90 Miles From Tyranny

Friday, April 19, 2019

7 Ways The Mueller Report Exposed The Media’s ‘Bombshell’ Fake News Stories

When Special Counsel Robert Mueller released his 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, some of the conclusions debunkedmany misleading, and anonymously sourced, conspiracy theories.

After two and a half years of countless mainstream media “scoops” and “bombshells” that turned out to be false or nonexistent, the American people finally have some concrete answers on Russiagate. When Special Counsel Robert Mueller released his 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election on Thursday, some of the investigation’s conclusions debunked once and for all many misleading, and anonymously sourced, conspiracy theories.

Here are some of the most prominent stories the press got wrong about the Russian collusion narrative.

1. Michael Cohen Never Went To Prague

The infamous Christopher Steele dossier, which was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party, alleged that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen met with Federation Council foreign affairs head Konstantin Kosachev in Prague. Desperately wanting to confirm this, news outlets sent reporters to hotels all over Prague checking hotel logs.

In April 2018, McClatchy reported Mueller had obtained evidence of Cohen’s visit to the Czech Republic, according to two anonymous sources. In December 2018, they reported that Cohen’s cell phone, or a device registered to him, was pinged off towers near Prague.

The Mueller report debunked this piece of the dossier once and for all when the special counsel wrote, “Cohen had never traveled to Prague and was not concerned about those allegations, which he believed were provably false.” McClatchy has now added a two sentence editor’s note to their two reports on Cohen.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Robert Mueller’s report to the attorney general states that Mr. Cohen was not in Prague. It is silent on whether the investigation received evidence that Mr. Cohen’s phone pinged in or near Prague, as McClatchy reported.

2. Carter Page Was Not a Russian Agent

Carter Page was the main link between the Trump campaign and Russia. He was a one-time foreign policy adviser on the Trump campaign, has spent time in Russia, and has many contacts with the foreign adversary. The dubious Steele dossier alleged that Page held secret meetings with allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin during his trips to Moscow.

These connections are perhaps the only evidence presented by the media who were convinced Page was a Russian spy (and the only evidence used by the FBI to seek a surveillance warrant against Page, but I digress).

Mueller finally put this myth to rest in his report, asserting they found no evidence Page coordinated with Russia on behalf of the Trump campaign.

Russian intelligence officials had formed relationships with Page in 2008 and 2013 and Russian officials may have focused on Page in 2016 because of his affiliation with the Campaign. However, the investigation did not establish that Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

3. Donald Trump Did Not Direct Cohen to Lie to Congress

In January 2019, BuzzFeed News dropped what was supposed to be “bombshell” report, alleging that Trump had directed Cohen to lie to Congress about a potential real estate deal in Moscow. They also reported that Mueller’s office had evidence of these alleged lies.

The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.

In February, Cohen told Congress under oath that the president never directed him to lie, and now the Mueller report is confirming the contrary report as false:

Cohen said that he and the President did not explicitly discuss whether Cohen’s testimony about the Trump Tower Moscow project would be or was false, and the President did not direct him to provide false testimony. Cohen also said he did not tell the President about the specifics of his planned testimony.

4. Cohen’s Call With a Russian Did Not Prove Collusion

In November 2018, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes reported on live television that “The President was compromised by a hostile foreign government, full stop.” Hayes proposed this was the only conclusion to take from Cohen’s admission that he lied to Congress.

The Mueller report investigated Cohen’s phone call with a personal assistant to a Russian official, and found no evidence that they ever followed up or acted on that initial phone call about a Trump Tower in Moscow.

“Cohen could not recall any direct follow-up from Poliakova or from any other representative of the Russian government, nor did the Office identify any evidence of direct follow-up,” the Mueller report concluded.

5. Paul Manafort Was Not Funneling Polling Data to Putin

Many reporters used Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s past business dealings in Russia to prove he was a Russian stooge, but one reporter...

