The liberal mainstream media — caught time and again producing fake news — is still flogging the story of Donald Trump, Jr.’s meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya (shown) last summer. And while playing a rousing game of pin-the-rumor-on-the-Trump, they continue to ignore facts inconvenient to their made-up narrative. Case in point: That Russian lawyer spent years working closely with Democrats.
That the liberal mainstream media are having a heyday reporting on the meeting is obvious to anyone watching, listening to, or reading the news. The reporting runs the gamut from the speculative to the ridiculous. Each new tidbit — no matter how irrelevant or unconfirmed — is reason for a new headline.
The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that a California businessman born in a former Soviet republic was part of that meeting. The Times — in typical form — reported it thus:
Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, 52, is the eighth person known to have taken part in the unusual Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, The Times has learned. His identity was not previously disclosed.
Kaveladze, who lives in Huntington Beach, is an employee of a large Russian real estate development firm. He was the focus of a scathing congressional inquiry in 2000 into alleged Russian money laundering through banks in California and New York but was not charged.
CNN — beleaguered by revelations of deliberately producing fake news to promote the narrative of collusion between President Trump and Russia — reported Wednesday that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee are interested in having Trump, Jr. testify under oath before the committee. CNN also made a point to claim that the spurious “dossier” — originally reported by CNN and later discredited — claiming that President Trump is both the victim of Kremlin blackmail and the beneficiary of Kremlin intelligence on Hillary Clinton will make an appearance in those hearings. Of course, the “additional Senate source” of that claim is — par for the CNN course — unnamed.
In a separate report Sunday, asserting that “the Trump Jr. meeting fits into the larger Putin game plan,” CNN stated, “Many in the media have focused too narrowly on how Donald Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with a Russian lobbyist and lawyer in Trump Tower looks bad.” The opinion piece goes on to say, “But what the media, the public and investigators should really focus on now is what happened after the meeting. The key is to think more broadly, including asking two questions,” and then makes assumptions that “collusion between the Trump circle and Putin’s team could well have continued far beyond June 9.”
This writer will give CNN credit for being correct that many media organizations “have focused too narrowly” on the meeting. But that credit must be followed with an indictment. CNN is guilty of what other liberal mainstream media have done. The issue is not about focusing narrowly or widely; it is a matter of focusing clearly. And in that, CNN — and its comrades-in-arms in other liberal mainstream media fail miserably.
A balanced and clear focus would certainly include the salient fact that the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya — who played at bait-and-switch to arrange the meeting with Trump, Jr. so she could discuss her pet issue of how laws impact adoptions of Russian children by American citizens — spent years working with (and meeting with) Democrats. It appears the liberal mainstream media ignore that because it would undermine the narrative that this meeting “proves” collusion between Trump and Putin.
Mere logic and journalistic integrity — which may be asking too much of the people who spend their time promoting a narrative they have been shown on hidden camera admitting is “bulls**t” — would lead to the conclusion that if meeting with Veselnitskaya is proof of collusion, then some high-ranking Democrats are guilty as sin of the very thing Trump is accused of.
As Breitbart has reported:
Although she has been painted by Democrats as a Russian government official, numerous reports and photos show she has a long record of working with U.S. political figures, including many Democrats.
Those Democrats include Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, which claims credit for producing the “dossier” mentioned above. According to the report by Breitbart:
She also worked with Christopher Cooper, the founder and CEO of Potomac Square Group, which has had Democratic clients including California Government Jerry Brown, Democratic presidential nominee Howard Dean, and Joe Trippi, according to the Daily Caller.
And it was Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch that granted her an extension in late 2015 to stay in the United States after her visa was due to expire, under “extraordinary circumstances” related to defending a case in New York, according to The Hill. She was granted an extension through January, but it’s not yet clear how she was able to be in the United States in June 2016, when she met with Trump Jr., and again January 2017.
And while she worked with and for some Democrats, at least one high-profile Democrat (and self-avowed socialist) worked for her. That Democrat was Representative Ron Dellums (D-Calif.) who retired in 1996 after serving 13 terms in Congress working to spread his socialist goals. Dellums was hired by Veselnitskaya as a lobbyist working to further Russian interests in American law and politics. The DailyCaller reported:
According to a complaint filed to the Department of Justice Foreign Agents Registration Act division last July, Dellums failed to register as a foreign agent representing a Russian-driven effort led by Veselnitskaya to repeal the Magnitsky Act.
The Magnitsky Act is a bipartisan legislation passed by Congress and signed into law in the last weeks of 2012. The law was passed in an effort to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky — who had investigated fraud involving Russian tax officials — in a Moscow prison in 2009.
So, to boil this down to its broth, Veselnitskaya — who had on her payroll lobbyists including a retired socialist Democrat U.S. congressman — was working in the United States on an expired visa that was extended by Democrat Attorney General Loretta Lynch (who is up to her eyeballs in conflicts of interest protecting Hillary Clinton who has her own ties to Russia). That congressman failed to register as a foreign agent representing a Russian-driven effort. Veselnitskaya also has ties to the group that says it produced the “dossier” claiming that Trump is a puppet of Putin. And the “big story” — the “smoking gun” — the liberal mainstream media is reporting is that Trump, Jr. met with her?
Given her ties to both anti-American and anti-Trump causes, it bears asking whether the meeting between her and Trump, Jr. was a well-calculated set-up. If not, the enemies of Trump and America were at least well-placed to seize the moment and turn this to their benefit. And those enemies in media are deliberately emphasizing minor issues while completely ignoring the real story.
Photo of Natalia Veselnitskaya: AP Images