I'm posting this article because I posted the one by Jane Mayer the other
day, to which it refers. At the time, I thought how much her reporting has
changed since Trump's election. That's also true of James Risen. Both of
them used to be wonderfully objective, but things have changed.
Miriam
The New Yorkers Partisan Attempt to Refute Its Claim of Partisan
Disinformation on Biden and Ukraine
October 8, 2019
A leading New Yorker writer omits crucial facts to run interference for Joe
Biden against serious allegations of corruption in Ukraine, writes Joe
Lauria.
By Joe Lauria
in Washington
Special to Consortium News
The New Yorkers Jane Mayer has gained a reputation as one of the best
reporters in Washington, but in her latest piece on Ukraine and former Vice
President Joe Biden, Mayer has succumbed to the partisan mania ripping apart
this city and much of the country.
There is little subtlety in her argument, as evidenced by the title of the
piece: The Invention of the Conspiracy Theory on Biden and Ukraine. Rather
than taking an impartial, non-partisan viewneeded now more than ever in
journalismMayer neglects evidence that would have produced a more nuanced
report on this increasingly volatile story.
Such an achievement required the suppression of a seasoned reporters
natural curiosity. Maybe the other side has evidence worth examining too.
Mayer is not alone in dismissing serious questions about Biden as merely a
repeatedly discredited conspiracy theory involving Joe Biden and his son
Hunters work in Ukraine. In doing so, Mayer has joined an unthinking media
consensus protecting Biden and the medias own interests to save itself from
the shame of having pushed the now discredited conspiracy theory of Trumps
collusion with Russia. With the Trump Justice Department digging into the
origins of that fiasco it was the perfect time to preempt its findings with
a trumped up impeachment scandal. The last thing the intelligence agencies
and their compliant media need are revelations about how they together duped
the country.
Jane Mayer in 2008. (Wikipedia)
Mayer, who distinguished herself on many stories, including a defense of the
wrongly accused National Security Agency senior executive Tom Drakean
actual whistleblowerreduced herself to the journalists herd that gave
Russiagate credence, and in the process undermined scores of media
reputations.
Instead of owning up to it, Mayer writes that the media was manipulated in
2016, not by Democrats or intelligence officials, but by Republican
partisans. She produces a line about Ukrainegate that would more credibly
describe media accomplices in Russiagate: News organizations continue to be
just as susceptible to manipulation by political partisans pushing
complicated and hard-to-check foreign narratives as they were in 2016.
Mayers unwillingness to see the corruption of both major parties is
stunning.
She writes: Anyone trying to track the Ukrainian conspiracy stories that
were eventually embraced by President Trump is likely to get mired in the
same echo chamber of right-wing news purveyors that misinformed voters in
2016 (except that in 2016 it was an echo chamber aligned with Democrats).
Mayer only blames Republicans who were largely on the defensive during
Russiagate. Her exoneration of Democrats then and now for misinforming
voters, extends to Secretary of State Hillary Clintons approval of an
uranium deal with Russia, after which, Mayer reports, more than two million
dollars in contributions came to the Clinton Foundation from the
businessmen behind the deal. She says Clinton is in the clear because
other U.S. agencies also approved the deal and the amount of uranium was
negligible. It was all just a conservative plot, Mayer tells us.
The Biggest Omissions
Mayer attributes the origins of Bidens appearance of conflict of interest
in Ukraine solely to a disinformation campaign run by a shadowy group set up
by Donald Trumps former chief strategist, the right wing activist, Steve
Bannon.
This is intended to put a nail in the story at its origins, portraying it as
just a nutty conservative conspiracy, and thus no one needs to be concerned
about significant evidence that followed. For nearly two years,
conservative operatives have been trying to weaponize the Ukraine-based
story that has led Trump to the brink of impeachment, Mayer wrote.
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She takes at face value Bannons braggadocio about his so-called Government
Accountability Initiative being key and the predicate to the
Biden-Ukraine story, allowing her to easily dismiss an array of facts,
including a public admission of corruption by Biden himself, as merely an
unethically seeming morass.
