Let me see, should I be more concerned with the great influence of
Putin in America's politics? or should I be more concerned with Donald
Trump and his billionaire Cabinet? Hmm...
Carl Jarvis
On 8/29/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Consortiumnews
Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995
More Misleading Russia-gate Propaganda
August 29, 2017
Exclusive: The U.S. mainstream media is touting a big break in Russia-gate,
emails showing an effort by Donald Trump's associates to construct a
building in Moscow. But the evidence actually undercuts the "scandal,"
reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
There is an inherent danger of news organizations getting infected by
"confirmation bias" when they want something to be true so badly that even
if the evidence goes in the opposite direction they twist the revelation to
fit their narrative. Such is how The Washington Post, The New York Times
and
their followers in the mainstream media are reacting to newly released
emails that actually show Donald Trump's team having little or no influence
in Moscow.
President Trump discusses his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin
at G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 2017. (Screenshot from
Whitehouse.gov)
On Tuesday, for instance, the Times published a front-page article designed
to advance the Russia-gate narrative, stating: "A business associate of
President Trump promised in 2015 to engineer a real estate deal with the
aid
of the president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin, that he said would help Mr.
Trump win the presidency."
Wow, that sounds pretty devastating! The Times is finally tying together
the
loose and scattered threads of the Russia-influencing-the-U.S.-election
story. Here you have a supposed business deal in which Putin was to help
Trump both make money and get elected. That is surely how a casual reader
or
a Russia-gate true believer would read it - and was meant to read it. But
the lede is misleading.
The reality, as you would find out if you read further into the story, is
that the boast from Felix Sater that somehow the construction of a Trump
Tower in Moscow would demonstrate Trump's international business prowess
and
thus help his election was meaningless. What the incident really shows is
that the Trump organization had little or no pull in Russia as Putin's
government apparently didn't lift a finger to salvage this stillborn
building project.
But highlighting that reality would not serve the Times' endless promotion
of Russia-gate. So, this counter-evidence gets buried deep in the story,
after a reprise of the "scandal" and the Times hyping the significance of
Sater's emails from 2015 and early 2016. For good measure, the Times
includes a brief and dishonest summary of the Ukraine crisis.
The Times reported: "Mr. Sater, a Russian immigrant, said he had lined up
financing for the Trump Tower deal with VTB Bank, a Russian bank that was
under American sanctions for involvement in Moscow's efforts to undermine
democracy in Ukraine. In another email, Mr. Sater envisioned a
ribbon-cutting ceremony in Moscow. 'I will get Putin on this program and we
will get Donald elected,' Mr. Sater wrote."
But the idea that Russia acted "to undermine democracy in Ukraine" is
another example of the Times' descent into outright propaganda. The reality
is that the U.S. government supported - and indeed encouraged - a coup on
Feb. 22, 2014, that overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian
President
Viktor Yanukovych even after he offered to move up scheduled elections so
he
could be voted out of office through a democratic process.
After Yanukovych's violent ouster and after the coup regime dispatched
military forces to crush resistance among anti-coup, mostly ethnic Russian
Ukrainians in the east, Russia provided help to prevent their destruction
from an assault spearheaded by neo-Nazis and other extreme Ukrainian
nationalists. But that reality would not fit the Times' preferred Ukraine
narrative, so it gets summarized as Moscow trying "to undermine democracy
in
Ukraine."
Empty Boasts
However, leaving aside the Times' propagandistic approach to Ukraine, there
is this more immediate point about Russia-gate: none of Sater's boastful
claims proved true and this incident really underscored the lack of useful
connections between Trump's people and the Kremlin. One of Trump's lawyers,
Michael Cohen, even used a general press email address in a plea for
assistance from Putin's personal spokesman.
The New York Times' connect-the-dots graphic showing the Kremlin sitting
atop the White House.
Deeper in the story, the Times admits these inconvenient facts: "There is
no
evidence in the emails that Mr. Sater delivered on his promises, and one
email suggests that Mr. Sater overstated his Russian ties. In January 2016,
Mr. Cohen wrote to Mr. Putin's spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, asking for help
restarting the Trump Tower project, which had stalled. But Mr. Sater did
not
appear to have Mr. Peskov's direct email, and instead wrote to a general
inbox for press inquiries."
The Times added: "The project never got government permits or financing,
and
died weeks later. . The emails obtained by The Times make no mention of
Russian efforts to damage Hillary Clinton's campaign or the hacking of
Democrats' emails."
In other words, the Russia-gate narrative - that somehow Putin foresaw
Trump's election (although almost no one else did) and sought to curry
favor
with the future U.S. president by lining Trump's pockets with lucrative
real
estate deals while doing whatever he could to help Trump win - is knocked
down by these new disclosures, not supported by them.
Instead of clearing the way for Trump to construct the building and thus -
in Sater's view - boost Trump's election chances, Putin and his government
wouldn't even approve permits or assist in the financing.
And, this failed building project was not the first Trump proposal in
Russia
to fall apart. A couple of years earlier, a Moscow hotel plan died
apparently because Trump would not - or could not - put up adequate
financing for his share, overvaluing the magic of the Trump brand. But one
would think that if the Kremlin were grooming Trump to be its Manchurian
candidate and take over the U.S. government, money would have been no
obstacle.
Along the same lines, there's the relative pittance that RT paid Gen.
Michael Flynn to speak at the TV network's tenth anniversary in Moscow in
December 2015. The amount totaled $45,386 with Flynn netting $33,750 after
his speakers' bureau took its cut. Democrats and the U.S. mainstream media
treated this fact as important evidence of Russia buying influence in the
Trump campaign and White House, since Flynn was both a campaign adviser and
briefly national security adviser.
Green Party leader Jill Stein and retired Lt. General Michael Flynn
attending a dinner marking the RT network's 10-year anniversary in Moscow,
December 2015, sitting at the same table as Russian President Vladimir
Putin.
But the actual evidence suggests something quite different. Besides Flynn's
relatively modest speaking fee, it turned out that RT negotiated Flynn's
rate downward, a fact that The Washington Post buried deep inside an
article
on Flynn's Russia-connected payments. The Post wrote, "RT balked at paying
Flynn's original asking price. 'Sorry it took us longer to get back to you
but the problem is that the speaking fee is a bit too high and exceeds our
budget at the moment,' Alina Mikhaleva, RT's head of marketing, wrote a
Flynn associate about a month before the event."
Yet, if Putin were splurging to induce Americans near Trump to betray their
country, it makes no sense that Putin's supposed flunkies at RT would be
quibbling with Flynn over a relatively modest speaking fee; they'd be
falling over themselves to pay him more.
So, what the evidence really indicates is that Putin, like almost everybody
else in the world, didn't anticipate Trump's ascendance to the White House,
at least not in the time frame of these events - and thus was doing nothing
to buy influence with his entourage or boost his election chances by
helping
him construct a glittering Trump Tower in Moscow.
But that recognition of reality would undermine the much beloved story of
Putin-Trump collusion, so the key facts and the clear logic are downplayed
or ignored - all the better to deceive Americans who are dependent on the
Times, the Post and the mainstream media.