McAuliffe watch: Murky report of a fuzzy probe!

MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

It happens every spring:
We've promised that we'd finish critiquing Rachel Maddow's ludicrous discussions of Governor Terry McAuliffe, which she pursued on Monday, May 23 and Wednesday, May 25.

It's depressing to review Maddow's clown-car conduct. For today, let's simply review the New York Times' May 25 news report about the apparent probe, or semi-probe, or possible probe, of McAuliffe's past campaign fundraising.

On Monday, May 23, an anonymous source said that McAuliffe was, or might be, under investigation by the FBI. As she typically does, Maddow rushed into action with a segment which seemed to assume his guilt.

(For Maddow, an accusation equals guilt. The anonymous hint of a possible probe equals an accusation.)

Maddow's own presentation that night was bad enough; see our prior report. When she interviewed the Washington Post's Matt Zapotosky that same night, his performance was even worse.

Two days later, the New York Times presented its news report about the apparent, alleged or possible FBI probe. Like everyone else, the Times was working on claims by a pair of anonymous sources.

It was apparent from the Times report that the claims were rather murky. According to Confessore and Saul, the alleged probe involves conduct by the Dandong Port Group, "one of China's leading agricultural importers:"
CONFESSORE AND SAUL (5/25/16): [T]he company's widening influence is coming under scrutiny by federal prosecutors, who are examining the relationship between Dandong's wealthy and connected chairman, Wang Wenliang, and Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, a Democrat who was elected in 2013.

A federal law enforcement official said the inquiry included $120,000 in contributions that a New Jersey construction firm controlled by Mr. Wang made to Mr. McAuliffe's 2013 campaign and inaugural committee. That official and a second law enforcement official, both of whom asked for anonymity to discuss the matter, said it was a preliminary inquiry of Mr. McAuliffe's campaign donations, and they provided no detail about the nature and scope of any potential violations being scrutinized.

Though Mr. Wang is a Chinese citizen, he is also a legal permanent resident of the United States, according to a spokeswoman for him, which entitles him to make campaign contributions.
That is murky stuff. Did we mention the fact that it comes from two anonymous sources?

Meanwhile, certain aspects of this report ought to ring every warning bell inside the heads of our top cable news clowns. As they continued, Confessore and Saul rang the bells in question:
CONFESSORE AND SAUL (continuing directly): The inquiry was first reported on Monday by CNN, which said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department's public integrity unit were involved in the review. The inquiry also encompasses Mr. McAuliffe's role as a board member of the Clinton Foundation, to which another company linked to Mr. Wang pledged a $2 million contribution in 2013. The foundation has raised millions of dollars from companies and wealthy individuals overseas as well as from foreign governments.

Representatives for Mr. McAuliffe and Mr. Wang said they had not been contacted by the Justice Department or the F.B.I. A spokesman for the Clinton Foundation also said it had not been contacted by law enforcement officials.

Speaking to reporters in Virginia on Tuesday, Mr. McAuliffe said he was shocked by reports of an inquiry. He had played no role in soliciting Mr. Wang's pledge to the Clinton Foundation and said the contributions to his campaign from by Mr. Wang's company were legitimate.

''I'm very confident this gentleman had been fully vetted,'' Mr. McAuliffe said of Mr. Wang.

But the federal inquiry throws a cloud over Mr. McAuliffe at a critical time: He is a top fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton, a close confidant of her and her husband, and the governor of a swing state critical to her chances of becoming president. On Sunday, Mr. McAuliffe headlined a $5,000-a-head Virginia fund-raising event for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign.
How many warning signs have to exist before the nation's cable news clowns stop their incessant clowning?

For all we know, McAuliffe may be robbing banks on a regular basis—perhaps with Maddow's help! But good God! Probes like these always start inside the bowels of the federal government when someone named Clinton or Gore runs for office.

All the familiar hooks are there! We start with the classic shadowy Chinese businessman, then jump to the evil-doing Clinton Foundation. If you've been alive on the planet in recent decades, you've been to this movie before!

