Ex-Press TV reporter at center of WaPo’s smear campaign against Grayzone
By Maryam Qarehgozlou | Press TV | June 11, 2024
The Washington Post reports that Grayzone journalist Wyatt Reed took funds from Iran, and the report is based on testimonies of anti-Iran elements or those linked to US arms manufacturers.
In another desperate bid to muzzle alternative media that has been revealing Western complicity in Gaza and Ukraine, The Washington Post recently published a hit piece targeting The Grayzone news outlet.
The article alleged that The Grayzone is financially backed by Iran and Russia to “spread falsehoods.”
Authored by Joseph Menn, the article claimed to have “exposed” The Grayzone’s journalist Wyatt Reed’s ties with Iran’s state media, relying on what it said were hacked emails and quotes from sources either anti-Iran elements or linked to the US government or arms manufacturers.
The oldest newspaper in Washington, owned by pro-Israel business tycoon Jeff Bezos, insinuated that since Reed, now a managing director at The Grayzone, appeared on Press TV many years ago, he is on the Islamic Republic’s payroll.
The piece went as far as to suggest that he should be jailed for reporting for the Iranian news channel.
The Washington Post report repeated the same claims about Reed’s reporting for Russia’s state-run news agency Sputnik.
Reed, for his part, has never hidden his work for Press TV. At the start of his journalistic career in 2020, Reed appeared on Press TV several dozen times and openly tweeted his reports. The “correspondent @PressTV” was also featured in his Twitter bio at the time.
“For weeks, we’ve been waiting to see how they would target us. Now we know. Congrats to the @washingtonpost’s ‘Digital threats reporter’ on this earth-shattering reporting on my appearances on Press TV years before I edited Grayzone,” Reed wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, last week.
“How could they possibly have figured it out?” he added.
Dan Cohen, an American journalist and filmmaker, also took to X to assert that The Washington Post’s “sloppy attempt” to discredit independent journalism only highlights the media group’s own corruption.
“The Washington Post is targeting Grayzone journalist @wyattreed13 for having previously worked for Iran state media outlet Press TV and Russian state outlet Sputnik, as if that’s somehow a breach of journalist ethics,” Cohen wrote in a post.
He said The Washington Post reporter Greg Jaffe has a fellowship at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a permanent war think tank funded by the US State Department and Pentagon.
The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal, responded that supporters of the Israeli war on Gaza and the Western proxy war in Ukraine are angry with The Grayzone and Reed because of their truthful reporting.
“The motive behind this malicious attack is abundantly clear: Wyatt now works for The Grayzone, and The Grayzone’s factual reporting has infuriated boosters of the Ukraine proxy war and members of Israel’s international propaganda network,” he said.
‘Embarrassing’ correction
Stung by the backlash, The Washington Post was forced to retract some of its allegations. While the story initially claimed that editors of The Grayzone had received payments from Iranian media, it soon corrected the story, saying only Reed received such payments.
“Less than 24 hours after @JosephMenn’s hatchet job on @TheGrayzoneNews landed, WaPo has been forced into a massive and deeply embarrassing correction,” Kit Klarenberg, a British investigative journalist and contributor to the Press TV website, wrote in a post on X.
“Other egregious distortions and falsehoods remain extant. But it’s a start. And certainly the foundation of future legal action,” he added.
Reed also said in an X post that more corrections are expected in the coming days.
“The ‘journalists’ attempting to get me jailed for journalism just had to issue a major correction to their hit piece. Expect more in the coming days as we expose the US government cutouts, pro-Israel zealots, and federal informants they relied on to target us.”
Bogus claims
Despite the correction, the piece is still filled with false, twisted, and distorted accounts. For example, the author of the article, Menn, claims Blumenthal did not answer emails seeking comment. However, Blumenthal said in a post on X that he received no emails.
“Unless Menn can prove that he emailed me and I somehow missed it, this is malicious conduct that demonstrates reckless disregard for journalistic ethics,” he said.
Blumenthal added that if he had received any emails from Menn, he would have stated clearly that Reed reported for Press TV three years before he joined The Grayzone and that Wyatt’s position at The Grayzone was created through “a public, grassroots crowd-funding campaign” in which readers pooled together small donations.
“I would have also stated that The Grayzone does not accept funding from any government, unlike nearly every intel front Menn quoted against us,” he added.
