Robert Mueller lijdt aan dementie en maakt van Russiagate een nog belachelijker verhaal

Het verhoor door een comité van de Democraten in het Huis van Afgevaardigden van speciaal aanklager Robert Mueller n.a.v. diens rapportage over Russiagate, was een anticlimax voor de Democraten, Mueller gaf op veel vragen geen antwoord en hij gaf verder de indruk het eigen rapport niet of slecht te kennen.......

Over deze zaak hieronder twee artikelen, de eerste van Consortium News en de tweede van Zero Hedge, over dat tweede artikel het volgende:

Robert Mueller hoogstwaarschijnlijk niet de schrijver van eigen rapport

Robert Mueller die afgelopen week moest getuigen over 'eigen' rapport*, leek voor een groot deel van de tijd wel dement, zo kon hij (als gezegd) veel vragen niet beantwoorden en niet zelden leek het erop dat hij z'n eigen rapport niet eens kende.....

Niet zo vreemd als je bedenkt dat het grootste deel van het team van aanklagers dat Mueller ter zijde stond bestond uit donoren van Hillary Clinton! (ha! ha! ha! ha!, de ware misdadiger was Clinton en met de Russiagate leugen kon ze haar eigen zeer kwalijke rol verhullen binnen de Democratische Partij, een misdadige rol van haar en haar campagneteam tijdens de voorverkiezingen t.b.v. de democratische presidentskandidaat in 2016......

Nogmaals is duidelijk dat het team van Mueller en hijzelf geen flinter aan bewijs hebben dat Rusland inderdaad de boel heeft gemanipuleerd..... Je moest intussen ook wel een imbeciel zijn als je dat hele achterlijke verhaal nog gelooft, zoals de reguliere westerse media en het overgrote deel van de westerse politici deze nonsens keer op keer blijven herhalen als was het een feit, ondanks dat er geen bewijzen zijn die e.e.a. bevestigen..... Dit alles terwijl er meters aan bewijs zijn voor bemoeienissen van de VS met verkiezingen in andere landen, dit nog naast het op poten zetten van gewelddadige opstanden die met staatsgrepen moesten (en moeten) eindigen, zoals de VS al zo vaak heeft gedaan, om nog maar te zwijgen over de illegale oorlogen die de VS keer op keer begint.......

Tyler Durden is de schrijver van het tweede artikel hieronder dat eerder op Zero Hedge verscheen (zie ook de link onder zijn artikel*):

CAMPAIGN 2016, COMMENTARY, INTELLIGENCE, LEGAL, MEDIA, POLITICS, RUSSIA, RUSSIAGATE, 

WIKILEAKS

Democrats Blowing on Embers With a Politicized Mueller

July 25, 2019

By Joe Lauria Special to Consortium News

Former Russiagate special counsel Robert Mueller’s appearance before the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on Wednesday was an exercise by the Democrats of trying to extract statements that would keep Russiagate alive and an attempt by the Republicans to finish off the story once and for all.

Appearing to be feigning, or actually suffering early signs of senility, the nearly 75-year old Mueller disappointed both parties and the public. He declined to answer 198 questions, according to a count by NBC News. When he did answer he was often barely intelligible and mostly stuck to what was in his final report, though he often had to fumble through pages to find passages he could not recall, eating into committee members’ five-minute time limit.

Mueller especially refused to comment on the process of his investigation, such as who he did or did not interview, what countries his investigators visited and he even dodged discussing some relevant points of law. It was an abdication of his responsibility to U.S. taxpayers who footed his roughly $30-million, 22-month probe.

But when it came to making political statements, the former FBI director suddenly rediscovered his mental acuity. He went way beyond his report to say, without prosecutorial evidence, that he agreed with the assessment of then CIA Director Mike Pompeo that WikiLeaks is a “non-state, hostile intelligence agency.”

Mueller called “illegal” WikiLeak‘s obtaining the Podesta and DNC emails, an act of journalism. In the 2016 election, the Espionage Act would not apply as the DNC and Podesta emails were not classified. Nor has WikiLeaks been accused by anyone of stealing the emails. And yet the foremost law enforcement figure in the U.S. accused WikiLeaks of breaking the law merely for publishing.