McAuliffe makes the perfect target for a nest of rumors. As noted by Confessore and Saul, he's the governor of an important swing state, and he's a top fund-raiser for Candidate Clinton! Why, the night before the possible news was leaked, he had "headlined a $5,000-a-head Virginia fund-raising event for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign!"

Has McAuliffe been robbing banks, perhaps with Maddow's help? Everything is possible! But for anyone who has been alive in the past twenty-five years, a million warning signs are found in that Times report.

On the basis of simple fairness, a journalist should want to be very careful in her reactions to such a murky report. Given the circumstances of the past twenty-five years, a liberal journalist would likely be especially suspicious of such a familiar old, heavily fraught, alleged apparent anonymous report.

Maddow, our leading cable clown, simply isn't that person! Tomorrow, we'll show you what happened on May 23 when she interviewed Zapotosky.

Two days later, the Confessore/Saul report appeared, and Maddow did a second report on this topic. This new report was even more pathetic than the one she'd already done.

The analysts howled, writhed and groaned as they watched the cable clown perform on those two evenings. In fairness, her orange shoes were very large. But what have we liberals ever done to deserve this corporate-funded, self-adoring brand of top-flight entertainment?

Tomorrow: Verdict first! What a gong-show looks like

27 comments:

  1. The troll should have some hilarious ripostes to this one.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. With Junia Noel in Run-On, Truc Phong in Vietnamese/Slovernian, 2 from Pavel in Turk/Azerbaijan/ and 5 from Cicero in Gibberish, perhaps this Troll you jumped in quickly to invoke thinks you are already in all the company you deserve.

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  2. Conservatives believe that anyone with a foreign sounding name is foreign, regardless of citizenship. So this guy Wang shouldn't have been able to donate to anyone's campaign. It reinforces their belief that Democrats only support immigration because immigrants vote for them.

    You could see this leaked investigation as a sign of the lurking nativism encouraged by Trump's rhetoric against Curiel. We naturally focus on the association with Hillary, but this investigation is also targeting Wang. Are legal immigrants now going to be persecuted? Do immigrant businessmen now have fewer rights than Trump, for example, who claims to be self-funding his campaign, or the many other millionaires and billionaires trying to sculpt the society with their contributions?

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  3. If only Bernie went after HRC's emails and Foundation a year ago.

    "Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders
    criticized the Clinton Foundation for accepting donations from foreign governments in an interview aired Sunday, calling it a conflict of interest."

    "Do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of State and a foundation run by her husband collects many, many dollars from foreign governments — governments which are dictatorships?

    "Yeah, I do have a problem with that. Yeah, I do," Sanders said on CNN's "State of the Union."

    http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/282261-sanders-clinton-foundation-engaged-in-conflicts-of

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    1. Democrats love a negative campaign -- NOT. Lovable Bernie would have greatly enhanced his image as a straight-talker and sincere agent of change had he adopted nonsensical Republican talking points. It would have undermined his "high road." Most Democrats understand the counter-arguments to those attacks and wouldn't have been impressed, just as they are dismayed by this turn now.

      Bernie would have done better if he had figured out earlier how to relate to women and minorities and how to avoid being a condescending, pompous interrupter. And he should have released his taxes.

      Who better to fund global improvement projects than dictators who have given so little back to their countries? This is like Trump saying he would make the Mexicans pay for the wall, except the contributions are voluntary and they go toward things that actually help people.

      If Bernie had even been more interested in helping people than in ideological purity, he might have won the nomination. Hillary's immunity to Republican attacks on her, and now on the Foundation, comes from the fact that she has devoted her life to helping others. Her good works are obvious to all and belie the attempts to call her a crook or liar. She is first and always a do-gooder, in the best sense of that word. Bernie never was.

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    2. Bernie should release his takes.
      Trump should release his taxes.
      HRC should release her Wall Street speech transcripts.

      As far as HRC's "good works" being obvious, HRC has never done anything that wasn't for self-aggrandizing purposes.