According to Blumenthal, these facts would have undermined the entire premise of Menn’s “malicious” smear piece, which may be why he did not email him.
WaPo quotes NATO-backed groups
Blumenthal also revealed that Menn’s key sources for the article included Neil Rauhauser, a “shady online troll” who is also believed to be an FBI informant, and some NATO-backed outfits.
The article cited the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI, a Canberra-based think tank funded by Australia’s Department of Defence, NATO, and the US Department of State.
The Atlantic Council, the semi-official DC think tank of NATO, is another source cited by The Washington Post, which has taken in substantial funding from the US Department of State, EU states, and arms manufacturers.
It also quoted Ali Herischi, personal lawyer of Masih Alinejad, a US-based, exiled Iranian rabble-rouser who is on Washington’s payroll for instigating anti-Iran sentiments inside and outside the country.
Alinejad has advocated for Israeli military attacks on Iran and received $305,000 from the US government for her work at Voice of America, the US state broadcaster, between 2015 and 2019.
“At no point did Menn inform his readers that his sources were state-funded pro-war entities,” Blumenthal said.
Misinforming readers
The Washington Post story also alleged that The Grayzone is spreading misinformation by reporting “widespread Israeli attacks against its [settlers] on October 7” when Hamas carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm into the occupied territories.
However, the newspaper conveniently failed to inform its readers that Israeli media have corroborated The Grayzone’s assessment that the Israeli military explicitly ordered attacks on Israeli settlers who had been taken captive on October 7, killing many.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported last month that Israeli Gen. Barak Hiram ordered an Israeli tank to shell a home in Kibbutz Beeri filled with over a dozen Israeli captives on October 7, killing all but two.
Desperate attempts
According to Hermela Aregawi, a US-based independent journalist, the targeting of American journalists who challenge mainstream narratives is likely to ramp up ahead of the US presidential elections.
“If you read beyond the headline, the ‘editor’s ties’ are that… ‘The files appear to show that the Iranian broadcaster paid [journalist Wyatt] Reed for occasional contributions to its programming’… The reality is US outlets, UK outlets, Qatar (Al Jazeera) etc. pay some of their contributors for their analysis,” she wrote on X.
Journalist Mark Ames also said that the piece was a desperate attempt to trigger a federal investigation against independent journalists.
“This is the second WaPo hit piece against Grayzone this year. Based on the sourcing/media here, you get the sense Langley & DC press corps are so frustrated that their ‘disinformation’ hex cast upon [The Grayzone ] has had no effect, so they’re trying to summon the Feds to shut [The Grayzone ] down.”
The Australia-based anti-war commentator Caitlin Johnstone also said on X that The Grayzone staff worked for foreign media outlets like Press TV because there are no major Western media outlets that platform dissident voices like theirs, who “criticize the Western empire and its actions.”
“The Washington Post is one of the worst propaganda rags ever to exist in any country. If I’d published such an article for such a depraved empire propaganda outlet, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”
Gaza: child survivors of Nuseirat massacre say Israeli soldiers targeted them deliberately
MEMO | June 11, 2024
Hamas supports UN resolution for Gaza ceasefire
RT | June 10, 2024
Hamas has agreed with the UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, the Palestinian militant group said on Monday evening.
The Security Council has approved the US-backed resolution, with 14 votes in favor and Russia abstaining. Washington had finalized the text of the draft on Sunday.
“Hamas welcomes what is included in the Security Council resolution that affirmed the permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the complete withdrawal, the prisoners’ exchange, the reconstruction, the return of the displaced to their areas of residence, the rejection of any demographic change or reduction in the area of the Gaza Strip, and the delivery of needed aid to our people in the Strip,” the group said in a statement quoted by Reuters.
Hamas also said it would be willing to take part in indirect negotiations with Israel over implementing the principles “that are consistent with the demands of our people and resistance.”
According to the White House, Israel has already accepted the ceasefire proposal. US President Joe Biden has claimed that the three-phase plan was an Israeli idea to begin with.
The UN resolution calls on both sides “to fully implement its terms without delay and without condition.”
Phase one of the proposal entails a six-week “pause” in the fighting, during which Israel and Hamas would open negotiations. If the talks continue past the six-week mark, the ceasefire will hold as long as the talks are ongoing, the resolution said.
