2016 Election
March 21, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
Attorney Robert Costello, who represented former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in 2018, was the final witness to appear before the grand jury in New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump. Following two hours of testimony earlier in the day, Costello joined Tucker Carlson on Monday night to weigh in. Costello attacked Cohen’s credibility. He described Bragg’s case as “weak,“ and said that Cohen has
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March 20, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has taken fire over the last two days for his silence regarding rumors that former President Donald Trump might be indicted by New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg for alleged hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, in 2016. His response managed to upset both Trump supporters and critics alike. Asked to weigh in at a Monday morning event, the Florida governor replied:
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February 18, 2023 — Scott Johnson
With a little help from Andrew McCarthy I wrote about former New York Times investigative reporter Jeff Gerth’s four-part Columbia Journalism Review retrospective on the bigfoot media’s promotion of the Russia hoax in “The deep meaning of ‘no comment.'” Aaron Maté took up Gerth’s series in the February 15 RCP column “Unchastened by Russiagate, the NY Times Doubles Down in Its Special Counsel Coverage.” Now Maté has interviewed Gerth in
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February 11, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Former New York Times investigative reporter Jeff Gerth has written a lengthy retrospective on the coverage of the Trump presidency and the award-winning journalism supporting the Russia hoax in particular. Indeed, we regularly mocked the coverage of the Russia hoax, as in my five-part mock epic Dossiad ridiculing the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. It is useful to have Gerth’s 24,000-word series as published in four parts by the Columbia Journalism
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January 13, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday afternoon Matt Taibbi posted a 40-part thread that stands as the fourteenth installment of the Twitter Files. It can be accessed via the first tweet in the thread below. The thread is unrolled here on the Thread Reader app. Taibbi comments on the thread in the related post at his TK News site on Substack in “America Needs Truth and Reconciliation on Russiagate.” 1.THREAD: Twitter Files #14THE RUSSIAGATE LIESOne:
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January 9, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The Washington Post, today: Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters Russian influence operations on Twitter in the 2016 presidential election reached relatively few users, most of whom were highly partisan Republicans, and the Russian accounts had no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior, according to a study out this morning. The study, which the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics
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January 5, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I have followed the Twitter Files as posted by Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, and David Zweig in a series of Notes on the Twitter Files. Taibbi has now posted a set of capsule summaries of each of the 12 installments posted on Twitter so far at his TK News site on Substack. It is posted here in accessible form. Most of Taibbi’s posts at TK News are behind
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January 4, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Matt Taibbi posted two more Twitter Files threads yesterday afternoon. They are the eleventh and twelfth such threads posted by the journalists to whom Elon Musk has opened the files of old Twitter. Taibbi has taken the lead in documenting The eleventh thread includes 33 tweets that can be accessed via the first (below). 1.THREAD: The Twitter FilesHow Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3,
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October 12, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The FBI filed its first application for a FISA warrant on Carter Page on October 21, 2016. According to the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General review, the application was based in relevant part on the Steele Dossier that it had obtained the previous month. The OIG review determined that the FBI omitted many material facts from the application. In addition to the previously identified omissions, we now learn
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September 7, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I held that the stand-up act by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at the lectern in the Brady Press Briefing yesterday was “A bad day for KJP.” The White House has now posted the transcript here. President Biden’s Triumph of the shill speech of this past Thursday continues to reverberate in Peter Doocy’s questions. Presented without further comment by me, I will only say that this is classic. *
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September 6, 2022 — Scott Johnson
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had a bad day at the lectern in the Brady Press Briefing Room today. The White House has yet to post a transcript, but Twitter features some interesting excerpts. Her attempted reference to the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, for example, was rendered as “Nordstrom 1.” In the video below Peter Doocy homes in on Jean-Pierre herself as an “election denier” in connection with President
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July 16, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Cast your mind back to 2016 for a moment, when it seemed a lock that Hillary Clinton would win the election, and nominate a leftist to succeed Justice Scalia. (Remember that Hillary refused to commit to re-sending the nomination of Merrick Garland—a clear signal to progressives that she’s pick someone younger and more progressive.) Mark Tushnet, one of the leading leftists at Harvard Law School, let loose with his id
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June 16, 2022 — Scott Johnson
How about a congressional investigation of the perversion of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the service of the Russia hoax intended to take out Donald Trump? The FBI, FISA, and the FISA court should be shut down until we get some answers about the abuse of the law in the service of the hoax. It is all unfinished business, although the Democrats are doing their best to make
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May 31, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Well, of course, that didn’t take long. The guilty guilty guilty Perkins Coie/HRC attorney Michael Sussmann was acquitted by his District of Columbia peers/HRC campaign donors sitting in judgment on his case. I’m not sure whether the jury spent more time picking a foreman or deliberating over the evidence. Perhaps some enterprising reporter will get us inside the process. Thanks to the evidence introduced at trial by the lawyers in
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May 23, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I took the occasion of the testimony in the Sussman trial last week to weigh “Watergate in the balance.” John reviewed what we already knew in “Hillary did it.” On Saturday, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal — I think this is Kim Strassel’s beat as a member of the board — plays it straight in the editorial “Hillary Clinton did it.” The Journal editorial lays out the
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May 21, 2022 — Scott Johnson
With perfect timing Christopher Caldwell reviews what we have learned about Watergate in the past 50 years. Caldwell’s First Things essay is titled “Regime change, American style.” The occasion of Caldwell’s essay is the publication of Garrett Graff’s Watergate: A New History. Caldwell’s essay usefully reminds us that, 50 years later, we still have no idea what the Watergate burglars were looking for. Whatever it was, however, they came away
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May 12, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Jen Psaki is riding off into the MSNBC sunset, to be replaced by Karine Jean-Pierre, who, as we noted here, has freely engaged in both race-baiting and disinformation. The disinformation was about the 2018 Georgia governor’s race, which Jean-Pierre said was “stolen” by Governor Brian Kemp, who won by 54,000 votes. It turns out that Ms. Jean-Pierre has a broader affinity for election conspiracy theories. Today it came to light
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