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    3. Unless HRC wasn't a Democrat in 2008, examples of her primary campaign tactics against opponent Obama were not only negative but extremely personal.

      "Clinton’s campaign attacks on Obama may have been an exaggerated version of reality, but in retrospect they were illuminating, in the way a hand grenade provides a flash of light before going boom.

      Former Clinton staffers didn’t want to be within a mile of this story. (“I’m hanging up now,” said one top ’08 campaign aide cheerfully before the line went dead.) But several more intrepid ex-aides pointed to one quote in particular: a Clinton broadside delivered in Toledo, Ohio, on Feb. 24, 2008, that represented her most stinging attack on Obama’s core hope-and-change message.

      “I could stand up here and say: let’s just get everybody together, let’s get unified,” Clinton said, voice dripping with contempt long since discarded.

      “The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know that we should do the right thing, and the world would be perfect,” Clinton added. “Maybe I’ve just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this will be. You are not going to wave a magic wand…”

      http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/barack-obama-hillary-clinton-2008-campaign-095035

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    4. More examples of Democratic Party positive campaigning from 2008.

      "About the same time, a picture of Obama in traditional Somali garb (from an official trip) then appeared on the Drudge Report, and Matt Drudge claimed he got it from the Clinton campaign. After stonewalling on the origin question, the campaign later claimed it had nothing to do with it. A Clinton flack then went on MSNBC and argued that Obama should not be ashamed to appear in "his native clothing, in the clothing of his country."

      http://americablog.com/2008/02/clinton-surrogate-says-obama-is-really-from-somalia.html

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    5. cicero you make no sense. First, you have no clue as to what motivates HRC and no credibility to accuse her of doing good works merely for self promotion. And you are one to talk, as someone whose prose is weak and unremarkable, the only point to your comments is to self aggrandize via misleading or false information. Second, your example of her campaign tactics does not show her in a negative light. Indeed, her acute assessment of Obama turned out to be prescient and hardly a stinging negative attack. Obama has been an impressive president, but he had few skills when it came to the hard work of negotiating with the opposing side.

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    6. What clues do you have about HRC's motivation to conclude she is altruistic? How much time will you require to locate a magnifying glass to perform your search?

      If HRC was merely exposing Obama's flaws as a possible POTUS, how is it that Bernie is attacked by Dems for exposing HRC's flaws as a possible POTUS?

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    7. Se qepik onun dalqenimetcilik mightly yoldas cicero.

      Delete
    8. I sahid elde ede bilersiniz?

      Delete
    9. "...I have no illusions about how hard this will be. You are not going to wave a magic wand…”"

      And how right she was. But I bet even she did not anticipate the vile treasonous reaction from the GOP to Obama's victory.

      No matter how hard Obama tried to compromise with the diseased republican party, he got a swift kick in the ass. Boehner finally lost his job over the sick intransigence of the goopers.

      And now the final indignity, mighty Mitch will not even allow this first black president to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, leaving the vacancy for over a year. Just cause.

      yeah, President Obama had no idea what he was in for. Hillary has been dealing with these traitorous fuckers for 30 years now.

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    10. @mm

      But Obama was portrayed as being able to walk on water.* Not to mention he got his Obamacare legislation into law while Hillarycare was stillborn.

      The POTUS can nominate a SCOTUS, but no where in the Constitution does it say Congress has to vote on the nominee or retain nine members on the SCOTUS. Federal Judiciary Act called for a chief justice and five associate justices

      *
      http://www.amazon.com/Yorker-cover-Barry-Blitt-Barack/dp/B00EVUEZ38

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    11. cicero, her actions indicate her earnest interest in helping others. Bernie is not attacked by Dems for exposing HRC's flaws, so your question is moot.

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    12. @8:30

      Surely you jest.

      "This is the worst-case scenario and the one people feared the most,” said one Clinton ally and former Clinton aide."