Israel would also withdraw from the populated areas of Gaza and free some Palestinian prisoners in exchange for some hostages in Hamas captivity.
Phase two would see the return of all the remaining living hostages, while phase three would involve turning over the bodies of dead captives and a US-led “major reconstruction plan” for the Palestinian enclave.
Russia ready to strike NATO airfields hosting Ukrainian jets – MP
RT | June 10, 2024
F-16 fighter jets and any airfields they are based at will be legitimate targets for the Russian military if they participate in combat missions against Moscow’s forces, the chairman of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee, Andrey Kartapolov, has warned.
The comments come as Kiev prepares to receive the first delivery of US-made fighter jets from its Western backers, after Ukrainian pilots were trained to fly them.
In a statement to RIA Novosti published on Monday, Kartapolov clarified that if the F-16s “are not used for their intended purpose” or are simply held in storage at foreign airbases with the intent to transfer them to Ukraine, where they will be equipped, maintained, and flown from Ukrainian airfields, then Russia would have no claims against its “former partners” and would not target them.
However, if the jets take off from foreign bases and carry out sorties and strikes against Russian forces, both the fighter planes and the airfields they are stationed at will be “legitimate targets,” according to Kartapolov.
“As for [our ability] to shoot [them] down, we can shoot down anyone, anywhere,” the MP insisted.
Kartapolov’s statement comes after the chief of aviation of Ukraine’s Air Force Command, Sergey Golubtsov, stated in an interview with Radio Liberty on Sunday that some of the F-16 fighter jets donated to Kiev by the West would be stationed at foreign airbases.
He explained that only a portion of the jets would be stationed directly on Ukrainian territory, corresponding to the number of pilots trained to operate the aircraft. The other jets would be kept in reserve at “safe airbases” abroad so that they are not targeted by the Russian military.
Golubtsov stated that so far four countries have agreed to transfer F-16s to Ukraine, namely Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands. While he did not specify exactly how many aircraft would be donated, he claimed it was between 30 and 40 planes, with potentially more to come in the future.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has also warned that Moscow would perceive the deliveries of F-16 fighters to Ukraine as a nuclear threat, given that the jets have long been used as part of the US-led bloc’s joint nuclear missions.
At the same time, the minister stressed that the US-designed jets would not change the situation on the battlefield, and would be shot down and destroyed like any other foreign weapons supplied to Ukraine.
US defence industry struggles to manufacture basic artillery for Ukraine
By Ahmed Adel | June 10, 2024
The United States arms industry is not producing the basic ammunition required to sustain support for Ukraine and Israel, Bloomberg reported on June 8. This is an extraordinary situation since Russia’s arms industry is booming despite facing major Western sanctions.
According to the outlet, the US defence industry gave priority to the manufacture of high-tech ammunition and halted the production of basic artillery such as 155-millimetre ammunition, the most used in the wars that are being fought today. The US is also facing a shortage of basic products, such as gunpowder or trinitrotoluene (TNT), to produce these munitions and have had to turn to other countries, such as Poland and Turkey, to obtain supplies.
At some point an attempt was made to replace the 155-millimetre ammunition with higher-tech projectiles on the battlefront in Ukraine, but the effort failed because the new weaponry was neutralised by the Russian military.
“Higher-tech shells that were intended to replace the traditional 155mm munitions failed an early test in Ukraine, when their targeting systems were thwarted by Russia,” Bloomberg reported. “The prospect that future wars could resemble the grinding combat taking place there has stirred fears that the US arsenal could someday be stretched to the breaking point.”
“The writing has been on the wall for a while,” Stacie Pettyjohn, a senior fellow and director of the defense program at the independent and bipartisan Center for a New American Security, told Bloomberg. “It has just taken the war in Ukraine to really shock Pentagon officials and members of Congress out of their complacency.”
Since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the Pentagon has divested or neglected facilities once used to manufacture everything from projectiles to gunpowder, focusing instead on transforming warfare with high-tech weaponry.
“What’s left is crumbling infrastructure, outdated machinery and a tiny workforce that can’t keep up with growing international demand,” the outlet highlights.
Before the special military operation in Ukraine, American production was 14,400 shells per month. Now, the US is spending more than $5 billion to overhaul aging factories across the country with the goal of producing 100,000 155mm shells a month by the end of next year.
