for itself. Russia recognizes that OPEC is an organization dominated by Saudi Arabia and it accepts that there cannot be two headliners in it. In fact, negotiating a deal on a par with Saudi Arabia only became possible because Russia is an outsider in this hierarchy. Moscow, however, has no intention of undermining the role of OPEC because in a playing field without the cartel’s restrictive rules Russia would likely be constantly catching up to Saudi Arabia in terms of output and access to markets.

Russia is more interested in maintaining its dominant position in the gas market given the fact that it holds the largest proven reserves of natural gas.[11] To that end, since the mid-2000s Moscow has been promoting the idea of a gas cartel with Russia as a leading country. The creation of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in 2001 fell in line with Russia’s ambition to set quotas and prices in the gas industry alongside Iran. For a while, GECF was marketed around the world as a “gas OPEC” led by Russia, Iran and Qatar. But the project failed to kick off and now seems dead. Unlike Qatar, which sells LNG gas at spot prices, Russia prefers to sign long-term contracts with its clients. The absence of an integrated global gas market and the lack of coordination over output and trade policies in that regard are key reasons why the GECF remains a discussion platform without binding commitments.[12]

As per the Russian Energy Strategy, the country pursues the goal of mutually beneficial cooperation in the energy industry with partners around the world, foremost in the Middle East. Cooperation, however, is something that Russia is still rediscovering in the wider region. Historically the Soviet Union played a role of a mentor for regional allies, helping them develop their own extraction industries, not for profit but in order to buy the loyalty of non-aligned states. Over 350 energy projects were implemented by the USSR in Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, Syria, Libya and Yemen.[13] The Soviet Union financed a bulk of these projects as well as introducing its indigenous exploration and extraction technologies to these countries. Today the balance of power has shifted and so have Russian energy priorities in the region. Inadvertently, it has to look to the Gulf for new business opportunities.

Despite the ongoing fight with Saudi Arabia and Qatar for leadership in the energy market Russia has managed to compartmentalize its relationship with them and pursue joint energy projects. This strategy is not only profit-driven but also helps make respective markets interdependent to minimize risks and deter unhealthy competition. Over the past five years, the Russian government has been exploring opportunities to secure oil and gas investments from the Gulf, a policy stimulated not only by falling levels of Western investment, but also by the desire to integrate the Russian energy industry into the global market. In December 2016, Russian oil giant Rosneft secured a $5 billion investment from Qatar,[14] the largest energy deal the country has entered into with a GCC state. UAE’s Mubadala Petroleum and Rosneft are also nearing a deal to jointly explore two oilfields in Eastern Siberia.[15] The Russian Direct Investment Fund in the meantime has set up a number of partnerships with GCC sovereign wealth funds, securing multi-billion investment pledge agreements with them, including in the energy sector. These include Mubadala, Kuwait Investment Authority, Saudi Public Investment Fund, Qatar Holding and others.

Russian energy companies have also developed an extensive portfolio of projects elsewhere in the region. Its three leading energy companies, Rosneft, Gazprom and privately-owned Lukoil, significantly increased their stakes in oil and gas projects across the region before the oil glut. Often building upon the heritage of Soviet energy cooperation, Russia is engaging in promising projects in Egypt,[16] Iraq (including in Kurdistan),[17] Libya,[18] and Iran.[19]

Nuclear power has also come to prominence in the Russian energy strategy. This industry, concentrated in the hands of just one state company, Rosatom, is a pivotal element of Russia’s policy to gradually loosen its dependence on oil and gas. Moscow also increasingly relies of its nuclear industry to engage partners around the world, since Rosatom is just one of the few global companies able to handle the full cycle of constructing nuclear power plants and servicing them. There has been tremendous interest in the Russian nuclear industry from the Middle East: Almost all regional powers, whether oil-producing and not, have reached out to Rosatom to explore the prospects of cooperation. Moscow has taken note of the growing interest and perceives its nuclear industry as an effective foreign policy tool. Rosatom made a huge leap in marketing its nuclear energy in the Middle East in spring 2016, opening its first regional office in Dubai. This office will oversee ongoing projects in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Turkey, as well as the UAE. Saudi Arabia, which has ambitious plans to build 16 reactors by 2032, has also reached out to Russia and forged a deal to promote nuclear cooperation in 2016[20] which may see Moscow build Saudi nuclear infrastructure from scratch.

