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FBI notes reveal doubts about Steele dossier promoted by news media leftists

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Left to right: Comey, Lynch, Clinton, McCabe
Left to right: Comey, Lynch, Clinton, McCabe

The mainstream media is being silent about revelations that the FBI had major doubts about the Steele dossier. So, let’s take a look at the newly-released FBI notes.

Here’s the latest from the Wall Street Journal:

A Senate committee released newly declassified documents that showed the Federal Bureau of Investigation was wary in early 2017 of a dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele that helped stir a narrative, later debunked, that the Trump campaign had close ties to Russian intelligence.

The documents released Friday by the Senate Judiciary Committee included FBI notes from three days of interviews with a primary source of Mr. Steele who cast doubt on some of the dossier’s contents. FBI notes from the interview in early 2017 indicated that Mr. Steele’s source had told him information about Mr. Trump’s alleged sexual escapades was “rumor and speculation” that he was unable to confirm.

Also released were notes of a former high-level FBI agent, Peter Strzok, who wrote that Mr. Steele himself “may not be in a position to judge the reliability of his subsource network.’’

Reacting to a New York Times report in February 2017 that said the Trump campaign and people around the candidate had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence officials, Mr. Strzok wrote in the margins of a printed copy of the article that “we are unaware of any Trump advisors engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials.”

Actually, Strozk wrote a lot more than that.

I found more FBI notes here:

Document number two, also withheld from public view until now, takes apart a New York Times article written by Michael Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzzo.

Comments made by then-FBI agent Peter Strzok undercut a litany of claims made in the Times article, which was entitled: “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contact With Russian Intelligence.”

Claim in NYT article: “Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.”

Note by Strzok: “This statement is misleading and inaccurate as written. We have not seen evidence of any individuals in contact with Russians (both Governmental and non-Governmental)” and “There is no known intel affiliation, and little if any [government of Russia] affiliation[.] FBI investigation has shown past contact between [Trump campaign volunteer Carter] Page and the SVR [Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation], but not during his association with the Trump campaign.”

Claim in NYT article: “… one of the advisers picked up on the [intercepted] calls was Paul Manafort, who was Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman for several months …”

Note by Strzok: “We are unaware of any calls with any Russian government official in which Manafort was a party.”

Claim in NYT article: “The FBI has obtained banking and travel records …”

Note by Strzok: “We do not yet have detailed banking records.”

Claim in NYT article: “Officials would not disclose many details, including what was discussed on the calls, and how many of Trump’s advisers were talking to the Russians.”

Note by Strzok: “Again, we are unaware of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intel officials” and “Our coverage has not revealed contact between Russian intelligence officers and the Trump team.”

Claim in NYT article: “The FBI asked the NSA to collect as much information as possible about the Russian operatives on the phone calls …”

Note by Strzok: “If they did we are not aware of those communications.”

Claim in NYT article: “The FBI has closely examined at least four other people close to Mr. Trump … Carter Page … Roger Stone… and Mr. Flynn.”

Note by Strzok: “We have not investigated Roger Stone.”

Claim by NYT: “Senior FBI officials believe … Christopher Steele … has a credible track record.”

Note by Strzok: “Recent interviews and investigation, however, reveal Steele may not be in a position to judge the reliability of subsource network.”

Claim by NYT: “The FBI’s investigation into Mr. Manafort began last spring [2016].”

Note by Strzok: “This is inaccurate … our investigation of Manafort was opened in August 2016.”

Claim by NYT: “The bureau did not have enough evidence to obtain a warrant for a wiretap of Mr. Manafort’s communications, but it had the NSA closely scrutinize the communications of Ukrainian officials he had met.”

Note by Strzok: “This is inaccurate …”

Basically, everything the New York Times wrote was judged by Peter Strozk – the anti-Trump FBI adulterer – as inaccurate. Keep that in mind the next time you read something in the New York Times. It’s just fake news, from front to back, top to bottom. Every day. People read it for feelings – not for an accurate view of the world.

There is a nice re-cap of left-wing news sources trumpeting the Steel dossier as genuine in this Twitter thread. Make note of the names, and don’t trust these news sources in the future. CNN, MSNBC, Brian Stelter, Rachel Maddow, New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait, Catherine Rempell, Katy Tur, Mother Jones, David Corn, Newsweek, Slate, Rick Wilson, Joy Reid, Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot, Charles Blow, Seth Abramson, Matthew Dowd, Kurt Eichenwald, The Daily Beast, The New Yorker, etc.

