New evidence suggests the New York Times was tricked into retracting a major Mueller probe bombshell
AlterNet
written by Cody Fenwick February 11, 2019
Last week, the court published an in-depth and partially redacted transcript of a hearing between Special Counsel Robert Mueller and lawyers for Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chair.
This trove of information provided a fresh glimpse inside the workings of Mueller’s team, revealing new details about the case that look increasingly bad for the president. And as reporter Marcy Wheeler noted, it also appears to significantly contradict previous reporting from the New York Times about a major development in the Russia investigation.
That development came when Manafort’s lawyers accidentally filed an improperly redacted document addressing allegations that their client lied to the special counsel about material facts in the investigation. Most strikingly, investigators believe Manafort lied about a meeting with Russian-born political consultant Konstantin Kilimnik, who the government believes has ties to Russian intelligence, where the campaign chair handed over polling data on the 2016 campaign.
When the New York Times first reported on this fact, it contained a stunning revelation: Manafort had given the polling data to Kilimnik to pass it along to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch close to the Kremlin. This was significant for many reasons. First, of course, it ties the campaign directly to Moscow, which had been working on efforts to help secure Trump’s victory. Second, previous reports of emails from Manafort during the campaign showed that he had offered private briefings to Deripaska to use his position close to Trump to fulfill his debts to the oligarch. And third, it makes the Trump administration’s recent decision to lift sanctions on Deripaska specifically in a particularly generous fashion look even more suspicious.
More: https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/new-evidence-suggests-the-new-york-times-was-tricked-into-retracting-a-major-russia-probe-bombshell/
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