Robert Mueller pursues the facts!

SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 2017

Cable star tends to invent them: We returned from the not-so-frigid waters of southern Maine to a major discovery:

Robert Mueller doesn't watch the Rachel Maddow Show!

We base that inference on the latest blockbuster bombshell explosive report in the New York Times. In hard copy, the report in question tops the famous newspaper's front page this morning.

Here's the way it starts:

ROSENBERG, APUZZO AND SCHMIDT (8/5/17): Investigators working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, recently asked the White House for documents related to the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, and have questioned witnesses about whether he was secretly paid by the Turkish government during the final months of the presidential campaign, according to people close to the investigation.

[...]

In interviews with potential witnesses in recent weeks, prosecutors and F.B.I. agents have spent hours poring over the details of Mr. Flynn’s business dealings with a Turkish-American businessman who worked last year with Mr. Flynn and his consulting business, the Flynn Intel Group.

The company was paid $530,000 to run a campaign to discredit an opponent of the Turkish government who has been accused of orchestrating last year’s failed coup in the country.

Investigators want to know if the Turkish government was behind those payments—and if the Flynn Intel Group made kickbacks to the businessman, Ekim Alptekin, for helping conceal the source of the money.

Silly man! Mueller wants to know if Flynn was paid by the Turkish government. Starting last November, Rachel Maddow has repeatedly told us he was!

She has told us this again and again. Repeatedly, we noted that the cable star was inventing this alleged fact. As we've sometimes told you:

If it weren't for the embellished, massaged and invented facts, there would sometimes be no facts on this cable star's program at all!

Was Michael Flynn "on the payroll of the Turkish government?" Again and again and again and again, Maddow has made this claim as if it were an established fact.

At one point, we actually thought that she had stopped making this claim. Then, she started up again. Here she was, on July 3, engaging in our her favorite activities—playing videotape of herself—while making this claim about Flynn:

MADDOW (7/3/17): [I]nterestingly, on Election Day, on our Election Day here in the United States in November, we learned in a strange way that somebody who was about to become very, very powerful in this country was apparently totally on board with that demand to hand over that Turkish guy to the Turkish government.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MADDOW: [...]

The hand-him-over guy, the guy who says we should just hand this guy over, he probably deserves it, that's General Mike Flynn, who is Donald Trump's top military and intelligence adviser. He was also today named to the executive committee of Donald Trump's new transition team.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: That was November 11. That was the Friday after our U.S. presidential election this past November. That was the day that we first learned that Michael Flynn's lobbying firm was on the payroll of the Turkish government. Three days after the election and red flags were already going up.

To watch the full segment, click here.

According to Maddow, we learned that Flynn "was on the payroll of the Turkish government" way back on November 11. And now, this very day, silly man!

Nine months later, Robert Mueller is still trying to learn if this actually happened! He should watch more "cable news!"

Let's drop the snark and talk some basic tom turkey. Our lesson goes something like this:

A war is on against Donald J. Trump, who is deeply disordered. Because the fellow is deeply disordered, it's natural to think that the people chasing him wear journalistic white hats.

We're all inclined to think such thoughts. Like a certain cable star's news reports, such thought are often inaccurate.

The "facts" you learn from the Maddow Show are often massaged, embellished, invented. Her repeated claim about Flynn and the Turks constitutes one such "fact."

It has been exciting and fun to hear her make this pleasing claim. There was only one problem with her claim:

It was never known to be accurate! It was never known to be true. It may very well be false.

Let's be clear! It may turn out that Michael Flynn actually was being paid by the Turkish government in some manner or fashion. (Presumably, he wasn't "on their payroll" in any literal sense.)

That said, it isn't known that this actually happened. Presumably, that's why Mueller is conducting the search for facts the New York Times describes.

Did Maddow know that she was over her skis when she kept making this pleasing claim? Did any of her staffers understand that this claim isn't known to be true, and may well be false?

Did her staffers know? Did her staffers care? Even Mueller won't get you the answer to that!

Concerning Maddow and her various claims, we advise you to proceed with a great deal of caution. Long ago, we told you that this $10 million per year* corporate star is perhaps a bit "less than obsessively honest."

That red warning flag still whips, in a brisk breeze, on a driftwood-littered beach! For ourselves, we're waiting for Mueller to tell us it's safe to go back in the water—that it's safe to believe the various unfounded claims we're fed on this "cable news" show.

*Official, highly plausible, blogworthy estimate, based on past reports.

Despite its desire for transparency from everyone else, corporate cable doesn't release such information. Presumably, the industry doesn't want you thinking about such aspects of its own rather shaky, unwise operations.