As the agency stresses, it is a mobilisation that, due to its speed and breadth, is unlike anything since World War II.
As part of this effort, Congress has appropriated $650 million for a TNT production plant that will take two years to build, according to Doug Bush, the Army’s top weapons buyer. And Washington will have to finance purchases of whatever the renovated facilities produce, possibly for many years.
But, as Bloomberg noted, getting the money may also be the easiest obstacle to overcome.
“The US must bring old buildings up to snuff, build new ones, buy updated machinery and hire and train workers. Environmental regulations stand in the way. And the Pentagon will need to ensure that plants can be run safely — munitions-making is prone to fires, explosions and other accidents,” the outlet noted.
Bloomberg concludes, “Boosting munition production is a costly and time-consuming business, and the US is playing catch-up at a time of growing tension in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific region.”
Washington naively believed that the sweeping sanctions against Moscow would collapse the Russian economy and therefore its military operation against the Kiev regime. Instead, Russia not only overcame the sanctions but is now producing artillery shells at a rate that the West cannot keep up with.
It is recalled that Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur admitted in November 2023 that Russia was firing 70,000 rounds a day, meaning that an equivalent of a year’s worth of European production at the time was fired by the Russian military every 10 days. The crippling shortage of artillery was also referred to by Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov in January, who revealed that Ukraine was unable to fire more than 2,000 shells per day.
Due to a severe worldwide shortage of artillery shells, Western analysts admit Ukraine will likely be outgunned by Russia for at least the remainder of the year, but even with Kiev’s allies ramping up production, realistically Russia will hold the advantage for the duration of the war.
Even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said recently there were no reports of artillery shortages, in an interview on May 21 with Reuters, he called on Western allies to speed up aid, saying every decision they’ve made on military support for Ukraine has been “late by around one year.” Even in this most desperate stage of the war, from Kiev’s perspective, Zelensky cannot but be ungrateful and entitled, even when the West struggles to overcome its industrial failures, particularly since Russia’s military industry is a resounding success despite the sanctions.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Scholz and Macron belong to ‘ash heap of history’ – Medvedev
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron should abandon politics after their respective parties suffered damaging setbacks in the European Parliament elections, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev believes.
Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) is projected to finish third in the key ballot, behind the center-right Christian Democrats and the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Macron’s Besoin d’Europe coalition is expected to win less than half of the votes received by the right-wing National Rally party associated with Marine Le Pen, prompting the French president to call a snap parliamentary election after preliminary results emerged on Sunday.
In a social media post on Monday, Medvedev claimed the outcome proves that Scholz and Macron are “respected by no one.” The former Russian leader linked the poor performance at the ballot box with the “idiotic economic and migration policy” pursued by the two leaders and their support for Ukraine “at the cost of [their] own citizens.”
“Time to retire. To the ash heap of history!” said Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, earlier called on Scholz and Macron to resign and to “stop victimizing the citizens of their states.”
Officials in Moscow have accused leaders of EU nations of betraying the interests of their populations in favor of US geopolitical goals. Responding to the Ukraine crisis in 2022, the bloc vowed to support Kiev militarily for “as long as it takes,” and imposed an array of economic sanctions against Russia. Most notably, Brussels has pushed EU countries to stop buying Russian natural gas.
Large consumers such as Germany have struggled to substitute cheap Russian pipeline fuel with other sources, including renewables and expensive liquified natural gas. American LNG producers have since taken over a large share of the European market. A hike in energy prices has forced many energy-intensive businesses to either move out of the EU or shut down entirely.
Biden to Offer Saudi Arabia Treaty In Exchange for Official Ties with Israel
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | June 9, 2024
The White House is prepared to roll out a plan that will make Saudi Arabia a Japan-style ally in exchange for Ryiadh developing official ties with Tel Aviv. While the Biden administration has invested substantial effort to get the deal inked, it is likely dead on arrival because Saudi Arabia refuses to normalize with Israel unless Tel Aviv agrees to the creation of the Palestinian state.
According to American, Israeli, and Saudi officials speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Washington is prepared to sign an agreement to defend Saudi Arabia if Riyadh establishes regular ties with Tel Aviv. However, it would not be a peace agreement as the two countries are not at war.
