ABC News announced Saturday that Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross would be suspended for four weeks without pay over a botched “exclusive” about former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
During a live “special report” Friday morning, Ross reported that Flynn would testify that Donald Trump had ordered him to make contact with Russians about foreign policy while he was still a candidate. The report raised the specter of Trump’s impeachment and sent the stock market plummeting.
Later in the day, ABC issued a “clarification” to Ross’s report, saying that Trump’s alleged directive came after he’d been elected president. Ross himself appeared on “World News Tonight,” several hours after the initial report, to clarify his error.
In a statement, ABC News said Ross’ report “had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process.”
“It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience,” ABC’s statement added. “These are our core principles. We fell far short of that yesterday.”
Bob Mueller Reassigned Peter Strzok: These Bastards Are Corrupt
Special counsel Robert Mueller removed a veteran FBI agent from his team amid an investigation into the agent potentially sending anti-Trump text messages, according to new reports on Saturday.
Three people close to the matter told The New York Times that Mueller reassigned Peter Strzok from the team investigating Russia’s election meddling to the FBI’s human resources department.
Strzok is a veteran FBI investigator who previously worked on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of State, as well as the investigation into potential connections between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials.
The Times reported that Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team after the Department of Justice’s inspector general launched an investigation into text messages sent by the agent that could appear to contain anti-Trump views.
The agent reportedly exchanged text messages with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, whom he was dating, during the campaign and Clinton investigation that appeared to support the Democratic presidential candidate, people with knowledge of the matter told The Washington Post.
The Post could not reach Strzok or Page.
“Immediately upon learning of the allegations, the Special Counsel’s Office removed Peter Strzok from the investigation,” Mueller spokesman Peter Carr told The Hill. “Lisa Page completed her brief detail and had returned to the FBI weeks before our office was aware of the allegations.”
The news comes just one day after Mueller’s team charged former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn with lying to FBI agents. Flynn pleaded guilty to the charge.
Cop Accuser Implodes in Breitbart Interview, Admits to Making Unsupported Claims About Roy Moore
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Faye Gary, a former police officer with the Gadsden Police Department in Alabama, has been featured in the news in recent days making the unsubstantiated claim that she was told to protect young cheerleaders from Roy Moore at local ballgames.
Speaking in a Breitbart News interview on Wednesday, Gary falsely claimed that Moore “wanted to keep segregation here in the south.”
She then claimed that Moore “hates Jews. He hates blacks. He hates Muslims. He hates gays.”
When challenged for specifics, Gary conceded that “I don’t know exactly what he said about Jews, but he doesn’t like Muslims. I know he doesn’t like Muslims. It is my personal feeling that he doesn’t like blacks.”
When further petitioned to support her charges, especially her claim that Moore “hates blacks” and supports segregation, Gary further admitted, “I am not sure. That is my feeling.”
The news media in recent days uncritically featured Gary making the undocumented claim on MSNBC that as a police officer “we were also told to watch him at the ball games to make sure that he didn’t hang around the cheerleaders.”
The news media seemingly failed to vet Gary, with numerous articles and the MSNBC interview not mentioning that Moore was the prosecutor in an 1982 high profile case that sent her brother, Jimmy Wright, to prison on charges of possession of a controlled substance. This after a second charge, unlawful sale of a controlled substance, was dropped.
The case was known locally as the “drugs in the mouth” case because, according to the state’s evidence, Wright allegedly tried to hide cocaine wrapped in foil in his mouth while his home was being searched. The Gadsden Times on April 9, 1982, documented how in his closing arguments, Moore put wrapped foil in his mouth that was ten times larger than the foil allegedly found on Wright in order to demonstrate that such a feat was possible.
Speaking to Breitbart News, Gary claimed that she was not motivated by anger over Moore’s involvement in convicting her brother.
“Really, I had forgotten all about the case on my brother,” she stated. “That had nothing to do with why my making the statements that I made. I made this statement because the women came out. I had no reason to make it before then. I didn’t even think about Roy Moore.”
Unprompted, Gary referred to herself in third person to deny ever being arrested on drug charges even though she was not asked whether she was arrested on drug charges and there is no information to indicate that she was. “Faye Gary has never been arrested for drugs because Faye Gary doesn’t do drugs,” she stated.
Criminal documents reviewed by Breitbart News show that in addition to her brother, Gary’s son was also arrested on drug charges in 2008 but he was killed before trial. Her grandson is currently in federal prison after pleading guilty to one count of distribution of cocaine. Gary discussed both cases in our interview, but she said that the matters should not impact her credibility.
