New York Times Tries Desperately to Salvage Russia Investigation

Just take a look at this pathetic attempt on the part of The New York Times to downplay the ramifications of Saturday’s FISA application release and salvage the Robert Mueller investigation. What we’re going to quote for you in today’s article is not from an op-ed or an editorial. This is a straight news story by Katie Rogers and Emily Cochrane that has nothing to do with reporting the facts and everything to do with putting forth a partisan viewpoint. The bias is dripping from every sentence of the piece, starting with the first one.

“President Trump claimed without evidence on Sunday that his administration’s release of top-secret documents related to the surveillance of a former campaign aide had confirmed that the Justice Department and the F.B.I. ‘misled the courts’ in the early stages of the Russia investigation,” they write.

Er, without evidence? The evidence IS the release of the documents!

But that’s the assertion that the Times attempts to knock down for the next 1500 words, because arguing with the President of the United States is apparently now what mainstream journalism is all about.

From the Times:

In a series of early-morning tweets, Mr. Trump left unmentioned how the documents laid out in stark detail why the F.B.I. was interested in the former campaign adviser, Carter Page: “The F.B.I. believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government.” The documents also said Mr. Page had “established relationships with Russian government officials, including Russian intelligence officers,” and had been “collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government.”

Those assessments were included in an October 2016 application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Mr. Page. The New York Times and other news outlets obtained the application and several renewals through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. The president had declassified their existence last year.

Okay, so hold on here. No one’s denying that the FBI SAID those things about Carter Page. They were, after all, the ones trying to get a warrant to spy on an American citizen – and a political opponent of then-sitting President Barack Obama, we must add. So it is no argument whatsoever to say, well, the FBI said he was in contact with all these Russians. Of course that’s what they said. That may have even been what they believed. But that doesn’t make it fact, and it really doesn’t even make it evidence. If they were mostly relying on the Steele dossier to make these claims – and everything about this application suggests that they were – it actually doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

But please, New York Times, keep telling us about what the PRESIDENT is asserting without evidence.