Posted on 01/19/2019 6:21:41 AM PST by Kaslin
The Special Counsel’s office has issued a statement debunking the BuzzFeed “bombshell scoop” that President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.
The story was widely regurgitated by the mainstream media, with the smallest of caveats, and then they marched full on pointing out that suborning perjury is an impeachable offense. They were excited, gleeful almost but here are five reasons they should never have reported the story in the first place. They are five red flags about Jason Leopold, one of the journalists behind the story, that meant they should not run a story on the report without independent verification. These are Jason Leopold’s five red flags:
1. In 2006 Leopold ran a detailed story stating that Karl Rove had been informed he was about to be indicted for leaking the name of CIA agent Valarie Plame. The story stated very authoritatively that Rove himself had “told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials,” that he was going to be charged. The indictment never happened. Just like the Trump story, Leopold said he had multiple sources for a story that turned out not to be true.
2. Of course anyone can make a mistake and maybe Leopold was misled by his “multiple sources” but in another story it looks like Leopold was involved in fraud and forgery of documents bolstering a story. In a 2002 story for Salon about energy company Enron, Leopold quoted a damning email which the subject of the story denied ever writing. After much prevaricating, Leopold eventually produced a “faxed copy of the email” with no headers or other identifying details. He never produced an original. The story was eventually removed from Salon’s archive.
3. Sources he quotes say he never spoke to them. In the same story Leopold claims he was given information by a source but the source denied this.
Leopold told Salon’s editors his phone bill would show the calls to the source. Again after much prevaricating, Leopold produced the phone bill and it showed just one call - less than a minute long and it occurred five days after he submitted the first draft of the story.
4. Leopold has plagiarized stories. Salon found he had lifted almost verbatim 480 words from a Financial Times story.
Leopold apparently submitted a forged document to cover his plagiarism. He told Salon that he had not plagiarized the FT story because the FT story was in fact based on a Dow Jones story that he had originally written. He sent them a copy of a story that he claimed the FT had ripped off. Salon and Dow Jones could find no record of Leopold’s alleged “original” story in the Dow Jones archive, however.
5. Leopold can’t even be truthful when he tries to confess to not being truthful. In 2005 Leopold wrote a confessional memoir. He wrote about how he “engaged in lying, cheating and backstabbing…and was looking for a path to redemption.” However just days before the book's release, the publisher, Rowman & Littlefield, pulled it off the shelves after one of the sources quoted in the book claimed Leopold made up quotes.
In truth the mainstream media should never have run the BuzzFeed story without verifying it themselves. It is just too serious a claim to report without proof that they themselves should have seen and checked. But they didn’t care. We hear a lot about how President Trump has apparently damaged institutions and democracy. The media claim he is “ethically challenged.” But perhaps the real story to emerge from this presidency is how the media is ethically challenged and have thrown all standards aside in their desire to bring the president down.
The two reporters contradicted themselves yesterday. One said they had seen the original documents. The other said they hadn’t.
One of the CNN panelists (Preet?) asked the editor of Buzz Feed if they’d sent the article to Mueller to confirm or deny. He avoided the question.
Leftists this said the Mueller response was a carefully worded non denial. Weren’t sure what it meant.
WaPo reported they were told that everything in the story was false. Seems pretty clear!
Amazing to see the msm implode so gloriously.
The media is grasping at straws.
MSM = Dogs always return to their vomit.
It was obviously a TDS wish fulfillment fantasy.
If there were any real dirt of the kind on Trump it would have come out a long long time ago.
A + B = if you thought there was a chance the story was true, you’re a baka.
One of the CNN panelists (Preet?) asked the editor of Buzz Feed if they’d sent the article to Mueller to confirm or deny. He avoided the question.
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I saw preet last night trying to say that this could still be true due to parallel investigations or some babble. They were all so desperately trying to pretend it is still true.
YES!
More FAKE NEWS.
In the case here, Trump's side can easily raise doubts about Cohen's credibility by simply asking the question: "Why would you believe someone who has already been found guilty of lying?" In the first scenario, you would have to ask: "Why is he lying in order to have himself found guilty?"
If Leopold was such a notorious serial plagerizer and pushing fake news then why on earth is he being printed and then reprinted by big anti trump media?
This is a case of manufacturing a source, as weak as it may be. MSM gets a free shot at the Trump administration. The MSM doesn’t get blamed for jack because they used an unsourced source. Not understood by people who merely read headlines.
Shades of Stephen Glass at the New Republic.
Nobody, throw the a life vest. Let them drown. But continue to expose the lying vermin.
And the gullible fools on the Left wait breathlessly for the next nothing burger to shriek hysterically and foam at the mouth about.
Waiting for the “fake but true” justification.
Chuck Todd should be fired for his gleeful reporting of this non-story. It was peppered with some “if trues” while he expressed without any doubt his desire that President Trump be impeached.
I’m reading a blog now in Newsbusters.org by Curtis Houck titled “Networks Spend Over 27 Minutes on Dubious BuzzFeed Trump Story”
Report put this week RBG has pneumonia. She’s not long for this world if that’s true.
So Dems have to drive up impeachment talk and will use this as an excuse Truno shouldn’t have a SCOtUS pick. They hope they pick off a Romney-tyke that’ll side with them and Flake out.
The RBG replacement fight will make Kavanaugh look mild by comparison. Leftists will go into full meltdown when she dies.
The vermin bastards in the media wanted it to be true, so they made it true. Even if they retract, the damage is done. Millions saw the lie and believed it.
The lying vermin in the media need to be sent to iran or somalia.
This is all about one thing:
The left is losing their minds with the possibility that Ruth Buzzy Ginsburg will soon retire or die. They are grasping at any and every straw, no matter how implausible.
Expect more of the same until she returns or DJT is in his last year of office.
They’ve certainly moved into the “prove your innocence” mode - typical communists.
Media: The story may not have *proof* that it is true BUT “we just don’t know yet” because, in all likelihood, it PROBABLY is true. We have no evidence it isn’t true. PDJT - prove it’s not true.
It’s pathetic. Now CNN is complaining that it will have made them and the media look bad. lol. No CNN - YOU MADE YOURSELVES LOOK BAD. You can’t help yourselves because of your rapid hateful bigotry. You followed this, you broadcast it, in full sensationalized mode, BEFORE you validated any facts. So yes, you do look bad. Not that we’re surprised.
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