The news media did such little vetting of Gary that many major publications reporting on the MSNBC interview got her last name wrong as did MSNBC. During the segment, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell correctly introduced the ex-cop as “Faye Gary, a retired Gadsden, Alabama, police officer.” In the middle of the 3-minute interview, a graphic on screen incorrectly labeled Gary as “Faye Gray.” Mitchell then ended the segment by correctly thanking “Faye Gary” for the interview.
Numerous publications, including the New York Daily News, Vice, the Seattle Times, and AOL.com wrongly reported her last name as Gray. The New York Times used her correct last name, Gary.
A simple Google search would have brought up Gary’s Facebook page, which has her correct last name.
During the interview with this reporter, Gary made numerous unsupported allegations against Moore before conceding that she could not prove her case.
“No, I don’t like his politics,” Gary stated when asked about her own political beliefs. “Because he hates Jews. He hates blacks. He hates Muslim. He hates Gays. And I don’t know how he can hide behind the Ten Commandments and people can believe him that he is speaking truth. And he speaks hate toward these people and these other races.”
Gary went on to claim that Moore “wanted to keep segregation here in the south.”
Here is a transcript of the ensuing exchange:
KLEIN: He (Moore) said that he wanted to keep segregation in the South?
GARY: You can search the records. You will find it.
KLEIN: What about Jews? What did he ever say about Jews?
GARY: I don’t know exactly what he said about Jews, but he doesn’t like Muslims. I know he doesn’t like Muslims. It is my personal feeling that he doesn’t like blacks.
KLEIN: Well, your personal feeling or you know that he doesn’t like blacks? … That’s a very strong statement. You are saying that he hates blacks. I have done a lot of research on him in general and I have never run across him ever making a racist statement or saying that there should be segregation in Alabama. So, are you sure he hates blacks?”
GARY: I am not sure. That is my feeling
KLEIN: And you are sure that he hates Jews? Because I also haven’t heard anything about that one.
GARY: Well, that is my personal feeling.
Gary was misleading when she charged that Moore “wanted to keep segregation here in the south.”
She was referring to a 2004 symbolic amendment seeking to remove racist language from the state constitution calling for “separate schools for white and colored children.” The racist mandate was not being enforced and had already been struck down by state and federal courts.
Moore and other conservatives took issue not with the removal of the racist, segregationist language, but with a provision added to the amendment which had passed the Democratic-controlled state legislature seeking to nix a 1956 amendment declaring Alabamans had no constitutional “right to education or training at public expense.” The amendment eventually failed to pass a statewide vote.
Even the far-left Talking Points Memo blog admitted that Moore’s opposition to the amendment was about the added public expense clause, with the politician fearing that the provision could lead to tax increases.
The blog related:
Moore and hardline conservatives pounced to argue the removal of that language would allow for a backdoor tax increase by judges who would see it as granting a constitutional right to an education, warning it would hurt taxpayers and threaten private schools and homeschoolers.
It cited Moore as telling the Birmingham Times in 2004 that the amendment would “open the door to an enormous tax increase.”
Meanwhile, in her interview with Breitbart News, Gary repeated her unsubstantiated claims about protecting cheerleaders from Moore. She claimed that her police department “had gotten a complaint that Roy Moore had been standing around watching the cheerleaders.”
“We worked the ball games,” she continued. “We worked all over the stadium. We were told to pay special attention to the cheerleaders’ stage. We had plenty to do at the ball game but that was one of the assignments also.”
Asked whether she was aware of another former or current police officer who would be able to publicly verify those claims, Gary responded, “No. I don’t know anybody that would want to go get on the news and tell it. I don’t. I sure don’t. I wish I did.”
Gary was challenged on why she waited all these years to go public.
Here is a transcript of that section of the interview:
KLEIN: If you knew about these rumors, why wait until now? If it is true, then couldn’t you have protected other women before now?
GARY: No. I couldn’t have protected anybody. I came out after the nine women came out. I remembered the incident when it happened back in the late 70s and early 80s. I had no reason to come out.
KLEIN: He was a Supreme Court Justice (in Alabama). He was a top politician in Alabama. So why now? Why not then?
GARY: I had no reason to come out. When the Corfman girl came out with her story that’s when I came out with my statement. After she came out with hers.
KLEIN: What I am saying is if you believe…
GARY (interrupts): Listen man, I know what Breitbart News is. So, when you quote me you better quote me right.
