Since June 2016, WaPo has been the main firebrand of the Trump-Russia and Russian election interference conspiracy theories. Multiple WaPo “reporters” were Democratic campaign operatives (Greg Sargent et al.). Unbelievably , this operation was financed by the same power that paid Robert Mueller and the law firm WilmerHale. This firm employed Robert Mueller and four (!) other lawyers he employed in the investigation of Trump (the “Russia investigation” pretext has just disappeared). From the Daily Caller (October 2015), China, Russia Pay Washington Post To Publish Their Propaganda:
“Chinese and Russian propaganda supplements are regularly included in The Washington Post, but the widely read newspaper won’t say how much money it gets on the deals.
China Watch – a China Daily publication – and Russia Beyond The Headlines – a Rossiyskaya Gazeta publication – have both appeared in the Post for years as paid advertising supplements. Both foreign periodicals are owned and operated by their respective governments.”
The Washington POS: Democracy Dies
The Russian propaganda supplement of the Washington Post, hosted at russianow.washingtonpost.com, disappeared in 2015 (according to the Web Archive; the Web Archive might be connected to Amazon.com; Amazon is co-owned and the Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos). That means that the Russian government stopped paying the Washington Post long before the 2016 elections. But the Chinese government continued paying WaPo through the elections campaign and after it through the present day.
The China Daily subdomain of the Washington Post website (chinawatch.washingtonpost.com) does not indicate that it is Chinese government propaganda. It shows the Washington Post logo WP BrandStudio. There is an inconspicuous word ADVERTISEMENT on the top of the page in a small font, white on black background, easily missed by most readers. In the past, including the 2016 elections period, even the word advertisement was missing. China Daily in the Washington Post has a layout of an American news site, complete with mock “ads.” This layout is like that of the Washington Post (or the other way around). But the use of the word chinawatch as the subdomain and the title China Watch is very deceptive. The word watch suggests that the content comes from an organization unfriendly to the Chinese government. In fact, China Daily is an official organ of the Chinese government.
The Washington Post repeatedly refused to disclose how much money it receives from the Chinese government, but estimates are in the range of hundreds of millions of yuans. It is possible that the Washington Post is a supplement to the China Daily. WaPo’s new motto should be Democracy Die! Yuan is Forever…
In the months before the election day, WaPo used the Chinese government’s money to dig dirt on candidate Trump. Reportedly, it has assigned 20 “reporters” to do so. Yuans paid for the pro-Hillary and anti-Trump propaganda in WaPo. No troll farms or anonymous accounts were involved. The Washington Post provided services directly to the Chinese government with complete knowledge and full intent.
Paid by China, WaPo has been supporting the Paris pact, which requires a crippling economic sacrifice from the U.S. and other Western countries but benefits China. After the elections, the Chinese government was behind WaPo when the latter was instigating a confrontation with Russia, and making fake and illogical allegations to provoke a conflict between the nuclear super-powers. Chinese government funds WaPo’s ongoing attempts to overthrow the U.S. government and to replace it with a regime as convenient to China (and Russia) as Obama administration was.
Thus, China interfered in the 2016 elections in favor of Hillary and the Democratic Party. The Washington Post is an accomplice. There was an actual collusion between the government of China and the Democratic Party; the US-China Joint Climate Statement of 2015, signed by Barack Obama, reads as if the U.S. were a dependent territory of China.
Robert Mueller knows and knew for months, if not from the beginning of his mission, that all or almost all foreign interference in the 2016 elections was to benefit Hillary. Yet he insisted and behaved as if it were the other way around. He led investigation away from the real culprits and beneficiaries of foreign interference. Every time he spoke to a federal agent he lied — a crime punishable under 18 U.S.C. § 1001. In the course of his “investigation,” Mueller committed other crimes, including revealing at least one covert CIA agent. Then he commanded or counseled a break in into places that store the president’s documents, and a theft of the president’s documents. Mueller is a public danger and should be arrested.
Some commentators suggest that we should retaliate against the foreign governments that interfere in our elections. This proposal is neither logical nor practical (unless the interference is on a very large scale or “in your face”). It is just natural for foreign governments and other political actors to promote their interests, including by propaganda directed at the U.S. There is no definitive line that separates elections interference from ordinary communication or expression of opinion by a foreign government or political party. Moreover, almost every foreign government comprises multiple agencies and institutions and is connected to multiple organizations of various degrees of independence. These agencies, institutions, and organizations frequently do as they please. Foreign persons don’t have to know our electoral laws, and don’t have to follow them even if they know them. And foreign governments and supra-governmental bodies can and do use NGOs and even commercial entities to disguise their interference. In any case, the U.S. has less than 5% of the world population and about 15% of the world’s economics. We cannot realistically punish Russia, China, or the rest of the world for propaganda having effect of interference in our elections. But we can vote out the party which accommodates interests of the rest of the world at the expense of the U.S.
Foreign persons are prohibited from electioneering propaganda and other forms of “participation” in our elections, but we cannot do much about most of them. But we can, and should, punish their accomplices on American soil. And “the press” is no exception. Freedom of the press is an individual right, every individual has it the same way, and nobody can use it as justification for a crime. The Supreme Court has repeated multiple times that those who describe themselves as the press have no special rights (for example, in Branzburg v. Hayes, 1972). The mainstream media used to have power when it was trustworthy and trusted. Today it is neither trustworthy nor trusted. Only 34% of democrat voters trust national news media, and they probably don’t matter anyway. Only 11% of republican voters trust it (Pew Research, 2017). When a straight-thinking prosecutor opens an investigation of WaPo, all the fake-stream media will bark like mad. Now it can bark, but can’t bite. It has been barking like mad for too long.
And there is a recent precedent of prosecution of the press – Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative American author and film maker, was sentenced in 2014 and served time for an “illegal” donation of $10,000 of his own money to a friend’s Senate campaign.
Some WaPo (WaPOS?) personalities were not 2016 campaign operatives, but still deserve mentions:
Ned (Edward ) Price — “a democrat apparatchik and political activist who has burrowed his way into the CIA.“
RealClearPolitics, Dec 2017 points out:
“Shailagh Murray went from the Washington Post to the Veep’s office [in Obama administration] while married to Neil King at the Wall Street Journal. Neil King has left the Wall Street Journal to work for Fusion GPS. … Douglas Frantz went from the Washington Post to the State Department and Stephen Barr went from the Post to the Labor Department. … Ruth Marcus, who heads the Washington Post Editorial Board, is married to the Obama Administration’s former Federal Trade Commission Chairman. … It goes on and on in a feedback loop of incestuous politics and worldview shaping. In the Obama Era, it was all about protecting their precious. Now it is about undermining the president.“
Originally published on 2018-04-11
Corrected on 2018-08-16: the number of WaPo staffers digging dirt on Trump was 20, per Bob Woodward.
Updated on 2019-01-13: Few added paragraphs, and a new logo and motto for WaPo: The Washington POS: Democracy Dies
Attached are supporting screenshots from the Web Archive.