The Federalist had some details about the source for the Steele dossier.

The Primary Subsource was in reality Steele’s sole source, a longtime Russian-speaking contractor for the former British spy’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence. In turn, the Primary Subsource had a group of friends in Russia. All of their names remain redacted. From the FBI interviews, it becomes clear that the Primary Subsource and his friends peddled warmed-over rumors and laughable gossip that Steele dressed up as formal intelligence memos.

On Twitter, I found a thread that presented a case that the source of the dossier was a PRESS SECRETARY. Not an intelligence agent.  Not a “veteran spy”. A PRESS SECRETARY. I guess we’ll find out if this is correct soon.

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CNN and MSNBC cut off Democrat governors praising Trump’s handling of virus crisis

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Did you see Trump’s briefing on Monday night about the Wuhan virus? He was able to show a timeline of his responses to the virus, as well as clips of various Democrat governors praising his handling of the crisis. He also had tons of good news to report, and re-affirmed his intention to re-open the country at the beginning of May. But CNN and MSNBC were not pleased.

Here’s the 4-minute video that Trump showed that got him into trouble with the Democrat journalists:

The Daily Wire explains:

President Donald Trump played a video during the White House Coronavirus Press Briefing on Monday that showed the media’s initial response to the coronavirus outbreak and highlighted his response to the outbreak and showed Democratic governors around the country praising the Trump administration for the work they did.

[…]The video highlighted the following comments from governors across the country. Here are a few of the examples included in the video:

  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D): “His team is on it. They’ve been responsive late at night, early in the morning and they’ve thus far been doing everything they can do and I want to say thank you and I want to say that I appreciate it.
  • California Governor Gavin Newsom (D): “He returns calls. He reaches out, he’s been proactive. We could that Mercy ship down here in Los Angeles, that was directly because he sent it down here. 2,000 medical units came to the state of California, these FMS, these field medical stations, and that’s been very, very helpful.
  • Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R): “The president has been outstanding through all this, the vice president has been outstanding, members of the Coronavirus Task Force, very responsive.”
  • New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D): “We had asked if we could have, if New Jersey could access to a piece of the beds that are on the USNS Comfort and the president came back, called me, assured me a few minutes before I walked in here to say that they would grant that to New Jersey. So that’s big step for us in addition to all the other capacity. I thank the president and vice president who were on the call.”

CNN cut away from the press conference shortly after the video started playing and MSNBC followed suit several moments later.

And here’s what CNN had on before cutting away, when Trump was explaining all the things that everyone (nurses, doctors, Army Corps of Engineers, etc.) were doing to solve the actual problem:

You won’t be able to get an accurate view of the world if you watch CNN and MSNBC. They can’t tell you anything that makes Trump look competent. They can only tell you things that make Trump look incompetent. And they’ll even lie, in order to do the latter.

I noticed that the mainstream media is bashing Trump for not taking the virus seriously, but the fact is that he took action to ban incoming flights from China at the end of January. Dr. Fauci didn’t even think there was a problem as late as the end of Fenbruary – which is not an insult at all, because that’s how things looked based on what we knew at that time.

The Daily Wire explains:

Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has served under three Republican and three Democrat presidents, apparently did not realize the threat of coronavirus as he said on February 29 that the virus did not pose a significant threat to Americans.

Fauci was asked on NBC News, “Dr. Fauci, it’s Saturday morning in America. People are waking up right now with real concerns about this; they want to go to malls and movies, maybe the gym as well. Should we be changing our habits, and if so, how?”

Fauci responded, “No. Right now, at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis. Right now the risk is still low, but this could change; I’ve said that many times, even on this program. You’ve gotta watch out because although the risk is low now, you don’t need to change anything that you’re doing. When you start to see community spread, this could change and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread.”

Far-left “journalists” are trying to make it look like Trump doesn’t listen to Dr. Fauci or the other scientific experts, but Dr. Fauci says that’s not true:

I think it’s important for everyone to understand that the mainstream media is in league with the Democrat party, and they are constantly lying and distorting the truth in order to get their boy Joe Biden into the White House in November. (And they don’t care that he’s been credibly accused of sexual assault, any more than they care about the credible allegations of rape against their boy Bill Clinton).

