Blockbuster Russia collusion story collapses, NY Times issues devastating “correction”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/...apses-ny-times-issues-devastating-correction/
Manafort didn’t try to pass election polling data to the Russians after all, but to the Ukrainians. OOPS.
The NY Times broke a story asserting that Paul Manafort passed secret polling data to a Russian Oligarch with close ties to Russian intelligence:
Both Mr. Manafort and Rick Gates, the deputy campaign manager, transferred the data to Mr. Kilimnik in the spring of 2016 as Mr. Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination, according to a person knowledgeable about the situation. Most of the data was public, but some of it was developed by a private polling firm working for the campaign, according to the person.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S A PROBLEM.
THE NEW YORK TIMES HAD TO ISSUE A MAJOR CORRECTION TO THE STORY
Ken Meyer at Mediaite reports, New York Times Makes Major Correction to Report on Manafort and Russian Oligarch:
On Wednesday, the Times made a correction to their piece, saying Manafort actually wanted Kilimnik to direct the data to Ukrainian oligarchs Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov, not Deripaska.
So the polling information was intended for the Ukrainians, not the Russians.
OOPS
Marshall was forced to eat crow to his prior post (quoted above):
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Maybe I’m missing something here on this story. Doesn’t CNN and NY times send polling data to the Russians and Chinese every week? That includes anyone who still bothers to read their sites or watch them on TV.
Polling data is publicly available information. Even “private” polling is publicly available information gathered by asking … wait for it … ta da! .. the “general public”!
Not exactly state secrets. Eh...
If I talk to a Russian friend about the 2020 election and who I think will win or a poll I saw on TV, am I now colluding?
They are trying to spin gold not from straw, but thin air, or possibly bovine excrement....
This is the old saying of “A lie is halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on”. The left counts on this in their daily lies and it has worked for them very well. Unfortunately, Trump has diminished his own credibility by constantly exaggerating almost everything he says. I guess it’s from his years working on the biggest lying medium on Earth, TV. It appears that he used good facts in his border security speech so we have not seen any big “Fact checks” from the talking heads.
Really, if Manafort had just put any really secret stuff he wanted the Russkies to get in an e-mail and sent it to his account on his private, unsecured e-mail server—I hear they’re all the rage—he’d be in the clear. Even if he had official security clearances. We know this because of ground-breaking—not to mention glass-ceiling-breaking—work done by that quintessential Democrat, Hillary Clinton.