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Hillary didn’t do it

I'm on vacation cruising down the Seine, so my threshold for commenting on dumb stuff is higher than usual. What's more, the proximate cause of my latest annoyance is the Wall Street Journal editorial page—which is sort of like saying I'm annoyed by cancer. I mean, I am annoyed by having cancer, but I'm annoyed by it every day and it's hardly worth bitching about it every time I get an upset stomach or something.

That said, I'm awake while Marian is still snoozing and I have nothing special to do. So here's the latest from the Journal's distinguished editorial board:

Well, of course Hillary did it. That goes without saying in Journal land. But what was it this time? Did she kill Elon Musk? Steal Joe Biden's stash of Diet Coke? Pull the heist of the century by emptying Fort Knox?

Nah. None of that. Apparently she ran for president a few years ago and her campaign manager, Robby Mook tried to interest the press in some dirt about her opponent:

Prosecutors asked Mr. Mook about his role in funneling the Alfa Bank claims to the press. Mr. Mook admitted the campaign lacked expertise to vet the data, yet the decision was made by Mr. Mook [and some others] to give the Alfa Bank claims to a reporter. Mr. Mook said Mrs. Clinton was asked about the plan and approved it. A story on the Trump-Alfa Bank allegations then appeared in Slate, a left-leaning online publication.

On Oct. 31, 2016, [Jake] Sullivan issued a statement mentioning the Slate story, writing, “This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow.” Mrs. Clinton tweeted Mr. Sullivan’s statement with the comment: “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.” “Apparently” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

In short, the Clinton campaign created the Trump-Alfa allegation, fed it to a credulous press that failed to confirm the allegations but ran with them anyway, then promoted the story as if it was legitimate news.

Hold the presses! A campaign passed along to the press some potential dirt that they hoped might lead to further digging. It wasn't something they "created," either: it had already been a widespread subject of rumor and investigation on blogs and Twitter for months (I was alive back in 2016 so I know this). Nor did "the press" run with it. A bunch of reporters tried to run down the allegations, but none of them was able to. Finally one person, Frank Foer of Slate, took a flier and decided to publish everything he could dig up. This is a common way of attracting the attention of sources who might be able to add something to a story.

And the Clinton campaign's shameful conspiracy to take advantage of Foer's piece? Two whole tweets!

All things considered, Foer probably made the wrong call. There were lots of questions about the Alfa Bank activity but not enough to justify a fishing piece. But that's it. A close but wrong call.¹

So in the end this was one of the most common and trivial things imaginable: a campaign trying to get the media interested in digging around a possible bit of mud. It's hard to think of anything more commonplace or basically innocuous in the world of presidential campaigns.

ALSO: The Clinton campaign merely passed along some information they hoped was worth checking out. But when it comes to feeding false information to the press and then quoting it back as confirmation when it's published, the all-time king is Dick Cheney during the marketing phase of the Iraq War. Or, more recently, Rudy Giuliani and the Hunter Biden laptop. Oddly, though, I don't remember the fine and honest folks of the Journal editorial page ever getting distressed about either of these things.

AND: As long as I'm at it, the Journal also offhandedly claims that this incident and others started the FBI's long Trump-Russia investigation. This is, unsurprisingly, an outright lie. The timeline of the investigation is very well known and it began not with Hillary Clinton but with a Trump advisor telling an Australian diplomat over drinks about alleged Russian emails that were damaging to Clinton. The Australian government passed this along to the FBI after Wikileaks published hacked DNC emails. This happened in July 2016, months before the Alfa Bank allegations.

¹And to Foer's credit, he promptly published a follow-up piece noting objections and new information about the Alfa Bank story.

44 thoughts on “Hillary didn’t do it

  1. antiscience

    Boy howdy, you sure said it, Kevin! Remember the (transatlantic) Puke Funnel? Good time, good times.

  2. DFPaul

    Where's the Hillary Hunter videotape? I assume we'll get to that by August, and it will be forgotten after November...

    1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

      Is that after Elon Musk tweets out that part of the reason he doesn't own his own home & relies on the kindness of friends to crash in their guestrooms is that he fears if he stays in one place too long Hillary is apt to succeed on killing him?

      1. DFPaul

        I'm no Emusk expert but my sense is that he views Elizabeth Warren as his key female nemesis. Am I wrong? Is he on record trashing Hillary? I wouldn't be surprised.

        Anyway, these's so much bad publicity for Tesla these days that I would guess Elon will be attacking anyone and anything that seems to him vulnerable.

        1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

          He's gone full ret--... Full MAGAnaut.

          He prolly is dipping into his "proof the Thailand rescuers were paedos" fund to help uncover whom Hillary paid to kill Seth Rich.

