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Sunday, April 09, 2017 4:05:35 PM
Why is Matt Taibbi Attempting to Undermine the Russiagate Investigation? -
Rolling Stone's legendary journalist Matt Taibbi has straddled a bizarre fence on the Russiagate investigation, taking
a deeply cautious, wishy-washy position. It's unclear as to why, says Bob Cesca, but it is deeply troubling.
by Bob Cesca
I'm old enough to remember 2013 when the song of the Summer was Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" and the news story of the Summer was the endless buffet of NSA PowerPoint documents leaked to reporters by Edward Snowden.
At the time, the crowd of journalists orbiting Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, the primary duo of reporters linked to Snowden, spent most of that year shaking their fists at the U.S. intelligence community, along with Eric Holder and Barack Obama for their part in pursuing Snowden for extradition back to the states. The story unfolded in much the same way as today's Russiagate reporting, with details being uncovered day by day, article by article. One of the big differences between then and now, however, was that the Snowden reporting was confined to whomever was deemed worthy by Greenwald and Poitras -- only a select few journalists were privy to the documents, but it's also safe to assume that Russian intelligence had a copy of everything, too, at least in encrypted form.
Despite the limited number of reporters with Snowden documents in hand, the story launched a million think-pieces, speculative blog posts and more than a few others with new information to lend context to the leaks.
Russiagate, on the other hand, is completely open-source, and the reporting surrounding the Russia/Trump story isn't nearly as limited. The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC News, Buzzfeed, McClatchy, Bloomberg, the BBC, ProPublica and many others are doing extensive and unique reporting on the criminal links between the Trump team and Russian intelligence, not to mention Russian oligarchs and Putin himself. The point being: most publications, while keeping their eyes on the competition, are operating independently of a central source like Snowden. The de-centralized nature of the reporting means it's less likely to be a product of a single ideology, not like the Snowden reporting, which was limited to reporters who were mostly advocating for Snowden himself -- Greenwald especially, who served as Snowden's de-facto media flack and chief spokesperson in the western press.
The point about the independent nature of the journalism occurring around the Russia story appears to have been lost on Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi. A former resident of Russia himself, Taibbi is known for his sharp and fearless commentary on politics and American culture. He's the closest reporter we have to the late Hunter S. Thompson, though Taibbi is no HST. Comparisons aside, Taibbi is famous chiefly because he doesn't pull any punches.
Except on the Russia story, that is.
For some reason.
From the beginning, Taibbi has straddled a bizarre fence on this one, taking a deeply cautious, wishy-washy position. It's unclear as to why, exactly, though there's plenty of room for speculation. It could be because he operates, at least partly, in the Greenwald orbit, with plenty of reader overlap. I have no idea what his motivation might be. It's quite unlike Taibbi to be so noncommittal on any story, much less a story in which Donald Trump, the subject of Taibbi's latest book, is implicated in a scandal that makes Watergate look like jaywalking. It's a scandal that, even if it's only halfway accurate, completely undermines whatever integrity remains in our electoral process, with Vladimir Putin very likely manipulating voters to do his bidding.
And yet Taibbi's latest, "Putin Derangement Syndrome Arrives," continues to foment doubt on the story. Worse, he attempts to cast as loony conspiracy theorists anyone with concerns about Putin's well-documented human rights atrocities, not to mention Putin's unprecedented hacking of our campaign politics (or am I just being deranged?). In fact, we're not just tagged as conspiracy theorists; Taibbi went so far as to compare us to self-proclaimed mad prophets like Glenn Beck during the former Fox News host's bug-eyed chalkboard phase back in 2009-10.
At some point months ago there was a possibility that Russiagate could've been debunked, or it could've faded away without any new or startling details. If this had been the case, I might be inclined to agree with nearsighted deniers like Taibbi. But the exact opposite has happened. Not only have new publications joined the investigation, further nailing down the veracity of the claims through journalistic peer review, but new and increasingly explosive details have emerged -- each story one-upping the previous story.