Several hurdles must be cleared before the deal can be finalized, and it is unlikely that will happen. As Biden is seeking to make Saudi Arabia a treaty ally, it would need the approval of two-thirds of the Senate. Additionally, the deal would require Tel Aviv to end the onslaught in Gaza and take permanent steps toward a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to take either step.
Despite the obvious obstacles to the agreement, the Joe Biden administration has pressed forward with negotiations. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan explained last month, “We should not miss a historic opportunity to achieve the vision of a secure Israel, flanked by strong regional partners, presenting a powerful front to deter aggression and uphold regional stability.” He added, “We are pursuing this vision every day.”
If it went through, it would make Riyadh Washington’s only treaty ally in the Arab world, a status that even Tel Aviv does not have. The deal would also give the US access to Saudi airspace. The treaty is also part of negotiations of a larger deal that would also see the US transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.
For President Biden, the deal could be politically problematic. As a candidate, Biden promised that he would treat Saudi Arabia as a pariah state for the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
To add to the potential domestic resistance to the agreement, there are widespread protests in the US against Biden’s support for Israel amid its war on Gaza. As the treaty is a bribe to Riyadh to accept official relations with Tel Aviv, Americans may object to becoming an ally with Saudi Arabia to secure Israel’s regional interests.
NATO ‘crossed red line’ – Austria
RT | June 9, 2024
Ukraine’s Western sponsors have crossed a boundary when they allowed Kiev to use their weapons to strike at targets in Russia, Austrian Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner said in an interview to Die Presse published on Saturday.
Several NATO members have openly supported the use of Western-produced armaments for cross-border strikes against Russia in recent weeks, ostensibly in a limited manner. The West insists that it is still not a party to the conflict, and only supports Kiev’s efforts to stall Russia’s push into the Kharkov Region, which Moscow launched to move the line of contact away from the border to prevent further Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians.
“A red line has been crossed,” Tanner stated when asked about the US, France and Germany’s permission to use their weapons in cross-border strikes. When the interviewer asked how else Kiev could stall the Kharkov operation, the Austrian Defense Minister replied that “as a militarily neutral state, it is not our place to judge.”
The Austrian defense chief added that at least she was “very pleased that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has clarified that NATO will not be sending troops to Ukraine.”
Stoltenberg claimed that the US-led military bloc has no plans to deploy ground forces to Ukraine in a press conference on Thursday. Despite this, French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Friday he was almost ready to finalize an international coalition to officially send Western military “instructors” to train Kiev’s forces in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has stressed that Moscow has long been aware that Western military personnel are already fighting in Ukraine, under the guise of “mercenaries” and “volunteers.”
Western-produced long-ranged armaments used by Kiev in cross-border strikes are also often controlled and serviced by these foreign troops, the Russian president said last month. And even if Ukrainians are pulling the trigger, the US and its allies are the ones providing Kiev intelligence on Russian targets, Putin noted.
Moscow has warned that Western-backed long-range attacks on Russian territories will amount to direct Western participation in the conflict, and that Russia can respond in kind. “We can respond asymmetrically,” the Russian leader said on Wednesday, suggesting that Moscow could supply similar weapons around the world, where they could be used against Western
Scott Ritter Silenced by Liberal Authoritarians
By Patrick Lawrence | ScheerPost | June 8, 2024
It is not difficult to be astonished these days, given how many things going on around us warrant astonishment. To pull something out of a hat at random, the Democratic apparatus has openly, brazenly politicized the judicial system—weaponized it, if you prefer—in its determination to destroy Donald Trump and now has the temerity to warn in the gravest terms that a second Trump term would mean… the politicization of American justice.
Again at random, in The Washington Post’s June 7 editions George Will tells us President Biden “has provided the most progressive governance in U.S. history.” Yes, he wrote that. Give in to your astonishment.
It is interesting in this case to note that, during the reign of Ronald Reagan 40 years ago, our George thought big government was bad, bad, bad. Now it is a fine thing that Biden is “minimizing the market’s role by maximizing the government’s role in allocating society’s resources and opportunities.” Apart from turning his own argument hourglass upside-down, this assessment of our swiftly declining president is preposterously, right-before-your-eyes false.
You cannot tell the AC’s from the DC’s these days. But this is not the half of it in the way of astonishing events, things done, things said and such like.