  3. kenalovell

    ... a credulous press that failed to confirm the allegations but ran with them anyway, then promoted the story as if it was legitimate news.This is not what happened. In fact it is the opposite of what happened. Most mainstream newspapers either ignored the story, or wrote sceptical reports concluding there was nothing to it. But it's long been part of the Trump Republican Big Book of Myths and Legends that Trump's "Russian collusion" was a central theme in Hillary's campaign, so naturally the narrative takes precedence over pesky facts.

    All this is only relevant to the Sussmann trial because Durham has to prove the alleged lie was material; i.e. that the FBI wouldn't have investigated the Alfa Bank data if Sussmann had said he handed it over on behalf of a client. It's totally unconnected to the FBI investigation that had started months earlier. But to read the hysteria on Trumpropaganda websites, you'd think the whole Mueller investigation only happened because of Sussmann's supposed deception. They really are the most irrational creatures.

    1. DFPaul

      Always a bit amusing to recall the evolution of Trump and Trump fans' claims about who started the "Russia Hoax". It shifts based on Trump's needs for defense at that particular moment, and the Republicans electoral needs at that particular moment.

      From 2017 to 2019 it was John Brennan at CIA, James Comey at the FBI (along with Peter Strzok etc), and the rest of the "deep state" who had cooked up the "fake story". At this point Trump's main enemy was the Mueller investigation, so the idea was to discredit any federal investigation.

      Late in 2019 into 2020, when Trump was in trouble for extorting Zelensky and Ukraine, the bad guy changed. Suddenly Ukraine had made up the "Russia Hoax" to smear Trump. We heard no more about Brennan and Comey.

      As the 2020 election approached, the bad guy switched back to Brennan. Durham was going to indict Brennan any moment and prove it had been the "deep state" the whole time trying to unseat Trump.

      After the 2020 election and the failure of the Trump coup attempt, we learned that Durham had let Brennan off the hook (have to imagine the failure of the election fraud allegations scared Durham into thinking he was headed the way of Giuliani).

      Durham needed something to justify his salary and investigation though, so he latched on to the idea that the FBI had been lied to by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Note once again the fantastic elasticity of the right wing mind; for years it was the "deep state" out to get Trump. Now the "deep state" was completely honest, but easily manipulated by Hillary Clinton.

      It's fairly easy to see now what's up. The Republicans need Hillary Clinton as the bad guy for an election when they are going to be in trouble with women, and Durham still needs to prove something, anything. The WSJ is always along for the ride, hilariously.

    2. KenSchulz

      IANAL, but I’ve read some that find the Sussmann case very weak, citing the conflicting statements of the key witness, and the materiality problem. Which suggests that the decision to prosecute was more political than legal.

      1. kenalovell

        It strikes me that prosecuting Sussmann for a trivial alleged offence is being used as a vehicle to re-tell old Trump Republican grievances and fairytales in court, thereby giving them a veneer of credibility. Thus we've had 30 page court filings by Durham, 28 pages of which are irrelevant to whatever motion he's making but red meat for the Trump Cult, which of course makes no distinction between a prosecutorial allegation and a proven fact.

        Why Trump Republicans think anyone else cares after all these years about an election Trump WON remains a mystery.

        1. DFPaul

          Yeah, recall that the point of appointing Durham was that Barr said quite unequivocally there had been "spying" on a presidential campaign, conducted by the FBI (at least). That has devolved to a well-known Democratic lawyer lying (maybe) to the FBI about whether he had a client or not. Trump always tells the big fibs up front to stir up his fans, then backs off because he actually cares quite a bit about still being seen as a bigwig in polite society (what's left of it...)

  4. Davis X. Machina

    ...Trump's "Russian collusion" was a central theme in Hillary's campaign,

    It was certainly one in Trump's. "Are you listening, Russia...?"

  5. D_Ohrk_E1

    First, you know, no one has actually discredited the Slate story re what happened between the Trump and Alfa servers. Plenty of people point to Durham's filings, but all he did was create reasonable doubt. It's understandable therefore that Mueller's report didn't bring up the Alfa server, but it doesn't credibly explain what happened between the two servers.

    If you don't remember, the Trump server was reconfigured with a new host name right before Foer's piece was published but immediately after a NYT reporter reached out to a Trump PR outlet. The first DNS lookup to hit that newly renamed server was from Alfa. For example, they renamed sample1.com to notsample1.com and alfa was the first to ask for the IP address specifically for notsample1.com.

    Second, there was nothing illegal about greenlighting info to a journalist, but the point of WSJ's story was to conflate the Durham allegations with an air of illegality as though it was part of a conspiracy. Ultimately, that's the goal of WSJ's story, and that's why they headlined it with "[She] Did It".

      1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

        This is a far cry from the Shooter we knew, who lamented Daniel Pearl's unnecessary assassination caused in no small part by the duplicity of Democrat Party officialdom in league with French agents colluding with Saddam to prop up al-Qaeda after Bush-43 had thoroughly routed them in Afghanistan.