Hell, this week alone we learned that Russian spies recruited a high profile Trump adviser [ https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/a-former-trump-adviser-met-with-a-russian-spy?utm_term=.giPmQbqLD#.wcd3PYGaR ] as a point of contact here. Known in government intercepts as "Male-1," this Trump adviser is on record as having unwittingly teamed up with Victor Podobnyy and Igor Sporyshev, according to Buzzfeed's Ali Watkins, in order to provide assistance on sanctions and energy development. "Male-1," it turns out, is former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page, who's already admitted to meeting with Sergey Kislyak during the Republican National Convention where the Trump team successfully lobbied the party to soften the platform plank on -- you guessed it -- Russian sanctions.
More deranged speculation similar to Glenn Beck's kooky chalkboard? Perhaps -- if Page hadn't literally confirmed to Watkins that he is, in fact, the "Male-1" character noted in the government transcripts. Which he did. For the article. In other words, yes, Page confessed to being "Male-1" and was therefore in cahoots with Russian spies.
Meanwhile, we know for a fact -- again, literally -- that Paul Manafort and Rex Tillerson have extensive financial ties to Russian oligarchs and Putin himself. We know that Betsy DeVos is the sister of Blackwater chief Erik Prince, who tried to set up a backchannel on Syria with the Russians on behalf of the Trump team. We absolutely know that Mike Flynn has extensive links to Putin and Putin's puppet in Turkey, President Erdogan. We know that Trump's Commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, was formerly the vice chairman of, and a major shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus, a reputed money-laundering front for vast amounts of Russian cash, including money that hopped from the Russian "Fertilizer King" to the Bank of Cyprus and then to Donald Trump's bank account in exchange for an overpriced, nouveau-riche property in Palm Beach [ http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article135187364.html ]
that was never lived-in and has since been demolished -- before winning Trump a colossal $60 million profit in the biggest single home real estate deal in American history.
Indeed, even if we strip away the layers and layers of election season collusion; even if we strip away the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta by Guccifer 2.0; even if we ignore the relationship between Putin and Wikileaks; even if we ignore the fact that Trump adviser Roger Stone was aware of the Podesta emails a month before they dropped; even if we disregard the fact that Trump has yet to say a single critical thing about the Putin regime; even if we ignore Trump's syllabus of lies about the very existence of the story in the first place; even if we suggest that Carter Page was lying when he confirmed that he's "Male-1" -- it still leaves dozens of stories about financial linkage between Trump, Trump's closest advisers and billions in cash exchanging hands with Russian oligarchs. These financial stories alone, including the one about the so-called "Fertilizer King," are potentially impeachable given the fact that Trump has refused to divest and refused to release his tax returns. His continued association with the Trump Organization and the volumes of information we know about Trump's ties to Russian money could lead to prosecutable violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which bans any public official from taking foreign money.
Matt Taibbi seems to think this is crazy talk, though. He's not alone, of course.
Glenn Greenwald occupies a very similar space -- in his own insufferably persnickety way. But I get Greenwald's objection. If Greenwald joined the chorus on Russiagate, it'd put Greenwald's chief benefactor, Snowden, in jeopardy. Perhaps if the pro-Snowden crowd began to routinely grill Putin for his human rights violations and his bloody crusade against journalists, dissenters and political opponents, Putin might agree to finally extradite Snowden back to the U.S. to face the criminal justice system here. It'd be quite a trophy for Trump, that's for sure. (One of Putin's challengers in the upcoming presidential election, Alexei Navalny, was attacked with indelible green dye, turning his face, hands and teeth green for the foreseeable future. [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/world/europe/russia-alexei-navalny-green.html?_r=1 ] Seven days later, he was incarcerated for participating in anti-Putin protests. But I guess this is merely Putin derangement syndrome -- right, Matt?)
So, yes, I understand why Greenwald is taking a skeptical posture to protect his guy Snowden in Moscow. But Taibbi? Who the fuck knows. It's a completely disillusioning and upsetting turn to know that one of our best opinion journalists appears to be siding with a legion of Putin apologists who helped get Trump elected, and the same Putin apologists who can't stop downplaying the Russian despot's horrendous record.