Last week, as many readers will have noticed, Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector and now a widely followed commentator, was about to board a plane bound for Turkey when armed police officers stopped him, confiscated his passport and escorted him out of Kennedy International Airport. Ritter was booked to transit through Istanbul for St. Petersburg, where he planned to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual gathering.
Here is Ritter recounting this incident in an interview with RT International:
I was boarding the flight. Three officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When asked why, they said, “Orders of the State Department.” They had no further information for me. They pulled my bags off the plane, then escorted me out of the airport. They kept my passport.
No passport, no freedom to travel, no explanation. I have it on good authority that Ritter subsequently advised other Americans who were to attend the St. Petersburg events not to risk it.
I have had countless conversations over many years in which the question considered has been “Is this as bad as the 1950s?” The matter has been especially vital since the Russiagate fiasco began during the Clinton–Trump campaign season in 2016. It was in the ensuing years that the authoritarianism implicit in American liberalism from the first burst upon us like some weird grotesque out of a Dr. Seuss book.
I always urge caution when invoking comparisons between our corruptions and ideological extremes and those of the McCarthy era. Hyperbole and exaggeration never serve one’s understanding or one’s argument. But the confiscation of Scott Ritter’s passport on the instructions of Antony Blinken’s State Department seems to me a radical step too far. The liberal authoritarians now in command of the nation’s major institutions, the House of Representatives among the only exceptions, have just signaled they are quite prepared to act at least as undemocratically as the House Un–American Activities crowd, the FBI and the rest of the national-security state did during the 1950s to preserve their political hegemony.
When I think of confiscated passports I think of Paul Robeson, the gifted singer, the courageous political dissenter, the civil rights advocate — here he is singing his famous Water Boy — whose documents were seized in 1950 because he refused to indulge in the Cold War paranoia that was already prevalent. His performing career collapsed and he nearly went broke before a Supreme Court decision restored them in 1958. Or I think of all the screenwriters, novelists, poets, painters and activists whose papers were canceled while they were in Mexico — or in France or in Sweden or in England — to avoid HUAC and expatriation turned into exile.
And when I am finished thinking of these people, about whom there is a rich, inspiring literature, I think of how far America descended into a derangement we tend to look back upon in some combination of wonder, derision and contempt.
We can no longer look back in this fashion. The revocation of Scott Ritter’s passport, along with the destruction of the judicial system, the myth-spinning about our purported leaders and all the rest pushes this in our faces. Let us give this a moment’s thought to see if we can determine what is likely to be in store.
Why Scott Ritter, I have wondered these past few days. Of all the dissident commentators of too many stripes to count, why Scott? I reply to myself, “Because Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer, a former U.N. arms monitor in Iraq and he enjoys big-time credibility as a patriotic American.” His voice, in short, is the sort that can carry weight in sectors of the voting public that may well prove key in determining the outcome in the Trump–Biden election this Nov. 5.
Viewed in this context, I take the full-frontal suppression of Ritter’s rights last week as very likely tied to the liberals’ political prospects, other than brilliant as they are at this point. Censorship, suppression of various kinds taking various forms, “canceling”—these are nothing new, of course. But I sense things may get a great deal worse from here on out.
This is a year of global elections, as has often been remarked. The Associated Press counted 25 major national elections in a piece published at the start of the year. Taiwan, El Salvador, Indonesia, Russia, Slovakia, India, Mexico: These are among the big ones that have already taken place. The European Union is holding parliamentary elections June 6–9, cited in liberal quarters as the most important in decades. When Americans vote Nov. 5, it will be in this context.
In many of these elections — not all but many — the core issues are variants on a theme. The liberal order, such as we have it, is cast as defending itself against the onslaughts of —take your pick — populists, authoritarians, here and there a dictator. This is certainly how liberal media encourage American voters to view the Biden – Trump contest. And it is for this reason I think we must all brace ourselves for what may turn out to be a very major disaster for what remains of American democracy — and by extension the West’s.
Cast your mind back to 1992, when the Soviet Union was no more, an incipient triumphalism was taking hold in the U.S. and Francis Fukuyama published his famous (or infamous) The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press). Fukuyama, then a middling bureaucrat at the State Department, made the case that liberal democracy had won out and would stand as the ultimate, unchallenged achievement of humankind. A sort of happy political monoculture was destined to prevail eternally across the planet.
