RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
June 30 to July 6
Featured Investigation:
Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts
Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims
Special counsel Robert Mueller's appearance before House panels this month could be one for the history books – Beltway drama rivaling the Watergate, Iran-contra and Army-McCarthy hearings.
But as Aaron Maté reports for RealClearInvestigations, the noisy partisanship over Mueller's findings on collusion and obstruction drown out a disturbing truth: None of his largely undisputed headline assertions that the Kremlin worked to secure Donald Trump's victory are supported by his evidence, or other publicly available sources for that matter. They are further undercut by investigative shortcomings and the conflicts of interest of key players involved.
Maté’s deep examination of Mueller’s work finds that:
- His report’s qualified language indicates that he and his investigators do not actually know for certain whether Russian intelligence officers stole Democratic Party emails, or how those emails were transferred to Wikileaks.
- The report's timeline of events appears to defy logic. According to its narrative, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange announced the publication of Democratic Party emails not only before he received the documents but before he even communicated with the source that provided them.
- There is strong reason to doubt Mueller’s suggestion that an alleged Russian cutout called Guccifer 2.0 supplied the stolen Democratic Party emails to Assange.
- Mueller’s decision not to interview Assange – a central figure who claims Russia was not behind the hack – suggests an unwillingness to explore avenues of evidence on fundamental questions.
- U.S. intelligence officials cannot make definitive conclusions about the hacking of Democratic National Committee computer servers because they did not analyze those servers themselves. Instead, they relied on the forensics of CrowdStrike, a private contractor for the DNC. It was not a neutral party, much as dossier compiler Christopher Steele, also a DNC contractor, was not a neutral party.
- Mueller’s report conspicuously does not allege that the Russian government carried out a nefarious social media campaign. Instead it blames "a private Russian entity" known as the Internet Research Agency. Mueller also falls far short of proving that it was a sophisticated operation, or even more than minimally related to the 2016 election.
- John Brennan, then Director of Central Intelligence, played a seminal and overlooked role in all facets of what became Mueller’s investigation: the suspicions that triggered the initial collusion probe; the allegations of Russian interference; and the intelligence assessment that purported to validate those allegations, which Brennan himself helped generate. Yet Brennan has since revealed himself to be, like CrowdStrike and Steele, hardly a neutral party -- in fact a partisan with a deep animus toward Trump.
None of this means that Mueller report's core finding of "sweeping and systematic" Russian government election interference is necessarily false. But his report does not present sufficient evidence to substantiate it. That leaves serious doubt about the genesis and perpetuation of Russiagate and the performance of those tasked with investigating it.
Insinuendo: Why the Mueller Report Doth Repeat So Much
RealClearInvestigations
In a piece related to the one above, Eric Felten of RealClearInvestigations looks at why the Mueller report, a document that ultimately clears the president, can also be read as an indictment of him. Felten finds the explanation in the report's rhetorical devices:
- Hectoring repetition that can make weak claims sound strong;
- The use of extraneous detail to add heft to flimsy assertions;
- The exclusion of other details that might weaken his case – including the fact that a man he casts as a Russian agent was a U.S. intelligence asset;
- A resort to insinuendo – a mix insinuation and innuendo – to prejudice the reader against those who have escaped the dock.
These literary devices, Felten explains with examples, clarify why those who were at first dumbfounded by the finding of no conspiracy with Russia, and no clear case for obstruction against the president, have since found reasons to be buoyed by the special counsel’s report – by its grudging tone, its sly assertions resembling proof, and its insistence that not being found guilty should not be confused with innocence.
“The first thing to note about the Mueller report,” Felten writes, “is just how contentious it is. It isn’t a set of findings so much as an assertion of what the findings might have been if only there had been more evidence.”
The Trump Investigations: Top Articles
Putin-Linked Mogul Breaks Silence, Roiling Mueller Probe, The Hill
Kamala Harris's 2020 Lawyer Hired Fusion GPS for Hillary, Examiner
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series
McKinsey Undermined U.S. Intel, Spies Fear
Politico
A few decades ago, many newspapers began hiring consultants to help them navigate change. We all know how that worked out. This article reports that America’s spying bureaucracy is trying the same approach – with similar results. For the past four years, the powerhouse firm McKinsey and Co., has helped restructure the country’s spying bureaucracy, aiming to improve response time and smooth communication. Instead, according to nearly a dozen current and former officials who either witnessed the restructuring firsthand or are familiar with the project, the multimillion-dollar overhaul has left many within the country’s intelligence agencies demoralized and less effective. These insiders said the efforts have hindered decision-making at key agencies – including the CIA, National Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Government Watchdog Finds Squalid Border-Center Conditions
New York Times
Overcrowded, squalid conditions are more widespread at migrant centers along the southern border than initially revealed, the Department of Homeland Security’s independent watchdog says. Its report describes standing-room-only cells, children without showers and hot meals, and detainees clamoring desperately for release. Some migrants clogged their toilets with blankets and socks in order to be released from the crowded cells. When some refused to return, Border Patrol brought in a special operations team “to use force if necessary.”
