You Read It Here First, Folks

The New Yorker and Mother Jones start to catch up

The journalism establishment is stepping on their dicks trying to catch up to the Buma story, whose statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee was published on this blog in mid-July.

The New Yorker assigned David Kirkpatrick, a Pulitzer winner, to describe in florid prose what you could read for yourself here a month before they published on August 14. He references this blog, but the Condé Nasty cartel won’t link it:

Although I obtained his statement independently, it recently became public because a conservative blogger had also obtained it, and posted it online, seemingly in an attempt to preëmpt the Senate committee. (The blogger, bizarrely, appended a PDF of the statement to a wholly unrelated post about Israeli influence in Washington.) Scott Horton, a lawyer for Buma, called the leak “unfortunate” and said that his client declined to comment at this time. “We are at the outset of a sensitive and confidential process,” Horton told me. The F.B.I., which has had a copy of Buma’s statement for weeks, also declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for the Senate committee. A spokesperson for the House Judiciary Committee said that it was “still weighing” what Buma had told its staff, “as we do with all whistle-blowers.” Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment, and neither did a lawyer for Fuks.

I hope Mr. Kirkpatrick doesn’t beat his wife as badly as he abuses the English language. Notice he is at pains to obscure who actually had it first. “Also obtained it,” indeed.

Kirkpatrick finds it bizarre that any of this is connected to the large payouts routinely made to top-level FBI officials by Israeli contractors and oligarchs, I guess because he’s been living under a rock.

He accuses me of trying to “preempt” the Senate committee, whatever the hell that means. He’s publishing before the committee himself! This is how journalism works these days, the liberal mandarins in the industry are more likely to cast aspersions for publishing evidence of wrongdoing than credit it.

He didn’t contact me, but at least he didn't try to get me to take the statement down, like the Post and Insider did. The Post hasn’t run a story yet, contrary Joseph Menn telling me they would have to. Menn’s Google bio says he’s “longest serving and most respected mainstream journalist on cyber security,” like he’s in the army or something. Respected by whom, kemosabe?

Mother Jones ran a story yesterday, which initially got the timeline wrong. I bugged Dan Friedman about it, and they were good enough to add a link and change it to this:

In July, Buma sent the Senate Judiciary Committee a 22-page statement full of eye-popping allegations, and the document leaked and was first reported last month by Insider (after a conservative blogger had posted it online). According to Buma’s account, Giuliani was used as an asset by a Ukrainian oligarch tied to Russian intelligence and other Russian operatives for a disinformation operation that aimed to discredit Joe Biden and boost Trump in the 2020 presidential race. Moreover, Buma says he was the target of retaliation within the bureau for digging into this.

Thanks, guys.

Messrs. Schwartz and Menn tried to pull the whole, “he’s concerned for his safety” thing with me. That’s conceptually wrong.

Buma’s fate is in the hands of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I’ve told him nothing about what he should or shouldn’t do. But if what he says in that statement is true, probably four or five different foreign governments already have an interest in him, there are interagency rivalries implicated here, and a lot of powerful U.S.-based actors now have an interest too. He’s past the point where he can run or hide. He seems like a pretty good agent, I’m sure he knows that. The question is whether America’s elected leaders will have his back.