Though Mueller’s report makes no mention of The Guardian’s tale that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort visited WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, when questioned on this, Mueller refused to refute the story, for which there isn’t a scrap of evidence. That was another purely political and not legal intervention from the lawman.


Russia, Russia, Russia

Mueller: Came to when he wanted to make a political point. (Flickr)

While Mueller concluded there was no evidence of a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign to throw the 2016 election, he has not let up on the most politicized part of his message: that Russia interfered “massively” in “our democracy” and is still doing it. There was no waffling from Mueller when it came to this question.

He bases this on his indictment of 12 GRU Russian intelligence against who he alleges hacked the DNC emails and transmitted them to WikiLeaks. Mueller knows those agents will never be arrested and brought to a courtroom to have his charges tested. In that sense the indictment was less a legal than a political document.

Among the inaccuracies about Russigaate that were  recycled at the hearing is that the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) spent $1.25 million in the United States to influence the election. That figure belonged to a unit that acted worldwide, not just in the U.S., according to Mueller’s indictment. In fact it only spent $100,000 on Facebook ads, half coming after the election, and as even Mueller pointed out, some were anti-Trump.

Cambridge Analytica had 5,000 data points on 240 million Americans, some of it bought from Facebook, that gave an enormous advantage for targeted ads to the Trump campaign. It paid at least $5.9 million to the company co-founded by Trump’s campaign strategist Steve Bannon. But we are supposed to believe that a comparatively paltry number of social media messages from the IRA threw the election.

Mueller implied in his testimony that there was a link between the IRA and the Russian government despite anorder from a judge for him to stop making that connection. In focusing again on Russia, no member of Congress from either party raised the content of the leaked emails.

IRA headquarters in St. Petersburg (Wikimedia Commons)

For the Democrats especially, it is all about the source, who is irrelevant, since no one disputes the accuracy of the emails that exposed Hillary Clinton. (That the source of authentic documents is irrelevant is demonstrated by The Wall Street Journal and other major media using anonymous drop boxes pioneered by WikiLeaks.) Were a foreign power to spread disinformation about candidates in a U.S. election (something the candidates do to each other all the time) that would be sabotage. But the leaking and publication of the Clinton emails was information valuable to American voters.

And WikiLeaks would have published Trump emails, but it never received any,  Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson told Consortium New‘s webcast CN Live!

No Power to Exonerate

With “collusion” off the table, the Democrats have been obsessed with Trump allegedly obstructing an investigation that found no underlying crime. That’s something like being arrested for resisting arrest when you’ve committed no other infraction.

In his morning testimony, Mueller amplified the misperception that the only reason he didn’t charge Trump with obstruction is because of a Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel policy that a sitting president can’t be indicted.

But then Mueller came back from a break in the  hearing to issue a “correction.” It was not true that he had concluded there’d been obstruction but was blocked by the OLC policy, he said. In fact he never concluded that there had been obstruction at all. “We didn’t make a decision about culpability,” Mueller said. “We didn’t go down that road.”

Instead of leaving it at that, Mueller said in his report and testimony that Trump was not “exonerated” of an obstruction charge. That led to blaring headlines Wednesday morning while the hearing was still going on. “Trump was not exonerated by my report, Robert Mueller tells Congress,” said the BBC. “Mueller Report Did Not Exonerate Trump, Mueller Says,” blared the HuffPost.

But in what may have been the most embarrassing moment for Mueller, Republican Congressman Michael Turner (R-OH) pointed out that a prosecutor does not have the power to exonerate anyone. A prosecutor  prosecutes.

Rep. Michael Turner

“Mr. Mueller, does the Attorney General have the power or authority to exonerate?” Turner asked the witness. “What I’m putting up here is the United States code. This is where the Attorney General gets his power. And the constitution … .

“Mr. Mueller, nowhere in these [documents] … is there a process or description on ‘exonerate.’ There’s no office of exoneration at the Attorney General’s office. … Mr. Mueller, would you agree with me that the Attorney General does not have the power to exonerate?”

“I’m going to pass on that,” Mueller replied.

“Why?” Turner asked.

“Because it embroils us in a legal discussion, and I’m not prepared to do a legal discussion in that arena,” Mueller said.

Pointing to a CNN headline that had just appeared, “MUELLER: TRUMP WAS NOT EXONERATED,” Turner said: “What you know is, that this can’t say, ‘Mueller exonerated Trump,’ because you don’t have the power or authority to exonerate Trump. You have no more power to declare him exonerated than you have the power to declare him Anderson Cooper.”