How Ankle Monitors Drive Defendants Into Debt
ProPublica/New York Times Magazine
Ankle bracelets are promoted as a humane and cost-saving alternative to jail. More than 125,000 people in the criminal-justice system were supervised with such GPS tracking monitors in 2015, compared with just 53,000 people in 2005, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. But private companies charge defendants hundreds of dollars a month to wear the surveillance devices. If people can’t pay, they may end up behind bars.
Truth About Those Tourists Dying in the Dominican Republic
Slate
The recent deaths of at least a dozen American tourists in the Dominican Republic have ignited fear and conspiracy theories – including speculation that the tourists could have been drinking bootleg liquor laced with battery acid. Or gassed with pesticides. Or contracted Legionnaires disease. This article argues that the deaths could be much ado about nothing. The dozen deaths reported this month, it notes, represent at most a tiny fraction – just a few percent – of all the ones that would be expected to occur in any year of U.S. travel to the Dominican Republic. So, they do not compose a “trend,” “spate,” “string,” “cluster,” or any “mystery” to speak of. They are, strictly speaking, from a news perspective, nothing. In other words, blockbuster stuff in our media environment.
Widespread Voting Fraud Scheme Targets LA Homeless
NBC
Nine people have been indicted in Los Angeles for allegedly participating in voting fraud schemes during the 2016 and 2018 elections — in which homeless people were allegedly offered cash or cigarettes in exchange for forged signatures on initiative petitions and voter registration forms.
Grubhub Fakes 30K Restaurant Websites
New York Post
The line "I'll have what he's having" needs a digital update: "You'll have what Grubhub's having." The food-ordering giant has created thousands of Web sites that masquerade as the sites of actual restaurants. This article reports that Grubhub – which also owns Seamless and Menupages – has scooped up more than 34,000 URLs since 2010 with names that are similar to restaurants’ own Web addresses -- changing dot-com to dot-net and what have you. In all cases reviewed by the Post, Grubhub’s copycat sites use the restaurants’ logos — even as they direct customers to its Grubhub and Seamless sites. While the imposter sites typically have the same menu as the restaurants do, the prices can be higher than ordering from these restaurants directly. Who's grubbing what here?
Just One More Dead Cyclist in the Big City
Deadspin
To relieve congestion, cities across the country are pursuing a number of strategies to increase bike use. It’s working -- well, up to a point. Upside: increases in bike use of up to 500 percent in certain American cities. Downside: more dead cyclists. Partly this is due to a failure to crack down on drivers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 2018 will wind up as the deadliest on record for cyclists, topping the previous high of 852 dead riders in 2016. If the driver is sober, this article reports, the consequence is typically a minor citation - and sympathy - following a deadly accident.
Classic Motels Now Last Resorts of the Most Vulnerable
MEL
In the age of Airbnb, some cheap motels are staying afloat by putting up the homeless. This article opens with a vivid description of one such room:
The scent of gas station air freshener is often used to try and mask the stench of cigarettes. But inside this fluorescent-lit, $55-a-night motel room along Route 66 in Barstow, California, the two odors combine to create a putrid tang that smells the way radioactive green smoke looks. Two of the walls are adorned with claw marks, likely human, etched so deeply you can see the drywall bleeding through. A strand of hair in the shape of a noose dangles near the center of the lower-than-average ceiling like an unfinished dream catcher. None of this seems to be an issue for the five or six large, black flies that are loitering near the bathroom fan which, when turned on, sounds like the screams of something alive being hacked to death by dull propellers.
Not great. But the reporter quotes a professor who says it beats the alternative: “If you’re in a homeless shelter sharing a room with 20 other people and you didn’t have a sense of privacy, you come to this motel."
We Were on 'House Hunters.' It's Really Fake Reality TV.
Slate
Brace yourself. You might be shocked, shocked to learn that some reality TV shows make stuff up. Big stuff. For instance, one would expect that all the people featured on “House Hunters” are actually looking for a house. Nope, says the woman who wrote this article about her two appearances on the program. “The first thing you need to know is that in neither episode of “House Hunters” were [husband] Jeff and I actually … house hunting. One time we’d already closed on the house we ‘chose’ in the episode; the other time we’d already lived in our house for a year.” Much of the shooting involved recreating events – “keeping up with where we were in the story (and what verb tense to use) was a constant battle.” Conflict is key, so she and Jeff staged fights -- including punches! “We actually really thought this was fun,” she writes. There's faux place like home.