A Dingo Almost Ate Their BaeBae

Sorry, couldn't help myself...

Hero dad fights off dingoes to save 14-month-old son

A baby has been dragged away in the mouth of a hungry dingo while his parents were sleeping. They awoke to hear his crying becoming “distant”.

A heroic dad saved his baby son from a dingo’s jaws after the child was dragged from a camper trailer as his family slept at Fraser Island overnight.

The boy’s parents — who were camping with the 14-month-old and his four-year-old sister at Eurong Beach — woke to the sound of their son’s cries, which were “becoming more distant”, according to the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland (RACQ) LifeFlight Rescue.

The father left the van to find the animal had already managed to carry the child some distance away, with other dingoes lurking nearby.

It is believed at least two dingoes managed to enter the trailer without the family noticing.

The boy is now in a stable condition.

After fighting them off, the father retrieved his son and called emergency services.

A Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) paramedic who is based on the island was the first to treat the boy’s injuries.

According to the Courier Mail, they included a fractured skull and puncture wounds to his head and neck.

Rescue pilot Frank Bertoli praised the father’s quick response, and said the parents’ actions likely saved the boy from even more horrific injuries.

“(The boy) was apparently grabbed around the back of the neck area and dragged away,” Mr Bertoli said.

“If it wasn’t for the parents fighting off the dingo he could have had much more severe injuries.”

Mr Bertoli also told the ABC how the dingo was able to carry out the terrifying sneak attack.

“I think he made his way under the canvas to get into the camper trailer,” he said.

“It’s pretty horrific to hear something like that come over the phone and we just wanted to get there to be able to help.

“They said that the main dingo was surrounded by others.”

Paramedic Ben Du Toit also revealed more chilling details about the incident.

“The child’s parents were woken by their son’s cries, which were becoming more distant,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“The dad got out of the campervan to investigate and found the dingo dragging the toddler away from the campervan.

“They also spotted several other dingoes in the area and near the vicinity, and...

The final report by special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, but details in the 448-page document provide fodder for congressional Democrats who want more investigations.

The lightly redacted report released by the Justice Department states that President Donald Trump feared appointment of a special counsel would mean the “end” of his presidency.

But it does not say conclusively that the president tried to obstruct the probe, and Attorney General William Barr determined that the evidence did not support criminal charges.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said Thursday that Barr will testify May 2, and that Mueller himself will testify shortly after that.

Nadler said congressional investigations will continue.

Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said the administration would like to see a thorough accounting of how the investigation commenced, apparently based entirely on the “dossier” compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, as opposition research targeting Trump as a presidential candidate.

“Investigating the investigators is something some of the investigators think would be a good idea,” Conway told The Daily Signal, but declined to say whether she thought criminal offenses occurred.

“If you’re going to scream about transparency and accountability and investigations for two years, than I’ve got 22 months to wait to see how we got here in the first place,” she said.

“When the president says it should never happen to another president again, let’s see how we got here. How did it start?”

Outstanding Questions on Obstruction

Muller presented a pattern of behavior by Trump and his associates that seemed hostile toward the Russia investigation, which the president routinely called a “witch hunt.”

But, as Barr already had announced last month, the special counsel didn’t make a determination that the actions constituted obstruction of justice.

“Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the president’s conduct,” the Mueller report states, adding:

The evidence we obtained about the president’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

The report also says, “The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”

>>> Read the Mueller Report

In most instances, the Mueller report noted, Trump aides declined to take actions to impede the investigation—including firing the special counsel, as then-White House counsel Don McGahn thought he was told to do.

The report refers to the month after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, who at the time was overseeing the Russia probe:

On June 14, 2017, the media reported that the Special Counsel’s Office was investigating whether the President had obstructed justice. Press reports called this ‘a major turning point’ in the investigation: while Corney had told the President he was not under investigation, following Corney’s firing, the President now was under investigation. The President reacted to this news with a series of tweets criticizing the...