      “Unfortunately, he’s choosing the path of burning down the house,” the ally said. “He continues with character attacks against Hillary. He continues with calling the Democratic Party corrupt, and he not only risks damaging Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party but he's currently doing it."


      http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/280622-clinton-fury-grows-with-sanders

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    13. "The POTUS can nominate a SCOTUS, but no where in the Constitution does it say Congress has to vote on the nominee or retain nine members on the SCOTUS. Federal Judiciary Act called for a chief justice and five associate justices"

      cicero,

      that is a childish argument/excuse. The Senate has a duty to advise and consent the President's nomination. Or they can stick their tongues out and say, "nananana, you can't make me", once again demonstrating clearly for all to see that they cannot be trusted with power and are incapable of governing. This is why nothing can get done in Washington - now they are setting a precedent.

      and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law:

      The Constitution describes and arranges one branch of the established government of these United States of America. As the justices on the Supreme Court retire or pass away, and the Senate just makes up its mind to not fill the vacancies and thereby eliminate one entire branch of our government, by that action they are violating their oath to uphold the Constitution.

      Of course the Constitution didn't contemplate a black man being president with the power to make a supreme court appointment either, so there's that.

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    14. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

      This is found in the Declaration of Independence, not The U.S. Constitution. There is a black man currently on the SCOTUS with the power to find the current POTUS' executive actions unconstitutional.

      Again, there is Constitutional law that requires a Chief Justice and five associate justices so your sci-fi notion a branch of government will be eliminated is bollocks.

      Delete
  4. My life became devastated when my husband sent me packing, after 8 years that we have been together. I was lost and helpless after trying so many ways to make my husband take me back. One day at work, i was absent minded not knowing that my boss was calling me, so he sat and asked me what its was all about i told him and he smiled and said that it was not a problem. I never understand what he meant by it wasn't a problem getting my husband back, he said he used a spell to get his wife back when she left him for another man and now they are together till date and at first i was shocked hearing such thing from my boss. He gave me an email address of the great spell caster who helped him get his wife back, i never believed this would work but i had no choice that to get in contact with the spell caster which i did, and he requested for my information and that of my husband to enable him cast the spell and i sent him the details, but after two days, my mom called me that my husband came pleading that he wants me back, i never believed it because it was just like a dream and i had to rush down to my mothers place and to my greatest surprise, my husband was kneeling before me pleading for forgiveness that he wants me and the kid back home, then i gave Happy a call regarding sudden change of my husband and he made it clear to me that my husband will love me till the end of the world, that he will never leave my sight. Now me and my husband is back together again and has started doing pleasant things he hasn't done before, he makes me happy and do what he is suppose to do as a man without nagging. Please if you need help of any kind, kindly contact Happy for help and you can reach him via email: happylovespell2@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. My life became devastated when my husband sent me packing, after 8 years that we have been together. I was lost and helpless after trying so many ways to make my husband take me back. One day at work, i was absent minded not knowing that my boss was calling me, so he sat and asked me what its was all about i told him and he smiled and said that it was not a problem. I never understand what he meant by it wasn't a problem getting my husband back, he said he used a spell to get his wife back when she left him for another man and now they are together till date and at first i was shocked hearing such thing from my boss. He gave me an email address of the great spell caster who helped him get his wife back, i never believed this would work but i had no choice that to get in contact with the spell caster which i did, and he requested for my information and that of my husband to enable him cast the spell and i sent him the details, but after two days, my mom called me that my husband came pleading that he wants me back, i never believed it because it was just like a dream and i had to rush down to my mothers place and to my greatest surprise, my husband was kneeling before me pleading for forgiveness that he wants me and the kid back home, then i gave Happy a call regarding sudden change of my husband and he made it clear to me that my husband will love me till the end of the world, that he will never leave my sight. Now me and my husband is back together again and has started doing pleasant things he hasn't done before, he makes me happy and do what he is suppose to do as a man without nagging. Please if you need help of any kind, kindly contact Happy for help and you can reach him via email: happylovespell2@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
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