Of all the evidence missing from Mayers piece, perhaps the most important
is the opening act of this Washington drama: the U.S.-backed coup that
overthrew an elected Ukrainian government in 2014. Without that evidence it
is impossible to understand the context of the nauseating Biden/Ukraine
impeachment story. She is not alone in this either. The entire elite liberal
media and Fox News wont mention it in a bipartisan cover-up of rapacious
American foreign policy.
The press usually takes 25 years, after the declassification of documents,
to admit the United States routinely breaks international law by
overthrowing sovereign governments, and not in the name of spreading
democracy, but in the interests of capital and geo-strategy. That was the
case with Ukraine in 2014.
Hunter and Joe Biden at Obamas 2009 inaugural parade.
Can you imagine if the Trump administration finally succeeds in overthrowing
the Venezuelan government and a couple of months later Vice President Mike
Pences son (who wasnt kicked out of the Navy for drug use) lands a spot on
the board of a privatized Venezuelan national oil company?
That is exactly what happened with Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine.
And then imagine that the U.S.-installed government of Juan Guaidó begins an
investigation into corruption at the oil company and wants to question
Pences son. So Pence flies to Caracas and tells Guaidó he wont get a $1
billion U.S. credit line until the prosecutor is fired. Six hours later the
prosecutor begins cleaning out his desk and Pence later brags about it in an
open forum at the Council on Foreign Relations.
That is exactly what Biden did in Ukraine.
The fired Venezuelan prosecutor then gives an affidavit under oath that
Pence had him fired because he was investigating his sons company and that
the U.S. had taken over the countrys prosecutors office.
That is exactly what the Ukrainian prosecutor testified.
But none of these facts are in Mayers story. In the face of the affidavit
and Bidens open admission on video, she still somehow calls these baseless
tales claiming that Biden corruptly intervened on behalf of his sons
Ukrainian business interests.
Instead Mayer attacks the reporter who revealed most of them, John Solomon
of The Hill. A partisan reporter attacking another partisan reporter is what
passes for journalism these days. Being non-partisana requirement to
practice serious journalismmeans looking past the politics of a reporter or
a news outlet, and even overlooking their partisan motivation, if they
present documented evidence. The motive is irrelevant if the evidence is
substantiated.
There was no such evidence in the Russiagate farce, but that never stopped
partisans in the Democratic media. The same lack of skepticism has accepted
now two CIA officials as whistleblowers without questioning their motives,
while showing no interest in real whistleblowers who challenge the
Establishment on behalf of the nation.
If the Department of Justice and its investigation into the origins of
Russiagate is serious and reveals wrongdoing by intelligence officials and
by extension by the media, the best move those officials and journalists can
make is to go on offense as their best defense. It also gives them another
crack at Trump after failing with Russiagate. And Trump gave them the
opening to do it.
Trumps Blunder
Zelensky and Trump at the UN last month. (Wikimedia Commons)
Trumps mistake was to get personally involved in the investigations into
the origins of Russiagate and the Bidens. By mentioning both in a telephone
conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he broke the wall
that should exist between the White House and the Justice Department. Though
there was no clear quid-pro-quo, Trump hinted that he would release military
aid to Ukraine in exchange for the investigations. If Trump did that it is
the routine corrupt way the U.S. carries out foreign policy, as Biden openly
admitted.
Trump compounded his problems by publicly calling for China to investigate
Hunter Bidens dealings in that country. By getting personally involved,
instead of leaving it up to the DOJ to investigate his possible challenger
in next years presidential election, Trump allowed his enemies in
intelligence and the media to portray his conversation as an impeachable
offense.
Every move the DOJ or Trumps personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, makes in
investigating Russiagate or the Bidens corruption, including legitimately
asking foreign governments for assistance, is now tainted as political
because of Trumps unwise intervention. He threw a lifeline to intelligence
officers and journalists like Mayer, who will continue to make the most of
it even if it means turning their backs on their professional commitments.
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@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and followed on Twitter @unjoe .