    1. golack

      We had an instrument installed that was controlled by a PC. Years afterwards, IT called us about internet traffic. Apparently the PC was trying to ping a server back in the factory (that was in Europe). Nothing nefarious, just a missed setting during setup.

      There's no evidence that the "Alpha connection" was a communication back channel. But there was something screwy there. Not in itself nefarious, but not normal either. Maybe Alpha gave Trump a PC as part of a deal....

      1. D_Ohrk_E1

        Following a CNAME/A change, the Alfa server was querying DNS to the IP of the new name, not the old name.

  6. J. Frank Parnell

    Remember when the Wall Street Journal editorial board took all their anti-Bill Clinton editorials and published them as a thousand page opus dedicated to celebrating their supreme wisdom? Within weeks new unread copies were selling on ebay for a price corresponding to a few cents per pound of dead trees. They say the WSJ news staff is professional, but one can't help having doubts given their publisher supports an editorial board arrives for work each day in clown car.

    1. Bardi

      If you are old enough, every paper had a section devoted to cartoons. The WSJ was an exception, except, nearly every financial person I encountered all considered the editorial section of the WSJ to be their "cartoon" section. Looks like things haven't changed.

      I've said it before, but "empty wheel.org", hosted by Marcy Wheeler, explains to this IANAL, what is really going on with Durham. The comment section, with real, high placed, attorneys really help connect the dots for me.

      "…the all-time king is Dick Cheney during the marketing phase of the Iraq War."
      Well said, sir. The fact that the US fell for it is double shameful. When president idiot turned away the Fed. at his "ranch" gates in August, 2001, I banned all jumpseaters in my cockpits, because, all summer long, the administration warned about up to ten hijackings, sometime.

  7. bebopman

    And that open-ended headline allows the Hillary haters to insert all kinds of things that are not even in the article. ….

    I dislike Hillary very much. But Yah, wake me up when it’s shown that she tortured children for no reason, positioned our foreign assets based on what our enemies tell her to do, encouraged frightened sick people to drink “cures” that killed them and, oh yeah, try to overthrow our democracy (among other highlights from recent years). Until then, she’s just an amateur.

    1. Bardi

      I respect her just from all the harassment she has endured, was it nine "meetings" just for Benghazi? I think the Republicans were actually afraid of her.

  8. Austin

    It’s been over 5 years since she died, politically at least. Yet conservative media just can’t quit her.

    If she did “do it,” she wasn’t very good at it, since she lost. Why are the winners in our society always so sour about winning? This combined with all their bellyaching about overturning Roe is really just a huge turn off for me, but apparently some voters in electorally important states just love always playing the whiny victim.

    1. kahner

      the continued obsessions with clinton is weird. a WSJ editorial on a woman who's not running for anything, almost certainly never will again and who has very little influence within the party as far as i can tell. but i supposed after spending several decades portraying her as evil incarnate, right wing media doesn't want to let all that work go to waste.

      1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

        They want to make sure Chelsea never tries to run for governor of Arkansas.

        Last thing the GQP wants is a dynast of a former Natural State governor installed as a despot in Little Rock.

  9. middleoftheroaddem

    Did Hillary do something illegal with the Alfa Bank/Trump news sharing? Based on what is known, the Hillary camp is solidly on the correct side of the law.

    In contrast, similar to the Kerry Swift Boat BS story (EG BOTH parties are guilty of this practice) , this type of new placement discredits ALL politicians and make US politics worse.

  10. Vog46

    Both Hillary and Trump have a unique ability to suck all the "news air" out of the room for both parties.
    Can we please get back to normalcy?
    Hillary may or may not have been a good president, we will NEVER know that. We DO KNOW Trump wasn't a good president.

    Good grief this is becoming obsessive.

    1. jte21

      Hillary Clinton has been living rent free in Republicans' heads since 1992. It's a bizarre fetish of theirs.

  11. jte21

    I'm REALLY looking forward to the WSJ editorial on the Hunter Biden laptop and how outrageous it was for the owner to leak the (unverified) hard-drive contents to Republican political operatives in a disgusting attempt to smear the Democratic presidential campaign.

    I'm sure they're outraged....

  12. jte21

    My understanding is that a cybersecurity expert working looking for Russian hacking during the campaign did indeed find that a Trump Org server was communicating with an AlfaBank computer. I don't know if they had any idea about the extent or nature of the communication. This info got leaked somehow to some Clinton people who, with Hillary's knowledge, passed it to the press and FBI. Quelle horreur, as Kevin observes. Durham's "investigation into the investigation" has indicted a Democratic lawyer, Michael Sussman, for allegedly lying to investigators about whether the information he was bringing to the FBI had come from the Clinton campaign or elsewhere.

    In other words, as far as "dirty tricks" go, this is really, really thin soup.

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