However sophomoric you may find this thesis, and I find it almost juvenile in its silliness, it came to define the expectations of all righteous American liberals. There was the Bush II administration, a major setback for the liberal narrative, although at the horizon this was merely a variation on the liberal theme. Then came the Obama years. And the Obama years set up the Democrats for a kind of fateful consummation in 2016. Hillary Clinton’s ascendancy that November was incontrovertibly the surest of outcomes because it was… what is my phrase?… a matter of historical destiny.
This is why Clinton’s defeat landed so hard among the mainstream Democrats. It was more, much more, than a loss at the polls. Trump’s victory contradicted what had become a prevalent consciousness among American liberals. Biden’s win in 2020 was a kind of salvage job: It put the liberal narrative back on track. But something had happened in the years after Clinton’s November 2016 loss. Liberals had assumed an uncompromising ideological righteousness such that we can now legitimately call them authoritarians—soft despots in de Tocqueville’s terminology, apple-pie authoritarians in mine. The cause is upside-down to the Cold War cause, but these people are at least as dangerous as the McCarthyites, and, as I have suggested, maybe more so.
We learned something important during those years. Deprived of what they considered their right as conferred by the force of history, liberals demonstrated that they would stop at nothing in the cause of retrieving it. Even those institutions that must stand above the political pit if a democracy is to have any chance of working, notably but not only the judiciary, were intruded upon in the liberal authoritarian project. Nothing was off limits.
Here we are again. We are headed into another confrontation of the kind that set liberals on the path of destruction they began to walk in 2016. We are already seeing a new wave of preposterous, utterly unsubstantiated charges of Russian or Chinese interference. Trump will turn America into a dictatorship. Trump will go on a rampage of retribution. Trump—we hear this already, as noted—will corrupt the courts, our courts, the courts we have kept pristine.
The Scott Ritter affair astonishes me yet more than any of the other astonishing developments of late. I read it as a warning of how extreme things may get, what irreparable damage to the American polity may be done, if liberal authoritarian cliques determine that a broad campaign to suppress dissent will be necessary if Biden is to have a chance of winning a second term and they are to fulfill their end-of-history destiny.
Let me put it this way. Liberal media now routinely bait Trump to say whether he will automatically accept the outcome this Nov. 5. One would have to be naïve in the extreme to make any such commitment as things now stand.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a media critic, essayist, author and lecturer. His new book, Journalists and Their Shadows, is out now from Clarity Press. His website is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site.
So Much for Lawfare? Trump Found Guilty and So What
By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | June 5, 2024
A New York jury convicted Donald Trump of 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with buying the silence of a porn star. He is the first American president to become a felon. The verdict is not unexpected from the deep blue Democratic enclave of Manhattan; the larger question is if lawfare will defeat Trump on November 5.
The jury found Trump faked records (hiding hush payments as “legal expenses”) to conceal the purpose of money given to the onetime attorney Michael Cohen. Trump was actually reimbursing Cohen for a $130,000 hush-money deal struck with porn star Stormy Daniels, to silence her account of an affair with Trump. The affair was in 2006, a decade before Trump was elected president. The falsification of business records took place in 2017, after Trump was already in the White House and thus could not have influenced the election. He was found guilty nonetheless.
For the jury to reach its unanimous decision of guilt on all 34 charges, the key was believing two witnesses over Trump.
There are only two people on earth who know if an affair actually took place between Stormy and Trump. Trump said no, Stormy said yes and the jury agreed with her, fully absent of any further actual evidence. Daniels benefitted greatly from her claims to having the affair, and violated a nondisclosure agreement she voluntarily signed and accepted money for, to achieve her goals. “Proving” the affair was the base upon which the rest of the case to find Trump guilty was made.
It is important to understand that having an affair and paying off someone to remain quiet about it are not crimes, even for a presidential candidate. Nonetheless, the prosecutor claimed in closing arguments Trump “hoodwinked the American voter” with a conspiracy to influence the 2016 election. In addition to those who may have benefitted from the plan, “all roads lead to the man who benefited the most: Donald Trump,” Joshua Steinglass told the jury.