Turner said: “The statement about exoneration is misleading, and it’s meaningless. It colors this investigation— one word of out the entire portion of your report. And it’s a meaningless word that has no legal meaning, and it has colored your entire report.”

Who is a Spy for Whom?

Mueller also took a pass every time the Steele dossier was raised, which it first was by Rep. David Nunes (R-CA):

“Despite acknowledging dossier allegations as being salacious and unverified, former FBI Director James Comey briefed those allegations to President Obama and President-elect Trump. Those briefings conveniently leaked to the press, resulting in the publication of the dossier and launching thousands of false press stories based on the word of a foreign ex-spy, one who admitted he was desperate that Trump lose the election and who was eventually fired as an FBI source for leaking to the press.

 “And the entire investigation was open based not on Five Eyes intelligence, but on a tip from a foreign politician about a conversation involving Joseph Mifsud. He’s a Maltese diplomat who’s widely portrayed as a Russian agent, but seems to have for more connections with Western governments, including our own FBI and our own State Department, than with Russia.”

When Nunes pointed out to Mueller that Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort business associate, whom Mueller’s report identifies as having ties to Russian intelligence, was actually a U.S. State Departmentasset, Mueller refused to comment saying he was “loath” to get into it.

This Schiff Has Sailed

The chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff (R-CA) used the word “lies” 19 times in his opening statement, which contained at least that many.

The central one was this:

“Your investigation determined that the Trump campaign, including Donald Trump himself, knew that a foreign power was intervening in our election and welcomed it, built Russian meddling into their strategy and used it.

Disloyalty to country. Those are strong words, but how else are we to describe a presidential campaign which did not inform the authorities of a foreign offer of dirt on their opponent, which did not publicly shun it or turn it away, but which instead invited it, encouraged it and made full use of it?”

Schiff reluctantly admitted that no Trump conspiracy with Russia was uncovered, but said the “crime” of disloyalty was even worse.

“Disloyalty to country violates the very oath of citizenship, our devotion to a core principle on which our nation was founded that we, the people and not some foreign power that wishes us ill, we decide who governs us,” said Schiff.

It was pure fantasy.

Mueller should have taken a pass on that one too.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe .

Tags: Adam Schiff Joe Lauria Robert Mueller Russiagate

===============================

James Clapper Suggests Mueller Was "Just A Figurehead" And Didn't Even Write His Own Report

by Tyler Durden

Fri, 07/26/2019 - 09:30

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Thursday that Robert Mueller could just be a "figurehead" who may not have been involved in writing "his" own report, according to The Gateway Pundit.

The comments came during a CNN interview discussing why Robert Mueller didn't seem to have "command" over the report's contents while testifying on Capitol Hill yesterday. 

Clapper was heavily involved in the coup against President Donald Trump and was an advocate for the Russia hoax theory earlier on.

Mueller's role was likely more of a "CEO", he said. “I think his role as a special prosecutor was a lot more like a CEO where he oversaw the operations but did not engage in interrogating witnesses or actually writing the report.”

Elizabeth Harrington

✔@LizRNC

James Clapper, one of the originators of the Collusion Hoax, suggests Mueller was just a figurehead, who was not involved in writing his report

Then who did?

Anti-Trump zealots who went to Hillary's Election wake, & represented the Clinton Foundation & Hillary's hammer man

(Dit is een still van een video die ik niet kan overnemen en waar na het voorgaande niets nieuws wordt verteld dan het CEO verhaal in het begin van dit artikel op Zero Hedge, zie het origineel)

And naturally, as the article asks, if Mueller didn't write the report, was it left to the anti-Trump zealots that filled his team? The piece notes that nearly "every single prosecutor on Mueller’s team was a Hillary/Obama donor."

Lead prosecutor Andrew Weissman was with Hillary Clinton on election night and praised acting AG Sally Yates for not enforcing Trump's travel ban. Aaron Zebley, another Mueller team member, represented the IT aide that smashed Clinton's Blackberrys while under subpoena. 

Zebley was next to Mueller on Wednesday to "advise" him on questions and was clearly more well versed on the report than Mueller himself was. 