KLEIN: Oh, we are quoting every word. Don’t worry. I am not going to misquote you.
GARY: Ok. I came out after the women came out with the accusations of what Roy Moore had done to them. I had no reason to come out before that. Had they not come out, I never would have even thought about what Roy Moore did. Because he wasn’t somebody that I thought about.
Besides her allegations about ballgames, Gary was also quoted by the New York Times as claiming that “it was a known fact: Roy Moore liked young girls.”
“It was treated like a joke. That’s just the way it was,” Gary told the newspaper.
Appearing on ABC’s This Week, National Public Radio’s Cokie Roberts admitted that “for years” the female press corps has covered up sexual misconduct on Capitol Hill.
While speaking about John Conyers and Al Franken, two Democrats facing numerous sexual misconduct allegations, Roberts let this bomb matter-of-factly drop on the left-wing Sunday show, “I mean, we all talked about for years: ‘Don’t get in the elevator with him,’ you know, and the whole every-female in the press corps knew that, right, don’t get in elevator with him.”
Which “him” is Roberts referring to? Conyers? Franken? Are there others?
But back up just a moment– According to Roberts, “every” woman in the press corps knew that there was sexual misconduct going on in congress, knew that it was so brazen and so permissive that not even a female reporter was safe on an elevator, and NO ONE REPORTED IT?
How do things get so brazen that a Conyers or a Franken or a whomever feels perfectly safe groping a journalist on an elevator? I will tell you how — when said groper knows there will be no accountability for his behavior.
I am 51-years-old, and I have seen a bit of the world; I have seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion and I have watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. But something I have never seen is a man grope a woman without her consent.
Yet, according to Roberts, our wonderful, glorious, utterly useless press corps knew for years this was going on in congress and covered it up, said nothing, let it slide, ENABLED IT, and through their silence, encouraged it.
What else are they covering up? What else are they allowing to happen in order to protect scumbags?
Other than the fact that our elites suck, this is my theory…
As we all know, Cokie Roberts is a lefty, as is 99% of the female press corps. Does anyone doubt, then, that the primary elevator gropers are/were Democrats, are/wereTed Kennedy/Franken/Conyers-types who voted the way in which the females press corps wanted them to vote, so a little snatch of media-bootie in an elevator was considered a small price to pay for abortion-on-demand?
And this is why, in my opinion, congress has gotten away with covering up these taxpayer-funded sexual harassment settlements for two decades. The media has known about this. Of course they have. Nothing was reported, though, because the names on that list are primarily Democrat “icons” like Conyers.
Even now, even when we know about this secret fund, the media’s interest in the story, in exposing the wrongdoers, is practically non-existent. This should be the biggest story in the world, the narrative dominating everything else. It is all there — a $17 million slush fund, cover ups, corruption, sex — but the media does not really care. Just last week, the left-wing Politico was downplaying this outrage, hoping to wrist-flick it all away. And I think we all know why…
Democrats sure got it good.
So good, in fact, Cokie is still not being asked to names names.
With the NFL’s Week 11 action wrapping up, it quickly became clear that football fans had found other things to do as thousands of empty seats could be seen in stadiums from coast to coast.
With TV ratings off nearly 20 percent over all and the networks already known to have lost up to $500 million in ad revenue, it is becoming clear that last year’s 12 percent decline wasn’t because of the raucous political season, a claim that served as the excuse for the 2016 season’s ratings loss.
The ratings slide is reflected in the skimpy attendance at the stadiums, too, with Week 11 photos showing that there are still empty seats galore.
To cite just a few:
As the Cincinnati Bengals beat the Denver Broncos, it appears that Denver fans stayed home from Mile High Stadium. Lots of unsold seats available:
The situation was no better in Cleveland at First Energy Stadium as the Browns got crushed both in attendance and by the Jacksonville Jaguars, 19-7:
The New York Giants may have toppled the Kansas City Chiefs in a 12-9 final, but fans weren’t there to see it at Met Life Stadium:
The Green Bay Packers apparently didn’t pack the stands as they got totally blown out by the Baltimore Ravens in a pitiful 23-0 final. But, the crowd at Lambeau Field was just as pitiful:
Accurate description for crowd at Hard Rock Stadium right now
Finally, the Houston Texans were able to beat the Arizona Cardinals 31-21, but were not able to fill seats as effectively:
With some analysts saying that the worst of the TV ratings fall may have peaked for 2017, the seats in stadiums are still going unfilled with only 6 more weeks of the season to go.
