Trump Sends Link to NY Times Report on Steele Dossier After YEARS of Railing Against NY Times Reporting
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As media critics and political pundits continue to grapple with the fallout from the indictment of Igor Danchenko for his role in putting together the “Steele dossier,” former President Donald Trump made the strange move on Wednesday to hype an article in the New York Times on the topic — the very publication he accused of “fake news” and bad reporting for years over the Russia investigation.
The simple email message from Trump’s Save America PAC said only:
ICYMI: “Authorities Arrest Analyst Who Contributed to Steele Dossier”
Read the full article by Adam Goldman and Charlie Savage with the New York Times here.
What makes the email so extraordinary is the fact that Trump railed against the New York Times for much of his presidency, particularly in regards to its reporting on the Trump-Russia scandal.
Danchenko, who helped create the “Steele dossier” alleging potential ties between Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russia, was indicted last week on five counts of making false statements to the FBI.
John Durham, the special prosecutor appointed by the U.S. Justice Department during Trump’s administration, referred evidence to a grand jury that indicted Danchenko.
After Danchenko’s indictment, multiple news outlets, like ABC News, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, announced they are “reviewing” past coverage of the Steele dossier. The indictment also led Trump and his allies to claim exoneration and validation for their attacks on the media which pushed the story and upped the credibility of the dossier.
Trump’s long record of attacking the New York Times includes tweets calling it “The failing @nytimes” and claiming it “has been wrong about me from the very beginning.” He has attacked most of the paper’s top reporters, columnists, and editors (full database of insults here) while calling their reporting “fake news” and “phony.” All of which begs the question why would Trump link to the New York Times as the credible source for what he sees as hyping his exoneration?