Mueller's embarrassing testimony - during which he admitted he wasn't even familiar with Fusion GPS - is being panned not only by conservatives, but also by Democrats, as we reported yesterday. 

Conservative columnist Byron York wrote yesterday:

"Mueller’s performance raised questions that reached far beyond one appearance before one committee. It called into doubt the degree to which Mueller was in charge of the entire special counsel investigation.” 

Tag Politics

================================

* Zie: 'Michael Moore Joins Chorus Of Defeated Democrats Panning "Frail, Forgetful" Mueller Testimony'

Zie ook:
'WaPo waarschuwt voor Russische digitale controle over de hersenen van VS burgers'

'Federale rechter stelt ten overvloede dat DNC geen grond heeft voor zaak te tegen Trumps verkiezingsteam'

''Geheime diensten in westen geven toe dat spioneren via het G5 netwerk praktisch onmogelijk is........'

'Britse regering weigert RT en Sputnik voor conferentie over persvrijheid..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'1984 het boek van George Orwell: niet langer fictie.......'

'Het westen vervolgt journalist Assange, Rusland laat journalist vrij na onrust over diens gevangenschap' (zie daarin ook de links naar andere berichten over Assange)

'De sterkste beïnvloeding van de VS presidentsverkiezingen wordt als volkomen 'legaal' en normaal gezien'

'Avaaz valt met fake news en desinformatie 'fake news en desinformatie' aan......' (zie in dat bericht ook de link naar een ander artikel met een smerige rol van Avaaz)

'Rob Jetten (D66 fractievoorzitter) liegt een fikse slag in de rondte in EU verkiezingspraatje'

'EU verkiezingen: manipulatie ook door lobbyisme is misdadig, zelfs Bas Eickhout (GroenLinks) doet hieraan mee'

'Intel processors al 10 jaar zo lek als een mandje, Intel niet een bedrijf uit Rusland of China, maar uit..... de VS!'

'Facebook stelt klimaatsceptisch Daily Caller aan als 'factchecker...' ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Russiagate: nog overtuigd van bestaan daarvan? Lees dit!'

'Putin vraagt en Trump levert: een lijst met 'alle goede zaken die Trump voor Rusland 

'Russiagate: VS en buitenlandse geheime diensten hebben de VS presidentsverkiezingen in 2016 gemanipuleerd'

'Obama gaf toe dat de DNC e-mails expres door de DNC werden gelekt naar Wikileaks....!!!!'

'WikiLeaks belooft The Guardian 1 miljoen dollar als het haar leugens i.z. Assange en Russiagate kan bewijzen.......'

''Banden van Trump met Rusland' gebaseerd op FBI operatie om VS 'burger' (CIA) in Iran vrij te krijgen......'

'Putin vraagt en Trump levert: een lijst met 'alle goede zaken die Trump voor Rusland regelde''

'Russiagate? Britaingate zal je bedoelen!'

'New York Times 'bewijzen' voor Russiagate vallen door de mand......'

'BNR 'denkt' als één van de vele mediaorganen nog steeds dat Russiagate werkelijk plaats vond'

'BBC topman waarschuwt dat de BBC haar geloofwaardigheid en reputatie kwijtraakt...... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Geen rectificaties voor meer dan 2 jaar brengen van fake news over het kwaadaardig sprookje Russiagate'

'Bedrijf dat voor 'Russische bots' waarschuwde, heeft een leger met nep-Russische bots'

'Britse militaire geheime dienst bedient zich van moddergooien en andere manipulaties om Europese en VS politiek te manipuleren, zo blijkt uit gelekte documenten'

'Politico rapport bevestigt: Russiagate is een hoax'

'BBC: Rusland 'misbruikt humor' om Russiagate te ontkrachten..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Uitgelekte telefoongesprekken tussen Trump en Putin bewijzen dat 'Russiagaters gelijk hebben......''