Eric Boehlert from Media Matters, who, by the way, was named as one of several derangement sufferers in Taibbi's hit piece, noted on Twitter: "I'm sure glad Rolling Stone didn't publish articles in 1973 complaining that reporters were filing too many Watergate stories." [ https://twitter.com/EricBoehlert/status/849451875493711872 ]
Me, too, Eric.
http://www.banterm.com/issues/2017/4/6/banter-m-issue-75-matt-taibbi-drops-the-ball-on-russiagate-investigation
Rolling Stone's legendary journalist Matt Taibbi has straddled a bizarre fence on the Russiagate investigation, taking
a deeply cautious, wishy-washy position. It's unclear as to why, says Bob Cesca, but it is deeply troubling.
by Bob Cesca
I'm old enough to remember 2013 when the song of the Summer was Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" and the news story of the Summer was the endless buffet of NSA PowerPoint documents leaked to reporters by Edward Snowden.
At the time, the crowd of journalists orbiting Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, the primary duo of reporters linked to Snowden, spent most of that year shaking their fists at the U.S. intelligence community, along with Eric Holder and Barack Obama for their part in pursuing Snowden for extradition back to the states. The story unfolded in much the same way as today's Russiagate reporting, with details being uncovered day by day, article by article. One of the big differences between then and now, however, was that the Snowden reporting was confined to whomever was deemed worthy by Greenwald and Poitras -- only a select few journalists were privy to the documents, but it's also safe to assume that Russian intelligence had a copy of everything, too, at least in encrypted form.
Despite the limited number of reporters with Snowden documents in hand, the story launched a million think-pieces, speculative blog posts and more than a few others with new information to lend context to the leaks.
Russiagate, on the other hand, is completely open-source, and the reporting surrounding the Russia/Trump story isn't nearly as limited. The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC News, Buzzfeed, McClatchy, Bloomberg, the BBC, ProPublica and many others are doing extensive and unique reporting on the criminal links between the Trump team and Russian intelligence, not to mention Russian oligarchs and Putin himself. The point being: most publications, while keeping their eyes on the competition, are operating independently of a central source like Snowden. The de-centralized nature of the reporting means it's less likely to be a product of a single ideology, not like the Snowden reporting, which was limited to reporters who were mostly advocating for Snowden himself -- Greenwald especially, who served as Snowden's de-facto media flack and chief spokesperson in the western press.
The point about the independent nature of the journalism occurring around the Russia story appears to have been lost on Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi. A former resident of Russia himself, Taibbi is known for his sharp and fearless commentary on politics and American culture. He's the closest reporter we have to the late Hunter S. Thompson, though Taibbi is no HST. Comparisons aside, Taibbi is famous chiefly because he doesn't pull any punches.
Except on the Russia story, that is.
For some reason.
From the beginning, Taibbi has straddled a bizarre fence on this one, taking a deeply cautious, wishy-washy position. It's unclear as to why, exactly, though there's plenty of room for speculation. It could be because he operates, at least partly, in the Greenwald orbit, with plenty of reader overlap. I have no idea what his motivation might be. It's quite unlike Taibbi to be so noncommittal on any story, much less a story in which Donald Trump, the subject of Taibbi's latest book, is implicated in a scandal that makes Watergate look like jaywalking. It's a scandal that, even if it's only halfway accurate, completely undermines whatever integrity remains in our electoral process, with Vladimir Putin very likely manipulating voters to do his bidding.
And yet Taibbi's latest, "Putin Derangement Syndrome Arrives," continues to foment doubt on the story. Worse, he attempts to cast as loony conspiracy theorists anyone with concerns about Putin's well-documented human rights atrocities, not to mention Putin's unprecedented hacking of our campaign politics (or am I just being deranged?). In fact, we're not just tagged as conspiracy theorists; Taibbi went so far as to compare us to self-proclaimed mad prophets like Glenn Beck during the former Fox News host's bug-eyed chalkboard phase back in 2009-10.
At some point months ago there was a possibility that Russiagate could've been debunked, or it could've faded away without any new or startling details. If this had been the case, I might be inclined to agree with nearsighted deniers like Taibbi. But the exact opposite has happened. Not only have new publications joined the investigation, further nailing down the veracity of the claims through journalistic peer review, but new and increasingly explosive details have emerged -- each story one-upping the previous story.
Hell, this week alone we learned that Russian spies recruited a high profile Trump adviser [ https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/a-former-trump-adviser-met-with-a-russian-spy?utm_term=.giPmQbqLD#.wcd3PYGaR ] as a point of contact here. Known in government intercepts as "Male-1," this Trump adviser is on record as having unwittingly teamed up with Victor Podobnyy and Igor Sporyshev, according to Buzzfeed's Ali Watkins, in order to provide assistance on sanctions and energy development. "Male-1," it turns out, is former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page, who's already admitted to meeting with Sergey Kislyak during the Republican National Convention where the Trump team successfully lobbied the party to soften the platform plank on -- you guessed it -- Russian sanctions.