Endnotes

[1] The National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation to 2020, Approved By Decree of the President Of the Russian Federation, 12 May 2009 No. 537. http://rustrans.wikidot.com/russia-s-national-security-strategy-to-2020

[2] Energy Strategy of the Russian Federation, Approved By Decree of the President Of the Russian Federation, 13 November 2009 No. 1715-r. http://minenergo.gov.ru/node/1026

[3] Will Worley, Russia ‘could run out of cash reserves over the next year’, The Independent, September 17, 2016. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-money-reserve-fund-2017-assets-oil-prices-recession-sanctions-a7313236.html

[4] How can Europe break its dependence on Russian energy, Debating Europe, June 14, 2016. http://www.debatingeurope.eu/2016/06/14/how-can-europe-break-its-dependence-on-russian-energy/#.WKMHQhJ97LY

[5] 80% of EU oil imports now supplied by non-European companies – study, Transport and Environment, July 11, 2016.https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/80-eu-oil-imports-now-supplied-non-european-companies-%E2%80%93-study

[6] Saudi Aramco enters Baltic market with oil supply deal with Polish PKN, Reuters, June, 2016. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pkn-poland-aramco-int-idUSKCN0YO02X

[7] Stanley Reed and James Kanter, Putin’s Surprise Call to Scrap South Stream Gas Pipeline Leaves Europe Reeling, New York Times, December 2, 2014 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/business/south-stream-pipeline-cancellation-fallout.html?_r=0

[8] As of now Russia pipes in 60 percent of Turkey’s total gas use, while Iran and Azerbaijan supply 20 percent and 13 percent respectively. (Jude Klement, Turkey’s Rising Natural Gas Demand Needs U.S. LNG, Forbes, February 7, 2016. http://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2016/02/07/turkeys-rising-natural-gas-demand-needs-u-s-lng/#19845bd22ac7)

[9] Tsvetana Paraskova, Russia To Cut From November’s 11.231 Million Bpd Output, OilPrice December 2, 2016. http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Russia-To-Cut-From-Novembers-11231-Million-Bpd-Output4926.html

[10] Tyler Durden, Here Are The Details From The OPEC Production Cut Deal, Zero Hedge, November 30, 2016. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-30/opec-said-reach-agreement-cut-output-12mmbpd

[11] OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin, 2015. http://www.opec.org/opec_web/static_files_project/media/downloads/publications/ASB2015.pdf

[12] Martin Vladimirov, Why is a natural gas OPEC not possible? Johns Hopkins University-SAIS Bologna, 2013. http://www.jhubc.it/ADMISSIONSBLOGDOCUMENTS/Mvladimiro%20MA_Thesis.pdf

[13] Aleksandr Shumilin, Energy Strategy of Russia and the United States, Moscow, 2008, p. 50

[14] Marc Champion and Javier Blas, Putin’s Oil and Gas Deals Magnify Military Power in Middle East, Bloomberg, December 20, 2016. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/putin-s-oil-and-gas-deals-magnify-military-power-in-middle-east

[15] Rosneft Signed more than 50 Agreements at St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Rosneft, May 24, 2014. https://www.rosneft.com/press/today/item/175533/

[16] In December 2016, Rosneft bought a 35 percent share in the largest natural gas project in the Mediterranean, off the Egyptian coast, for $1.13 billion.

[17] Since 2009, Lukoil and Gazprom have won a number of large contracts in Iraq, including at West Qurna. In 2012, Gazprom Neft signed two deals with Iraqi Kurdistan, making it the fourth major oil company to enter the region

[18] Gazprom and Tatneft both invested up to $200 million in oil exploration in Libya before the Arab Spring.

[19] In August 2014, the Russian Ministry of Energy announced an oil-for-goods deal with Iran worth $1.5 billion per month. Under the proposed terms, approximately 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day would be provided at a discount in exchange for Russian goods and services.

[20] Russia shows interest in Saudi Arabia’s reactor plans, Al Arabiya, August 17, 2016. https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2016/08/17/Russia-shows-interest-in-Saudi-Arabia-s-reactor-plans-.html

Anti-Progressivism is not Anti-Semitism: Shame on Those Who Smear Sebastian Gorka 

 Bruce Abramson and Jeff Ballabon  

  The Jewish Press  March 2, 2017

http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/anti-progressivism-is-not-anti-semitism-shame-on-those-who-smear-sebastian-gorka/2017/03/02/

The hatchet job against the Trump Administration continues. The most recent victim is Sebastian Gorka, a member of Trump’s inner circle. The charge is (surprise!) anti-Semitism. And the behavior of Jewish progressives leading the attack is shameful.

Since President Trump announced his candidacy, his detractors have slandered him—and his supporters—as every kind of hatemonger known to progressivism. The most recent manufactured charges involve anti-Semitism. As we detailed for the Institute for The Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy (ISGAP), the so-called “evidence” is farcical. Orthodox Jews highly sensitive to real anti-Semitism remain among Trump’s strongest supporters. Their response to the anti-Trump attacks has been a simultaneously snappy and gloomy addition to the pantheon of Jewish humor: What’s the difference between Donald Trump and Jewish leftists? Trump’s grandchildren are Jewish.