'Russiagate haat- en angstcampagne samenzweerders als FBI en Clinton moeten strafrechtelijk worden vervolgd'

'Russiagate en Assange: The Guardian wordt nu zelfs door collega's voor zot uitgemaakt'

'WikiLeaks toont aan dat VS en GB een gezamenlijke gewelddadige en bedrieglijke buitenlandpolitiek voeren'

En over het grote slachtoffer in het Russiagate verhaal, Julian Assange:
'Belangrijk account voor de verdediging Julian Assange geblokkeerd door Twitter'

'Britse regering weigert RT en Sputnik voor conferentie over persvrijheid..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Julian Assange: Speciaal VN rapporteur martelen heeft grote twijfels bij onafhankelijkheid rechter'

'Het westen vervolgt journalist Assange, Rusland laat journalist vrij na onrust over diens gevangenschap' (en nog hadden de reguliere media een grote bek over Rusland, media die niet anders hebben gedaan dan collega Assange besmeuren.....)

'VN rapport: Assange is gedemoniseerd en psychisch gemarteld'

'Media wakker geschrokken en ontwaken in Assange nachtmerrie'

'Julian Assange weer vervolgd wegens 'verkrachting', waarvoor het Zweedse OM eerder geen bewijs kon vinden......'

'Dag van Persvrijheid: Assange wordt zoveel mogelijk uitermate hypocriet gemeden door de pers'

'Julian Assange (brekend nieuws) veroordeeld tot 50 weken gevangenisstraf......'

'Chelsea Manning blijft voor onbepaalde tijd in de gevangenis'

'Julian Assanges vervolging is de genadeklap voor klokkenluiders en (echte) journalisten' (zie ook de iets oudere links in dat bericht)

'Julian Assange gedemoniseerd door media die hem zouden moeten steunen, waren ze bevolkt geweest door echte journalisten........'

'WhiteHouse: US, Ecuador Coordinating About Future Of Assange Asylum'

'De prijs op het hoofd van Julian Assange: 1 miljard dollar.....'

'Assange kan niet voor spionage worden vervolgd, immers hij is journalist >> aldus Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) in een video'

'Assange is journalist en zou alleen daarom al niet mogen worden vervolgd, een artikel o.a. voor de huidige 'journalisten' van de reguliere media en de gebruikers van die media'

'WhiteHouse: US, Ecuador Coordinating About Future Of Assange Asylum' 

'Stop de isolatie van Julian Assange!'

CNN met nog smeriger lastercampagne tegen Julian Assange

Zelfs voor CNN is de nieuwe lastercampagne die deze zendgemachtigde tegen Assange voert van een niveau dat al in jaren niet meer werd gezien, behalve dan bij de desinformatie vorig jaar over het 'Assange-Manafort rapport' in The Guardian. De haatzaaicampagne van CNN berust niet op documenten zoals men beweert, er is voor geen van de beschuldigingen ook maar een schijntje van bewijs........

Zo stelt men dat Assange de Ecuadoraanse ambassade in een commandopost had omgetoverd om de verkiezingen in de VS te manipuleren..... Verder meldt CNN dat Assange kamers van de ambassade onder de poep zou hebben gesmeerd, weer geen greintje van bewijs, terwijl de ambassade maar wat blij zou zijn geweest, ware het echt gebeurd, immers men zat al sinds het aantreden van de nieuwe (fascistische Ecuadoraanse president) met Assange in de maag en had hem dus makkelijk kunnen laten verwijderen als inderdaad zou blijken dat hij een gevaar voor anderen en zichzelf zou zijn (dan zou hij zijn opgenomen in een psychiatrische kliniek....) Nee, ook dit door CNN gebrachte 'feit', wordt niet onderschreven door de Ecuadoraanse ambassade, noch de regering van dat land.......

Messcherp legt de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel de vinger op de etterende wond, waar ze bijvoorbeeld stelt dat door het gebruik van het woord 'potentially' (mogelijk) de kijkers en luisteraars op het verkeerde been worden gezet, immers men koppelt er zogenaamde 'feiten' aan vast in de vorm van 'documenten' (die men niet heeft bij CNN, immers ze bestaan niet..)......

Mensen lees het artikel van Johnstone, een gedegen stuk tekst en zegt het voort, daar we ook hier op dergelijke manieren worden besodemieterd, zo hoorde ik gistermorgen de bijna slechtste presentator van Radio1 (die bovendien volkomen ten onrechte denkt leuk te zijn), Jurgen van den Berg zeggen dat de vraag over de eigenaar van het goud uit een museum op De Krim, diezelfde dag in een rechtszaak in Nederland zou dienen (in hoger beroep, wat van den Berg er niet bij vertelde), een zaak aangespannen door de directie van het museum op de Krim en autoriteiten van de regio daar.* Volgens van den Berg is dit goud tijdens de inname door Rusland van De Krim naar Nederland gegaan voor een tentoonstelling......

