Contributed by @BoumtjeBoumtje
In Lee Smith’s book The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History, Smith outlines how news outlets were utilized to fictitiously tie President Trump to Russia in order to provide evidence for the Russia collusion hoax. It appears to be happening once again as a disturbing, but all too familiar pattern is emerging in the media in an attempt to link the President with yet another foreign power.
This time, the (dis)information campaign being pushed by the media attempts to fictitiously tie President Trump to an elaborate collusion scheme with Turkish actors in order to enrich himself and influence the outcome of the then-upcoming 2016 presidential election.
The recent, well-publicized hit piece in the New York Times on President Donald Trump’s illegally leaked 2016 and 2017 tax returns (The President’s Taxes: Long-Concealed Records Show Trump’s Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance) appears to be part of a series of news reports being published by various media outlets that is meant to lay the groundwork for a broader conspiracy theory to be used as an “October Surprise” and/or to attack and undermine a second Donald Trump presidential term.
The NYT article focuses attention on business dealings and contacts that President Trump has had in Turkey, with particular emphasis on Trump’s interactions with Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, chairman of the Turkey-U.S. Business Council (TAİK). TAiK is the oldest bilateral trade organization in Turkey and represents roughly 70% of Turkey’s GDP.
Screenshot from the Sep. 27, 2020 New York Times article The President’s Taxes: Long-Concealed Records Show Trump’s Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance
There appear to be numerous other examples of articles appearing in other publications which attempt to link Pres. Trump to Turkey. NBC News recently published their own article (Donald Trump’s longtime business connections in Turkey back in the spotlight) attempting to make nefarious connections between the Trump family and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The NBC News article builds on the New York Times article, again referencing Yalcindag and citing social media postings by Ivanka Trump from as far back as 2012 as some kind of evidence of misdealings. The article is laughable on its face because it hints at a violation of the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution, which can be categorized in the same sphere as violations of the Logan Act of 1799 which no one with any knowledge of US law takes seriously and are simply used as threats by politicians to target their political opponents.
What really draws a parallel between the lead up to the 2016 election Trump-Russia Collusion smear job and the current, possible (dis)information campaign are articles published in lesser known publications, which are often cited as “evidence” by legacy media outlets like the New York Times & Washington Post, as well as congressional investigations. Case in point, a recent article in OCCRP.org (Behind Trump’s Turkish ‘Bromance’: Oligarchs, Crooks, and a Multi-Million-Dollar Lobbying Deal) which attempts to connect Trump and figures in Turkey to the same Russia, Putin, and Ukraine hoaxes which have all been thoroughly debunked. OCCRP, which is partially funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, is the same publication that was used and cited to plant the “Ukraine Quid Pro Quo” accusations that formed the foundations of the Rep. Adam Schiff-led impeachment effort of President Trump. This September 18, 2020 article is again laughable because it continues to promote the accusations of the thoroughly discredited Trump Ukraine Impeachment hoax as established fact.
Screenshot from the Sep. 18, 2020 OCCRP article Behind Trump’s Turkish ‘Bromance’: Oligarchs, Crooks, and a Multi-Million-Dollar Lobbying Deal
What is notable is the OCCRP article pays particular attention to a man named Ekim Alptekin. Mr. Alptekin is the man accused by the Mueller Office of Special Counsel of hiring Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (Ret.) to act as an illegal foreign agent on behalf of Turkey. The article itself repeatedly makes reference to Alptekin and his business arrangement with Gen. Flynn. In Flynn’s plea agreement, he agreed to testify against Alptekin and Flynn’s business partner, Bijan Kian (referred to as Bijan Rafiekian in court filings). The judge in the case later set aside the verdict ruling no rational jury could convict based on the government’s case. It is also notable Alptekin was Yalcindag’s predecessor as chairman of TAiK at the time he employed the Flynn Intel Group and remains a member of the TAiK Executive Board.
Screenshot from the Sep. 18, 2020 OCCRP article Behind Trump’s Turkish ‘Bromance’: Oligarchs, Crooks, and a Multi-Million-Dollar Lobbying Deal
The Washington Pundit has learned attorneys for Alptekin were recently contacted by an investigative reporter for Buzzfeed and working with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) requesting comment on a series of articles titled The FinCEN Files detailing alleged corruption by major investment banks related to Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR). Specifically Buzzfeed & ICIJ requested comment on a series of questions about the SAR filed related to the payments to the Flynn Intel Group from his company Inovo BV for investigative work related to Fethullah Gülen. The payments in question have already been extensively covered in the media.
The Washington Pundit asked Alptekin for comment on the inquiry from Buzzfeed and ICIJ, and he responded, “Only reason [the] transaction got flagged is probably because Flynn’s company didn’t have much business. All payments 100% are in line with the agreements which were filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filing.”
Buzzfeed, it should be noted, was the critical publication in pushing the Steele Dossier in its entirety out into the public. As detailed by Lee Smith in The Plot Against the President, Buzzfeed used the January 10, 2017 CNN story “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him” as justification to publish the full dossier. Like OCCRP, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) is also funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
With recent revelations in the Flynn case, it now appears all but certain Flynn will have his case for allegedly lying to the FBI about discussing sanctions with Russian Ambassador Kislyak dismissed. But it seems clear, deep state actors are desperate to string the case out long enough to keep Flynn from speaking out publicly. Left wing media has begun to signal that if they can’t convict Flynn of the current charges, they may be able to come back after a possible Biden victory and have a Biden DOJ charge Flynn with the discredited FARA charges related to Turkey.
The pattern seems to be following the same playbook used in the Trump-Russian collusion run up to the 2016 presidential election. Soros-backed media outlets planting dirt on political targets to help fuel “bombshell” exposés in legacy media outlets, which appears to be the New York Times once again. They seem to be pulling in all the same elements from the prior hoaxes (Putin, Russia, Ukraine, etc.) with the added element of Turkey. If they hold to form, you should expect to see multiple independent stories related to Turkey which will all come to be tied together by a massive “bombshell” piece in the New York Times that will drop in late October near election day in a well-coordinated smear campaign. If the (dis)information campaign fails to prevent Trump from winning reelection, it will then be repurposed into yet another hoax that the Left will use to harass & undermine the president and attempt to impeach and remove him from office.
So why Turkey? Just speculation, but the obvious answer is it gives Trump’s enemies another means to go after Flynn and keep him quiet. Likewise Ekim Alptekin has recently begun to speak out about how he was targeted and framed just like Flynn by the Mueller Special Counsel team both in an interview with Mike Doran on his Counterbalance podcast and later by Tracy Beanz on her UncoverDC podcast, so there is a need to dirty him up and have him silenced as well.
But there seems to be another, as yet unknown, reason to target Turkey. Joe Biden and his campaign have focused an unusual amount of attention on Turkey recently including press releases meant to destabilize the Turkish government and this December 2019 comment to the New York Times editorial board where he all but called for an overthrow of Turkey’s President Erdoğan, the duly elected leader of a NATO ally. He has not seemed to use this type of hostile rhetoric with any other world leader up to and including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad right next door. We suspect there is more to be learned here.
Based on what we now know, we will soon see how this newest hoax plays out.
Read more about Ekim’s story here.
Follow me on Truth Social @AdamCarter