But the witness whose testimony was fully believed by the jury, and whose testimony will see Trump receive a criminal penalty when he is sentenced on July 11 (four days before the Republican National Convention!) is Michael Cohen. In the total absence of physical evidence and in the face of Trump’s claims to the contrary, Cohen served as connective tissue for many disparate elements. It was Cohen who claimed Trump masterminded the plan to hide the payments to Stormy. It was Cohen who said the 34 checks and invoices, only nine of which were signed by Trump himself, were not for legal expenses as they were labeled but were to reimburse Cohen for paying off Stormy. Stormy’s name appeared on none of the 34 documents, a fact which instead of exonerating Trump became under Michael Cohen’s testimony the linchpin of the conspiracy to falsify business records. Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Trump, told jurors the case hinged on the testimony of Michael Cohen, whom he called “the greatest liar of all time.”
Nearly incredibly (Trump’s defense team called Cohen a “walking reasonable doubt”) the jury believed Cohen based on nothing but his good word. This is despite Cohen having gone to jail for perjury, been caught lying to Congress, being disbarred, and actually telling a lie during his testimony at the instant trial. It remains difficult to understand how a jury could objectively grant so much credence to Cohen in the face of his record of lying to his own advantage. Every critical element of the case came down to whether his word could be trusted. That is what convicted Trump. You might have thought Robert De Niro was leading the deliberations.
There’s more. For jurors to have found Trump guilty of all 34 counts, they must have concluded beyond a reasonable doubt not only that Trump falsified or caused the falsification of business records “with intent to defraud” but also that he did so with the intent to commit or conceal another crime. That second element — the intent to commit or conceal another crime — elevates the charges to felonies and got around the statue of limitations that usually governs misdemeanors such as false business records. To reach this conclusion the jury had to also believe Cohen that Trump’s primary intent in all this was election influence and not, as Trump claimed, to hide the affair from his family.
There are many questions surrounding the jury’s verdict, and the fact pattern of the case itself, all of which should come out in Trump’s inevitable appeal. With that in mind, the actual legal conclusion of this case is far into the future, almost certainly after the November 5 election. But that begs the more important question: does any of this matter to voters? This is lawfare, not justice, after all. “The real verdict is going to be November 5, by the people,” said Trump.
CNN, for example, concluded “Donald Trump, who built a mystique as the brash epitome of power, has never been more powerless to dictate his own fate. His reputation, future, and even perhaps the White House’s destiny, [was] placed in the hands of 12 citizens of his native New York City, proving that not even once-and-possibly future commanders in chief are above the law.”
So a victory for Democratic lawfare? Maybe not. Trump remains eligible to campaign for the presidency and serve if elected. None of the other lawfare shots is likely to conclude before November.
So does it matter? A majority of registered voters said a guilty verdict in Trump’s trial would make no difference in their vote in the 2024 presidential election. Across all registered voters, 67 percent said a guilty verdict would have no effect on their vote, while 17 percent say they would be less likely to vote for him and 15 percent say they would be more likely, according to the NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll released before the verdict. An ABC News poll earlier this month showed 80 percent of Trump’s supporters say they would stick with him even if he’s convicted of a felony in this case. Some say they would either reconsider their support (16 percent) or withdraw it (four percent.) Similar polls followed Trump’s defeat in New York courts over supposed real estate fraud.
And Biden knows it. A Biden campaign spokesman said Trump’s conviction showed “There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.”
As in other Third World countries where the judiciary is used to smite political opponents, let us hope the people can see the truth, as they still hold the final card to be played. The Deep State has tried from day one to destroy Donald Trump — Russian collusion and dossier hoax, pee tape accusation, Mueller hearing and report, Emoluments Clause, various calls for extra-legal interventions and coups, Alfa Bank hoax, Impeachment I, Impeachment II, demands Mike Pence invoke the 25th Amendment, MSM blackout of Hunter Biden laptop story, Twitter purge of conservative accounts, FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, Letitia James prosecution “show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime” with no victims, no monetary loss but an effort to bankrupt Trump with civil judgment, Colorado attempt to remove Trump from state ballots over the 14th Amendment, and false statements Trump will “take revenge,” “demand retribution,” ensure a “bloodbath,” and “end democracy” (America’s last election if he wins.)
Trump meanwhile has characterized this trial, and the others, as unjust, rigged, lawfare pure and simple. He has kept the voters’ eyes not on who he is (his personal life has been baked-in to the vote long ago) but on what he represents to the electorate. As such, it is hard to see this guilty conviction, however unfair, as mattering too much come November.