Dit zijn 2 dikke leugens, ten eerste hadden de autoriteiten na het referendum waar meer dan 80% van de bevolking stemde vóór aansluiting bij Rusland, nooit toestemming gegeven het goud te verzenden. Het goud was ten tijde van het referendum al een paar maanden in Nederland... De autoriteiten en de museumleiding hadden echt wel geanticipeerd op een eventuele (schandelijke) inbeslagname ware men van plan geweest die collectie af te sturen naar Nederland, juist daar er in Oekraïne een neonazi-junta zat o.l.v. de zwaar corrupte misdadiger en neonazi Porosjenko, een junta door de VS geparachuteerd, deze junta werd ook onvoorwaardelijk door de Nederlandse flutregering Rutte 2 gesteund.......

Ten tweede: iedereen kan weten dat De Krim niet is ingenomen door Rusland, maar dat de bevolking zich in een door internationale waarnemers als goed en eerlijk beoordeeld referendum, massaal (meer dan 80%) uitsprak vóór aansluiting bij Rusland (en dat vóór aansluiting stemmen werd met eenzelfde percentage gedaan door de oorspronkelijke bewoners van De Krim....)

JULY 16, 2019 AUTHOR: CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

New CNN Assange Smear Piece Is Amazingly Dishonest, Even For CNN

CNN has published an unbelievably brazen and dishonest smear piece on Julian Assange, easily the most egregious article of its kind since the notoriously bogus Assange-Manafort report by The Guardian last year. It contains none of the “exclusive” documents which it claims substantiate its smears, relying solely on vague unsubstantiated assertions and easily debunked lies to paint the WikiLeaks founder in a negative light.

And let’s be clear right off the bat, it is most certainly a smear piece. The article, titled “Exclusive: Security reports reveal how Assange turned an embassy into a command post for election meddling”, admits that it exists for the sole purpose of tarnishing Assange’s reputation when it reports, with no evidence whatsoever, that while at the Ecuadorian embassy Assange once “smeared feces on the walls out of anger.” Not “reportedly”. Not “the Ecuadorian government claims.” CNN reported it as a fact, as an event that is known to have happened. This is journalistic malpractice, and it isn’t an accident.

Whenever you you see any “news” report citing this claim, you are witnessing a standard smear tactic of the plutocratic media. Whenever you see them citing this claim as a concrete, verified fact, you are witnessing an especially aggressive and deliberate psyop.

The Ecuadorian embassy was easily the most-surveilled building in the world during Assange’s stay there, and the Ecuadorian government has leaked photos of Assange’s living quarters to the media in an attempt to paint him as a messy houseguest in need of eviction, so if the “feces on the walls” event had ever transpired you would have seen photos of it, whether you wanted to or not. It never happened.

Marshall Cohen
✔@MarshallCohen

SCOOP: New documents obtained exclusively by CNN reveal that Assange received in-person deliveries, potentially of hacked materials related to the 2016 election, during a series of suspicious meetings at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. w/ @kguerrerocnn https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/15/politics/assange-embassy-exclusive-documents/index.html …

2,369

9:27 PM - Jul 15, 2019

Exclusive: Security reports reveal how Assange turned an embassy into a command post for election...

New documents obtained exclusively by CNN reveal that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange received in-person deliveries, potentially of hacked materials related to the 2016 US election, during a series...

cnn.com

“New documents obtained exclusively by CNN reveal that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange received in-person deliveries, potentially of hacked materials related to the 2016 US election, during a series of suspicious meetings at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London,” the article begins.

In its very first sentence the article invalidates all the claims which follow it, because its use of the word “potentially” means that none of the documents CNN purports to have contain any actual evidence. It’s worth noting at this time that there is to this day not one shred of publicly available evidence that any of the Democratic Party emails published by WikiLeaks in 2016 were in fact “hacked” at all, and could very well have been the result of a leak as asserted by former British ambassador Craig Murray, who claims to have inside knowledge on the matter.