It’s almost time for the campaign to start. Get yourself lawn sign, make a donation, volunteer your time, share stories on social media, etc. Whatever it takes to stop these secular leftist fascists.

 

News

Two peer-reviewed studies shed light on news media bias

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Why do people think that CNN are biased leftist clowns?
Why do people think that CNN are biased leftist clowns?

Let’s learn about media bias using these peer-reviewed studies.

Here’s a UCLA study on media bias.

Excerpt:

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News’ “Special Report With Brit Hume” and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” CNN’s “NewsNight With Aaron Brown” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” were a close second and third.

“Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill,” Groseclose said. “If these newscasters weren’t centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators.”

The fourth most centrist outlet was “Special Report With Brit Hume” on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC’s “World News Tonight” and NBC’s “Nightly News” to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

“If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox’s ‘Special Report’ as ABC’s ‘World News’ and NBC’s ‘Nightly News,’ then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news,” said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.”

Here’s a Harvard University study on media bias.

Excerpt:

The programming studied on Fox News offered a somewhat more positive picture… of Republicans and more negative one of Democrats compared with other media outlets. Fox News stories about a Republican candidate were most likely to be neutral (47%), with the remainder more positive than negative (32% vs. 21% negative). The bulk of that positive coverage went to Giuliani (44% positive), while McCain still suffered from unflattering coverage (20% positive vs. 35% negative).

When it came to Democratic candidates, the picture was more negative. Again, neutral stories had a slight edge (39%), followed by 37% negative and 24% positive. And, in marked contrast from the rest of the media, coverage of Obama was twice as negative as positive: 32% negative vs. 16% positive and 52% neutral.

But any sense here that the news channel was uniformly positive about Republicans or negative about Democrats is not manifest in the data.”

From the Washington Examiner, a study of the political contributions made by the mainstream media.

Excerpt:

Senior executives, on-air personalities, producers, reporters, editors, writers and other self-identifying employees of ABC, CBS and NBC contributed more than $1 million to Democratic candidates and campaign committees in 2008, according to an analysis by The Examiner of data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Democratic total of $1,020,816 was given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks, with an average contribution of $880.

By contrast, only 193 of the employees contributed to Republican candidates and campaign committees, for a total of $142,863. The average Republican contribution was $744.

[…]The data on contributions by broadcast network employees was compiled by CRP at the request of The Examiner and included all 2008 contributions by individuals who identified their employer as one of the three networks or subsidiaries. The data does not include contributions by employees of the three networks who did not identify their employer.

The CRP is the organization behind OpenSecrets.org, the web site that for more than a decade has put campaign finance data within reach of anybody with an Internet connection.

President Obama received 710 such contributions worth a total of $461,898, for an average contribution of $651 from the network employees. Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain received only 39 contributions totaling $26,926, for an average donation of $709.

And more from a study done by the radically leftist MSNBC.

Excerpt:

MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

The donors include CNN’s Guy Raz, now covering the Pentagon for NPR, who gave to Kerry the same month he was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq; New Yorker war correspondent George Packer; a producer for Bill O’Reilly at Fox; MSNBC TV host Joe Scarborough; political writers at Vanity Fair; the editor of The Wall Street Journal’s weekend edition; local TV anchors in Washington, Minneapolis, Memphis and Wichita; the ethics columnist at The New York Times; and even MTV’s former presidential campaign correspondent.

Those are the facts.

So what?

Now consider this column from Brent Bozell, which explains the difference media bias makes to political intelligence.

Excerpt:

A 2008 survey by the Pew Research Center asked media consumers three questions: which party was in control of Congress (Democrats), who was the secretary of state (Condi Rice) and who was the prime minister of Britain (Gordon Brown).

Let’s document how the viewers of “Hannity & Colmes” were better informed than Stewart’s “Daily Show”  gigglers on basic political facts. Hannity viewers beat Stewart’s on the Democratic majority (84 percent to 65 percent correct answers), Condi Rice (a dramatic 73 percent to 48 percent gap) and Gordon Brown (49 percent to 36). Overall, as a percentage getting all three questions right, Hannity won 42-30.

Just keep that in mind when you are watching the mainstream media news shows. A very good site to bookmark and read is Newsbusters, which documents mainstream media bias daily.