FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

New York Times Wishfully Resurrects Fake Russiagate Narrative

Feb. 11, 2019 (EIRNS)—For this week’s regular Sunday Russiagate Meme, the New York Times focused on a heavily redacted transcript of arguments conducted before Washington, D.C. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, concerning Paul Manafort’s sentencing. True to form, Robert Mueller’s pitbull, Andrew Weissmann, is alleging that following his guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with Mueller, Manafort lied concerning five discrete topics to FBI agents and the grand jury. Although Manafort corrected his alleged misstatements, Weissmann wants Manafort to receive no reduction of sentence based on his cooperation with prosecutors. Of interest to the Times is the claim that Manafort “lied” about a peace proposal for Ukraine advanced by one of Manafort’s long-time business partners, Konstantin Kilimnik, which was originally broached to Manafort in 2016, and was continuing to be broached by Kilimnik to Manafort as late as 2018. When Judge Jackson asked Weissmann why this was even significant, Weissmann responded that this topic was at the “center” of what the Special Counsel is investigating. Hence, the new Times story about Mueller continuing to fan the flames of Russiagate.

The Times’ fevered story followed, of course, Sen. Richard Burr’s statement from the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, that the committee had seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians to date. Burr’s statement was a big downer for Resist partisans. Otherwise, media heavies, who claim “to know,” have pronounced that Mueller will reveal lots of smoke but no smoking gun in his final report about Trump and Russia. It also underlines what should be a troubling question for Judge Jackson. Why, exactly, is a peace plan for Ukraine; an end to sanctions against Russia; a hard-nosed pursuit for peace, something which qualifies for criminal investigation?

This news service has repeatedly emphasized that Russiagate began with the Ukraine coup in 2014 as a conspiracy between British intelligence and its lackeys in the U.S. services to create regime change in Russia. The British elements used, including Christopher Steele, were knee-deep in the operational aspects of the Maidan events. The British deployment included the 77th Military Brigade and the Integrity Initiative, as well as longstanding Ukrainian neo-Nazi elements with both a British and an American intelligence pedigree. This slow-moving attempted coup had the complete and full backing of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and would surely have moved the world much closer to outright war had Donald Trump not been elected. Since the election, the Russiagate operation has largely concentrated on putting Trump into a box where he cannot implement any of his rational campaign pledges to pursue peace with Russia, because of political and legal peril stemming from mass hysteria.

The Times has utterly failed to tell its readers that Manafort’s alleged convictions have nothing to do with Russia. In fact, Manafort was working with the State Department and various Democratic Party operatives, including the Podesta brothers and former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig, within Ukraine’s incredibly convoluted political sphere, to steer Ukraine into signing a political and trade association agreement with the EU, which Moscow opposed. In this, he worked with Serhiy Lovochkin, chief of staff to former President Viktor Yanukovych. After the coup that overthrew Yanukovych, Manafort continued his Ukraine consulting work, which included the campaign of the current President Petro Poroshenko, according to Rick Gates’ testimony at Manafort’s Virginia trial. This is the picture which emerged at Manafort’s Virginia trial. It is also the picture recounted in September by former Fusion GPS researcher Graham Stack in Kyiv Post, who states that the fabricated Steele dossier and other Fusion GPS products about Paul Manafort got it “all wrong.”