The glaring plot holes in the Mueller report’s assertions about Russia being the source of the 2016 WikiLeaks drops have already been ripped wide open by journalist Aaron Maté’s meticulous analysis of the report’s timeline in an article accurately titled

“CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims“. The CNN smear piece, which claims to “add a new dimension to the Mueller report”, is entirely relying on this porous timeline for its reporting. Plot holes include the fact that Mueller claims (and CNN repeats) that the Russians transferred the emails to WikiLeaks on or around July 14, which Maté notes is “a full month after Assange publicly announced that he had them.”

CNN kicks off its smear piece with the inflammatory claim that “Assange met with Russians and world-class hackers at critical moments”, mentioning both “Russians” and “hackers” in the same breath in an attempt to give the impression that the two are related. It’s not until paragraph 43 and 46, long after most people have stopped reading, that the articles authors bother to inform their readers that the “hackers” in question are German and have no established connection to the Russian government whatsoever. The “Russians” counted among Assange’s scores of visitors consist of RT staff, who have always consistently reported on WikiLeaks, and a “Russian national” about whom almost nothing is known.

The article falsely labels Assange a “hacker”, a defamatory claim the mass media circulates whenever it wants to tarnish Assange’s reputation. Assange, of course, is a publisher. WikiLeaks publishes materials which are given to it, it doesn’t “hack” them.

George Szamuely@GeorgeSzamuely

 · 20h

Replying to @GeorgeSzamuely

.@CNN puts out the claim that @RT published articles about Podesta e-mails before @wikileaks even released them. A serious claim for which CNN scrupulously fails to provide evidence.

Nebojša Malić@NebojsaMalic

That is a LIE that's been debunked over and over. We published ONE article about the emails that were RELEASED already, just not TWEETED about yet, because WikiLeaks had been releasing them like clockwork and we paid attention. It's called journalism, they should try it sometime.

82

11:45 PM - Jul 15, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

CNN also repeats the long-debunked lie that RT “published articles detailing the new batches of emails before WikiLeaks officially released them” during the 2016 election, citing no evidence because this never happened. RT reported on a WikiLeaks release in October 2016 after it had been published by WikiLeaks but before the WikiLeaks Twitter account had tweeted about it, and western propagandists willfully conflated WikiLeaks publications with tweets from the WikiLeaks Twitter account in order to make it look like RT had insider knowledge about the publications.

In reality, RT was simply watching the WikiLeaks site closely for new releases in order to get an early scoop before other outlets, because Podesta email leaks had been dropping regularly.

“That is a LIE that’s been debunked over and over,” tweeted RT America editor Nebojša Malić‏ in response to the smear. “We published ONE article about the emails that were RELEASED already, just not TWEETED about yet, because WikiLeaks had been releasing them like clockwork and we paid attention. It’s called journalism, they should try it sometime.”

“Yes that is fake news,” tweeted RT’s Ivor Crotty. “I was the editor on the team that monitored wikileaks and by Podesta 6 we knew they tweeted at 9am EST each day (1pm Dublin) – so we checked the database by reverse searching and discovered a new dump, tweeted about it, and the conspiracy theorists jumped.”

“RT already addressed this in 2016, convincingly if you read the sequence of events they lay out: the Podesta emails appeared on the WikiLeaks website before WikiLeaks sent a tweet about it,” Maté tweeted at CNN’s Marshall Cohen. “Ignoring that allows for the conspiracy theory you propose. It’s ridiculous to suggest that RT-Wikileaks ‘were coordinating behind the scenes’ based on the fact that RT tweeted about the Podesta emails AFTER they appeared on WL’s site, but BEFORE WL tweeted about them. You’re implicating RT in a conspiracy… for doing journalism.”

It’s not possible to research the “RT had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks drops” conspiracy theory without running across articles which debunked it at the time, so the article’s authors were likely either knowingly lying or taking dictation from someone who was.

“Spanish newspaper El Pais on July 9: ‘Spanish security company spied on Julian Assange’s meetings with lawyers‘. Add little security state propaganda and 6 days later you get from CNN: ‘How Julian Assange turned an embassy into command post for election meddling’,” noted Shadowproofmanaging editor Kevin Gosztola in response to the CNN smear, a reminder of how a little narrative tweaking can turn a story on its head in support of the powerful.

