The Latest Russia Collusion ‘Bombshells’ Are Big, Fat Duds

A recent blitz of “bombshell” headlines initially appear to show there might actually have been some collusion between the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and Russia. First, there was The Guardian claiming that Paul “Manaford” (oops, the source meant Manafort) met with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks in spring 2016, with the obvious implication that it was done to plan or coordinate WikiLeak’s Hillary Clinton email dump.

Mollie Hemingway ably pointed out holes in the story by mentioning, among other issues, that Manafort would have entered the Ecuadorian embassy to meet Assange in the heart of London, which is blanketed by the most robust network of video cameras in the world. There would be video and it would have leaked. It hasn’t.

Margot Cleveland followed up with a nice article showing that The Guardian’s anonymous sourcing doesn’t pass muster against on-the-record denials from both Assange and Manafort, especially in light of the pattern of the media’s several false starts with other competing collusion theories.

We can now add NBC News, which just published a very misleading piece that incorrectly appears to be another “smoking gun” gotcha of Russia collusion. The first sentence reads, “Two months before WikiLeaks released emails stolen from the Clinton campaign, right-wing conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi sent an email to former Trump campaign advisor Roger Stone anticipating the document dump.” . . .

On July 21, 2016, Heavy reported that Assange would release the new emails as part of “a series,” which strongly suggests Assange planned to time the releases for maximum effect in the presidential election. On July 27, 2016, The New York Times noted that Assange was timing his email releases for maximum political damage, releasing one batch for the Democratic National Convention. Following the July, 2016 release of documents, Assange publicly announced that his website might have “a lot more material” relevant to the U.S. electoral campaign. (Read more from “The Latest Russia Collusion ‘Bombshells’ Are Big, Fat Duds” HERE)

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