Tag: nick merrill
Former Clinton Aide Slams Times’ Stealth Correction On Uranium One

Former Clinton Aide Slams Times’ Stealth Correction On Uranium One

On Tuesday, tucked into a paragraph of an article on how President Donald Trump had battled investigations against him for the past two years, The New York Times made an astonishing, seemingly accidental confession about a massive failure in their coverage of the 2016 presidential election.

“Using Congress’s oversight powers, the Republican lawmakers succeeding in doing what Donald Trump could not realistically do on his own: forcing into the open some of the government’s most sensitive investigative files  including secret wiretaps and the existence of an F.B.I. informant  which were part of the Russia inquiry,” said the article. “House Republicans opened investigations into the F.B.I.’s handling of the Clinton email case and a debunked Obama-era uranium deal indirectly linked to Mrs. Clinton.”

It is remarkable that the Times casually mentioned the Uranium One deal as a “debunked” scandal, noted Nick Merrill, a former State Department official and adviser to Hillary Clinton, because it was the Times that promoted that story in the first place:

Nick Merrill@NickMerrill

For those who don’t recall or have appropriately suppressed all 2016 election memories, this story came in April of 2015, 12 days after HRC announced she was running for President.

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Nick Merrill@NickMerrill

Because the NYT ran it, it carried enormous weight despite it being the result of a deal struck between the NYT & a book project funded by Steve Bannon.

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Nick Merrill@NickMerrill

It was incredibly problematic for the campaign as the right pounced and we worked to debunk it. Only much later through a lot of hard work educating people on the facts was it more widely accepted that Uranium One was complete crap.

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One of the saddest parts of the story, notes Merrill, is that all of this drove donor funding away from the Clinton Foundation, as it tried to do life-saving work distributing medications and funding global development.

Nick Merrill@NickMerrill

Worst of all, it had lasting damage on the @ClintonFdn, diverting resources from programs that quite literally save lives across the globe.

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Nick Merrill@NickMerrill

As frustrating as all of this was, thankfully the Clinton Foundation & the incredible people there are committed & resilient, so they have continued to do remarkable work. Here’s a recent piece about CF’s comeback & it’s work in Puerto Rico.https://www.axios.com/clinton-foundation-bill-hillary-puerto-rico-hurricanes-2df82398-5a9e-4574-97e3-4a219257f112.html 

The Clintons’ “Comeback Foundation” aids hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico

It has expanded its work worldwide with fresh momentum and more support.

axios.com

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The New York Times has faced criticism for its coverage in the 2016 election. For example, a review of the paper’s coverage found that they “ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all the policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.” The Clinton Cash saga is a major chapter in how the Times‘ editorial process fell short — and it arguably deserves more attention than a passing reference buried in an article on Trump.