This would be the same CNN who told its viewers that it’s against the law to read WikiLeaks, with Democratic Party prince Chris Cuomo lying “Remember, it’s illegal to possess these stolen documents; it’s different for the media, so everything you learn about this you’re learning from us.” The same CNN which falsely reported that Assange is a pedophile not once, but twice. The same CNN which has been caught blatantly lying in its Russiagate coverage, which has had to fire journalists for misreporting Russiagate in a media environment where that almost never happens with Russia stories, which has deleted evidence of its journalistic malpractice regarding Russiagate from the internet without retraction or apology.

So this latest attempt to tarnish Julian Assange’s reputation from CNN is not surprising. Nor is it surprising that the article contains exactly zero of the “exclusive documents” which it says validate its claims and insinuations. Nor is it surprising that CNN is using invisible evidence which almost certainly came into its hands through a government agency to give weight to its smear. But the sheer volume of disinformation and deceit they were able to pack into one single article this time around was just jaw-dropping. Even for CNN.

_____________________

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* Er is nog geen uitspraak in deze zaak, maar reken maar dat de rechter beslist dat de kunstschatten volkomen ten onrechte naar Kiev en niet naar De Krim gaan.....

Zie ook:
'Julian Assange moet onmiddellijk vrijgelaten worden!' 

'Snowden vindt het ongelofelijk dat de media VS politici niet aanspreken op totaal verschillende reacties n.a.v. 'klokkenluiden''

'Twitter verwijdert accounts vanwege 'propaganda', maar werkt zelf met een militair propagandist' (zie ook de links in dat bericht)

'WaPo waarschuwt voor Russische digitale controle over de hersenen van VS burgers'

'VS geweldcultuur gevaar voor iedereen' (zie ook de links in dat bericht over agressie van de VS)

'Robert Mueller lijdt aan dementie en maakt van Russiagate een nog belachelijker verhaal'

'Belangrijk account voor de verdediging Julian Assange geblokkeerd door Twitter'

'Britse regering weigert RT en Sputnik voor conferentie over persvrijheid..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Julian Assange: Speciaal VN rapporteur martelen heeft grote twijfels bij onafhankelijkheid rechter'

'Het westen vervolgt journalist Assange, Rusland laat journalist vrij na onrust over diens gevangenschap' (en nog hadden de reguliere media een grote bek over Rusland, media die niet anders hebben gedaan dan collega Assange besmeuren.....)

'VN rapport: Assange is gedemoniseerd en psychisch gemarteld'

'Media wakker geschrokken en ontwaken in Assange nachtmerrie'

'Julian Assange weer vervolgd wegens 'verkrachting', waarvoor het Zweedse OM eerder geen bewijs kon vinden......'

'Dag van Persvrijheid: Assange wordt zoveel mogelijk uitermate hypocriet gemeden door de pers'

'Russiagate: VS en buitenlandse geheime diensten hebben de VS presidentsverkiezingen in 2016 gemanipuleerd'

'Julian Assange (brekend nieuws) veroordeeld tot 50 weken gevangenisstraf......'

'Russiagate: nog overtuigd van bestaan daarvan? Lees dit!' (en zie de links in dat bericht)

'Chelsea Manning blijft voor onbepaalde tijd in de gevangenis'

'Julian Assanges vervolging is de genadeklap voor klokkenluiders en (echte) journalisten' (zie ook de iets oudere links in dat bericht)

'Julian Assange gedemoniseerd door media die hem zouden moeten steunen, waren ze bevolkt geweest door echte journalisten........'

'WikiLeaks toont aan dat VS en GB een gezamenlijke gewelddadige en bedrieglijke buitenlandpolitiek voeren'

'WhiteHouse: US, Ecuador Coordinating About Future Of Assange Asylum'

'De prijs op het hoofd van Julian Assange: 1 miljard dollar.....'

'Assange kan niet voor spionage worden vervolgd, immers hij is journalist >> aldus Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) in een video'

'Assange is journalist en zou alleen daarom al niet mogen worden vervolgd, een artikel o.a. voor de huidige 'journalisten' van de reguliere media en de gebruikers van die media'

'WhiteHouse: US, Ecuador Coordinating About Future Of Assange Asylum' 

'Stop de isolatie van Julian Assange!'

Zie wat betreft de kunstschatten uit De Krim ook:
'Rechter beslist dat gegijzelde kunstschatten naar Oekraïne moeten.........'

'Oekraïne eist het goud uit musea van de Krim op........'