More deranged speculation similar to Glenn Beck's kooky chalkboard? Perhaps -- if Page hadn't literally confirmed to Watkins that he is, in fact, the "Male-1" character noted in the government transcripts. Which he did. For the article. In other words, yes, Page confessed to being "Male-1" and was therefore in cahoots with Russian spies.
Meanwhile, we know for a fact -- again, literally -- that Paul Manafort and Rex Tillerson have extensive financial ties to Russian oligarchs and Putin himself. We know that Betsy DeVos is the sister of Blackwater chief Erik Prince, who tried to set up a backchannel on Syria with the Russians on behalf of the Trump team. We absolutely know that Mike Flynn has extensive links to Putin and Putin's puppet in Turkey, President Erdogan. We know that Trump's Commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, was formerly the vice chairman of, and a major shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus, a reputed money-laundering front for vast amounts of Russian cash, including money that hopped from the Russian "Fertilizer King" to the Bank of Cyprus and then to Donald Trump's bank account in exchange for an overpriced, nouveau-riche property in Palm Beach [ http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article135187364.html ]
that was never lived-in and has since been demolished -- before winning Trump a colossal $60 million profit in the biggest single home real estate deal in American history.
Indeed, even if we strip away the layers and layers of election season collusion; even if we strip away the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta by Guccifer 2.0; even if we ignore the relationship between Putin and Wikileaks; even if we ignore the fact that Trump adviser Roger Stone was aware of the Podesta emails a month before they dropped; even if we disregard the fact that Trump has yet to say a single critical thing about the Putin regime; even if we ignore Trump's syllabus of lies about the very existence of the story in the first place; even if we suggest that Carter Page was lying when he confirmed that he's "Male-1" -- it still leaves dozens of stories about financial linkage between Trump, Trump's closest advisers and billions in cash exchanging hands with Russian oligarchs. These financial stories alone, including the one about the so-called "Fertilizer King," are potentially impeachable given the fact that Trump has refused to divest and refused to release his tax returns. His continued association with the Trump Organization and the volumes of information we know about Trump's ties to Russian money could lead to prosecutable violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which bans any public official from taking foreign money.
Matt Taibbi seems to think this is crazy talk, though. He's not alone, of course.
Glenn Greenwald occupies a very similar space -- in his own insufferably persnickety way. But I get Greenwald's objection. If Greenwald joined the chorus on Russiagate, it'd put Greenwald's chief benefactor, Snowden, in jeopardy. Perhaps if the pro-Snowden crowd began to routinely grill Putin for his human rights violations and his bloody crusade against journalists, dissenters and political opponents, Putin might agree to finally extradite Snowden back to the U.S. to face the criminal justice system here. It'd be quite a trophy for Trump, that's for sure. (One of Putin's challengers in the upcoming presidential election, Alexei Navalny, was attacked with indelible green dye, turning his face, hands and teeth green for the foreseeable future. [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/world/europe/russia-alexei-navalny-green.html?_r=1 ] Seven days later, he was incarcerated for participating in anti-Putin protests. But I guess this is merely Putin derangement syndrome -- right, Matt?)
So, yes, I understand why Greenwald is taking a skeptical posture to protect his guy Snowden in Moscow. But Taibbi? Who the fuck knows. It's a completely disillusioning and upsetting turn to know that one of our best opinion journalists appears to be siding with a legion of Putin apologists who helped get Trump elected, and the same Putin apologists who can't stop downplaying the Russian despot's horrendous record.
Eric Boehlert from Media Matters, who, by the way, was named as one of several derangement sufferers in Taibbi's hit piece, noted on Twitter: "I'm sure glad Rolling Stone didn't publish articles in 1973 complaining that reporters were filing too many Watergate stories." [ https://twitter.com/EricBoehlert/status/849451875493711872 ]
Me, too, Eric.
http://www.banterm.com/issues/2017/4/6/banter-m-issue-75-matt-taibbi-drops-the-ball-on-russiagate-investigation
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