The Orthodox response is hardly idiosyncratic. Donald Trump has been so familiar, and so friendly, for so long that the predictable leftist scaremongering has been far less effective than usual. Because the President’s aides are less familiar, however, they are more vulnerable. The first target, Steve Bannon, was so off base that the ADL, which had led the attack, was forced to issue a humiliating retraction; its relentless search for evidence of Bannon’s alleged anti-Semitism came up completely empty.

Enter Sebastian Gorka. Gorka, whose family suffered through fascism and communism in Hungary, is proud of his ancestral roots; the paparazzi have spotted him wearing historical Hungarian medals. Furthermore, when the Iron Curtain fell in the early 1990s, Gorka left the comfort of London to help Hungary transition from the Warsaw Pact to NATO. Because his politics have always been conservative, many of his closest Hungarian allies and affiliations were right of center. And, as those closely familiar with his work in Hungary have stated in no uncertain terms “Gorka has a decades-long record as an opponent of anti-Semitism, xenophobia and anti-American sentiment in Hungary and fought to undermine elements on the political right—even going as far as helping launch a political party to push conservative voters away from anti-Semitic parties.”

Nonetheless, the flagship progressive American Jewish publication, The Forward, exploited America’s unfamiliarity with Gorka’s work as an opening for character assassination. First, it seems that some of Gorka’s connections in Hungary—though not Gorka himself—were also connected to other people or organizations that had taken anti-Semitic positions or actions. Though Gorka’s personal track record is strongly pro-Jewish and pro-Israel, The Forward focused on the records of selected associates of his associates rather than to his own work. By that standard, nobody who has ever associated with any American political party could escape charges of anti-Semitism.

The Forward’s scramble to make its case latched on to Gorka’s medals, and assigned them its own biased interpretation of their meaning. But as Breitbart’s Joel Pollak, an Orthodox Jew and Gorka’s former colleague explained, that bias is badly misplaced. Different Hungarian regimes used those medals in different ways, and Gorka’s family history is consistent only with positive associations. To put the matter into an American context, making a case against Gorka’s medals is like insisting that anyone who visits the Jefferson Memorial is celebrating slavery, or the FDR Memorial is celebrating the internment of Japanese citizens and the refusal to admit Jewish refugees from Hitler. Such conclusions are beyond absurd; they’re offensive.

When Jewish progressives ambivalent about the Palestinian flags at this summer’s Democratic National Convention feign outrage at obscure Hungarian symbols, there is more to the story than meets the eye. The alleged evidence of anti-Semitism in Trump’s circle is such thin gruel that it has become necessary to ask what is driving it. The Forward provided the answer—courtesy of former KKK leader David Duke. According to Duke, “[Jewish groups] define an anti-Semite as someone, anyone, who opposes the organized Jewish agenda.” Duke claimed that Trump qualifies, and The Forward approvingly embraced Duke’s analysis to confirm its own biases.

Tragically, Duke’s description is not groundless—and it is a far greater condemnation of American Jewish leadership on today’s left than of the president, Steve Bannon, or Seb Gorka. Too many Jewish progressive activists equate Jewishness with what they term “social justice,” chauvinistically label this political agenda “Jewish values,” and see all opposition to progressive politics and policies as an attack on their “Jewish values.”

Because Trump, Bannon, and Gorka oppose the progressive agenda, Jewish progressives portray – and may truly see – them as inherently anti-Semitic. Perversely, the progressive Jewish equation of progressive values with Jewish values turns leftists with long histories of animosity towards the Jews into pro-Jewish advocates. This bizarre bit of logic explains how progressive Jews could attack the Trump team for anti-Semitism while endorsing Louis Farrakhan’s former spokesman, Keith Ellison, to lead the DNC. In a new twist on the ways that Jews can become our own worst enemies, progressive members of our tribe have discovered abnegation: they reject as anti-Jewish those most concerned with Jewish survival, and embrace as pro-Jewish those who subscribe to the vilest anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.

Progressive Jewish Americans abusing Jewish history to score cheap political points are poisoning political discourse, dismissing the pain that Jews have suffered throughout history, masking the frightening rise in global anti-Semitism, embarrassing the Jewish community, harming the Jews of Israel, and defaming fine Americans. In an era where Democrats embrace openly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel leaders and movements, the Jewish left has launched this witch hunt against individuals – like Trump, Bannon, and Gorka – who are actively working to protect not only all Americans, but particularly the Jews, including the often-targeted Jews of Israel.

We are pained to have to write such an article, but the left’s slander of decent people who have committed their lives to helping Jews is now out of control. It is an embarrassment, a distraction, and an affront to those chafing beneath, or fighting, the very real anti-Semitism that genuinely threatens our people.

Bruce Abramson and Jeff Ballabon

Bruce Abramson, a technology lawyer in private practice in NYC (www.bdabramson.com), is a Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research. Jeff Ballabon is CEO of B2 Strategic (www.b2strategic.com) and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Statesmanship and Diplomacy.