The New York Times resorts to selling us half a duck

 

Canard:

The primary English meaning of “canard” comes from the Medieval French expression “Vendre un canard à moitié.” The meaning literally is “to sell a duck by half.” It is actually the punch line to a joke. Eventually the punch line came to stand for the joke and then finally the word alone stood for the whole concept. The story is that a duck seller is successful and contented being the only duck seller on the street and he sells his ducks for eight francs each. A new duck seller moves in across the street who steals all the business by offering his ducks for seven francs each. Then a price war ensues, back and forth, until the new duck seller is down to three francs for a duck. The original duck seller is beside himself with worry and frustration, but finally he puts up a big sign that says, “Two francs” and then in small print at the bottom “for half a duck.” Thus, to sell the ducks by half meant to trick people with something that was literally true, but misleading. It has this same metaphorical meaning in French. Now in English, it simply means anything that is deliberately misleading, a fraud.

The liberal media, led by the NY Times, is taking a new tack vis-a-vis the Russia investigation.  Every day it becomes more and more clear that the  phony Trump dossier (the FBI’s insurance policy), created by Fusion GPS and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, was used by the FBI to secure a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign and discredit Trump in an effort to ensure Hillary Clinton would win the election. The FBI and the DOJ are slow walking the production of dossier-related documents to the House Intelligence Committee.

House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes is accusing the Justice Department and FBI of “intransigence” for ignoring a subpoena issued more than four months ago for interviews and records related to the infamous Steele dossier.

“At this point it seems the DOJ and FBI need to be investigating themselves,” Nunes wrote Thursday in a bluntly worded letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Nunes, a California Republican, accused Rosenstein of ignoring a subpoena issued on Aug. 24 for a slew of records related to the dossier, the Democrat-funded report that is central to the allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russians during the presidential campaign.

Nunes is asking Rosenstein to produce summaries of all interviews conducted with witnesses and confidential human sources as part of the investigation into the dossier by Jan. 3, next Wednesday.

He is also demanding that Rosenstein set dates for next month for interviews with former DOJ Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, FBI general counsel James Baker, FBI lawyers Lisa Page and Sally Moyer, and the FBI’s congressional liaison, Greg Brower.

High level officials within the Obama DOJ were working on the dossier either for or in conjunction with Fusion GPS:

Ohr was recently stripped of his top DOJ position after it was discovered that he met last year with Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier, and with Glenn Simpson, a partner at Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the salacious document.

Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, also worked for Fusion GPS during the presidential campaign on its Trump investigation.

Bruce Ohr, who had an office several doors down from Rosenstein until his recent demotion, reportedly did not tell his superiors about his meetings with Steele and Simpson.

Nunes also revealed the existence of a meeting involving a lawyer working on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe that was held in April.

That meeting that took place between DOJ/FBI personnel and members of the media. Andrew Weissman, a Justice Department attorney who now works on Mueller’s team, took part in the meeting, which has not previously been reported.

Let us recall that FBI Deputy Director Wayne McCabe testified that the ONLY thing in the Trump dossier the FBI could verify was that Carter Page took a trip to Moscow.

We need to know just how high this involvement goes.The framework of the conspiracy is pretty clear now and in its panic the liberal media now wants to take the focus off the dossier and the connections that go deeply into the obama administration, so la presse se vend la moitié d’un canard. They want to think that it wasn’t the dossier so it is spitting out poorly thought articles to muddy the waters.

The NY Times first claimed that it was Carter Page’s trip to Moscow that set off the investigation.

WASHINGTON — Ever since F.B.I. investigators discovered in 2013 that a Russian spy was trying to recruit an American businessman named Carter Page, the bureau maintained an occasional interest in Mr. Page. So when he became a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign last year and gave a Russia-friendly speech at a prestigious Moscow institute, it soon caught the bureau’s attention.

That trip last July was a catalyst for the F.B.I. investigation into connections between Russia and President Trump’s campaign, according to current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials.

It is unclear exactly what about Mr. Page’s visit drew the F.B.I.’s interest: meetings he had during his three days in Moscow, intercepted communications of Russian officials speaking about him, or something else.

That didn’t sell well and knowing how damaging the true dossier story is yesterday the Times is back with a new Clinton propagandist Maggie Haberman canard. Now they want you to believe THIS was the spark for the Russia investigation (and not the dossier):

A Trump campaign adviser’s drunken conversation with an Australian diplomat last year was one of the catalysts for the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign.

That’s according to a new report from The New York Times on Saturday.

According to the newspaper, Trump campaign volunteer George Papadopoulos told Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in May 2016 that the Russian government had dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Papadopoulos was with Downer, Australia’s top diplomat to the U.K., in an upscale London bar.

A month prior to that encounter, Papadopoulos claims he was told by a London-based associate named Joseph Mifsud that Russian government officials had obtained Clinton emails. It is unclear whether Papadopoulos, a 30-year-old energy consultant, told anyone in the Trump campaign about alleged Clinton dirt.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about his encounters with Mifsud and at least two Russian nationals. As part of his plea deal, Papadopoulos agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

The FBI caught wind of Papadopoulos’ claims more than two months after the London meeting with Downer. The Australian government decided to share the information with U.S. investigators after emails stolen from Democrats began to be released by WikiLeaks.

See how the rest of the liberal media pounced on it.

It took little time time for our friends at the Conservative Treehouse to completely destroy the story’s credibility:

1) Um Maggie, [@maggieNYT ] hate to undercut your *explosive story* on origin of Russia Probe. But George Papadopoulos talking in May 2016, is likely about this *open and public information* from April 2016. https://t.co/t9qtqDoLdQ

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) December 30, 2017

5. @maggieNYT If George Papadopoulos was so important to the FBI “investigation” why did all “intelligence” agencies released their final JAR report without ever speaking to him?
Not even once?

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) December 30, 2017

Loads more on their Twitter feed.

For more irony, check this out:

Here’s @HillaryClinton speaking at UNESCO in 2011 the same year her department chose #Papadopoulos as a finalist and featured his essay on the State Dept website #RussiaHoax

As you can see, this story is nonsensical. The new effort to distract from the dossier is but one more element to keep the American public from the truth- that this is the single biggest scandal in the history of the country. The closer we get to the truth the more frequently the Times will try to sell us half a duck.