Is OAN the Leading Edge of Russian Misinformation?

[Celerity]

The Biden campaign says Trump’s favorite TV network is peddling the Kremlin’s lies.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/biden-ukraine-recordings-oan/612454/



In what appears to be a signal of intensifying political warfare ahead of the November election, One America News Network, the Trump-supporting cable channel that has been promoting anti-Biden conspiracies for several months, says it has obtained several hours of secret recordings of then–Vice President Biden’s conversations with Ukrainian officials. If such recordings exist, they’re likely linked to pro-Russian interests in Ukraine and a Russian intelligence operation, two former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine and a former ambassador to Russia told me. The OAN employee who claims to have the tapes would not say what was on them, other than suggesting that they will be revelatory. In the audio that has been released elsewhere so far, Biden is heard dangling the promise of financial aid to Ukraine if its government ousted a prosecutor who was seen as corrupt—which Biden has previously said publicly was his goal, as part of a push for widespread reforms.

Conspiracists have alleged that this was intended to help his son Hunter escape charges of corruption, but an audit by Ukraine’s former top prosecutor released last week found no evidence of illegal activity by Hunter in his capacity as an energy-company board member. What is most remarkable here is that none of this is particularly surprising. Russian interference in the 2016 election has been closely studied over the past four years, and America’s vulnerabilities have only worsened in that time. As my colleague Franklin Foer wrote recently, “Russia’s interference in 2016 might be remembered as the experimental prelude that foreshadowed the attack of 2020.” That OAN is now a player in such interference suggests an escalation that the Biden campaign has been bracing for. Indeed, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul—who has recalled being secretly recorded himself, among other forms of harassment, when he was posted in Moscow—told me, "There’s never been a moment like this in American history.”

That includes 2016. McFaul said what he’s seeing now reminds him of tactics the Kremlin has used against its domestic political opponents. “It’s not to convince you of a different point of view. It’s to convince you that there is no truth,” he said. “When it feels like nobody’s telling the truth and there is no truth, the reaction to that is despondency and demobilization.” It’s hard not to feel some déjà vu here. In 2016, Russian intelligence agents hacked the emails of Democratic National Committee staffers and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and delivered them to WikiLeaks, as a way to get them into the American media. Some outlets learned a lesson from that episode, and have treated new Biden recordings out of Ukraine with care. Others have not. Andriy Derkach, who released the Biden tapes that have already come out, is a former member of a pro-Russian political party who graduated from a KGB-run academy in Moscow. OAN lends his efforts a veneer, however thin, of journalistic legitimacy.

The person now claiming to have more tapes is OAN’s Chanel Rion, the on-air personality who went with Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, on his December trip to Ukraine in part to find information on Biden to help Trump. Rion, who has become famous for her conspiracy-inflected questions at White House briefings, emailed the Biden campaign May 29 claiming that she was working on an “in-depth report” about recordings that appear to be of Biden speaking with Petro Poroshenko, then the president of Ukraine. “We have over five hours of these recordings (beyond what has been posted online by Nabu Leaks),” she wrote, referencing a Ukrainian website suspected of Russian links. Derkach, a politician known as the “Ukrainian Putin,” has been a proponent of the conspiracy theory that Ukraine was really behind the interference in the 2016 election instead of Russia. And he has previously been eager to provide damaging material about Biden for Trump’s sake. Derkach released a batch of recordings three weeks ago, claiming that they had been made by Poroshenko and given to him by “investigative journalists.” (Poroshenko has said the audio is “fabricated.”) Most mainstream-media outlets have decided that the recordings that have emerged so far offer “little new insight into Biden’s actions in Ukraine,” as The Washington Post’s Carol Morello wrote after the recordings were first released.

snip



EXCLUSIVE: A changed name, an alleged fraudster dad and a VERY questionable resume: So how did Donald Trump's favorite White House correspondent pass security checks to become the social-distancing-defying briefing-crasher?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8181867/Fake-conman-dad-questionable-resume-Truth-Chanel-Rion-Trumps-favorite-reporter.html

Chanel Rion is the pro-Trump journalist for conservative network OAN, which was removed from White House briefings for her refusal to socially distance
She was promptly re-invited by then press secretary Stephanie Grisham and Trump again invited her to ask a question - and has been back twice since
DailyMail.com reveals new questions over how the 29-year-old is allowed into the White House
She was born Chanel Dyan-Ryan and only changed her last name legally last year when she applied for a 'hard pass' for the White House
For years she had no obvious employment but posed in designer dresses and at expensive vacation venues
She describes herself as a Harvard graduate but actually enrolled in Harvard's Extension School where entry requirements are much lower
She claimed to be part of Trump's 2016 campaign but a senior Republican told DailyMail.com they had no memory of her
Rion appears to have visited New Hampshire with her brother and sister and was photographed in front of a Chris Christie sign
Her fiance, a combat veteran who servied in Iraq, ran for Senate in a Republican primary in Missouri as Courtland Sykes but his real first name is Bob

She is Donald Trump's favorite White House reporter – invited back by his press secretary when other journalists had her network removed for refusing to socially distance at his coronavirus briefings. But a DailyMail.com investigation has uncovered serious questions over One America News (OAN) White House Correspondent Chanel Rion's background, finances, and how she obtained security clearance to be in the White House.

In fact, DailyMail.com can disclose that Rion changed her last name before applying for White House security clearance last year and that until becoming a correspondent for the conservative network last May, she had no obvious source of income, despite a social media profile filled with designer dresses and vacations in upscale hotels.

The 29-year-old has now flouted the White House Correspondents' Association repeatedly after it had OAN removed from the rotation of reporters allowed in the briefing room for Rion's refusal to follow social distancing guidelines.

Her latest appearance was on Wednesday, when once again she turned up at the back of the briefing room, defying the WHCA guidelines, and once again was invited by Trump to ask a question. It was her third day this week, starting with Monday night, when she boasted to DailyMail.com about a 'meeting' with his then-press secretary Stephanie Grisham, who was moved to another job the next day.

snip

[mahina]

1. Yep.

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. characteristically deplorable. of course!