President Trump continued his afternoon Twitter spree by trying to once again discredit the media’s reporting and the Special Counsel’s investigation by repeating out-of-context refutations that he almost certainly just watched someone say on FOX News — but it didn’t go the way he expected it to.
According to the Failing New York Times, the FBI started a major effort to flip Putin loyalists in 2014-2016. “It wasn’t about Trump, he wasn’t even close to a candidate yet.” Rigged Witch Hunt!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2018
Trump’s latest tweet references a New York Times article that documents the FBI’s unsuccessful attempts to turn Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska into an informant against Putin’s ruling coven.
Trump, or whoever he saw defending him on TV, asserted that the fact that the investigation into Russian oligarchs preceded the declaration of his candidacy somehow is supposed to prove that the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian agents is a politically motivated hit job.
Of course, if Trump had actually bothered to read the article he would have realized that it says nothing of the sort and actually makes things worse for him, since the FBI then used their discussions with Deripaska to try to get dirt on Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who secretly received millions of dollars from Deripaska in exchange for lobbying on behalf of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s Ukranian puppet leader, Viktor Yanukovych, and his Party of Regions political party.
The article’s author, Matthew Rosenberg, took to Twitter to set the record straight and point out the absurdity of the President’s pathetic cover-up:
It’s nice to quoted by the president, but he’s dropped a crucial part of what I said: By the fall of 2016, the outreach to Deripaska did turn to Russia’s possible aid to the Trump campaign. FBI agents specifically asked Deripaska if Manafort was campaign’s link to the Kremlin. https://t.co/HGpTuHRBxx
— Matthew Rosenberg (@AllMattNYT) September 3, 2018
The president is also misconstruing larger point: The fact the outreach to oligarchs started before he was a candidate is indicates Ohr & Steele were not part of a “witch hunt” or “deep state” plot. The outreach only turned to Trump after a separate FBI investigation was underway
— Matthew Rosenberg (@AllMattNYT) September 3, 2018
It really is remarkable how desperate President Trump is for anything at all that he might be able to use to defend himself from the looming conclusions of the Mueller investigation — and how every defense he comes up with just ends up digging himself a deeper hole.
