[Peace-discuss] Guardians of the Magnitsky Myth

[David Johnson]

The Magnitsky Act was the opening salvo of the new cold war with Russia

David J.

 

Guardians of the Magnitsky Myth

July 21, 2018 

FROM THE ARCHIVES: In pursuit of Russia-gate, U.S. mainstream media embraces
any attack on Russia and works to ensure Americans don't hear the other side
of the story, as with the Magnitsky myth, reported Robert Parry on Oct. 28,
2017.

By Robert Parry
Special to Consortium News

 
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/robert-parry-306x264.
jpg>
https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/robert-parry-306x264-1
30x130.jpgAs Russia-gate becomes the go-to excuse to marginalize and
suppress independent and dissident media in the United States, a warning of
what the future holds is the blacklisting of a documentary that debunks the
so-called Magnitsky case.

The emerging outlines of the broader suppression are now apparent in moves
by major technology companies - under intense political pressure - to
<https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/26/russia-gate-breeds-establishment-mcca
rthyism/> unleash algorithms that will hunt down what major media outlets
and mainstream "fact-checkers" (with their own checkered histories of
getting facts wrong) deem to be "false" and then
<https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/25/nyts-assault-of-press-freedom/>
stigmatize that information with pop-up "warnings" or simply make finding it
difficult for readers using major search engines.

For those who believe in a meaningful democracy, those tactics may be
troubling enough, but the Magnitsky case, an opening shot in the New Cold
War with Russia, has demonstrated how aggressively the Western
powers-that-be behave toward even well-reported investigative projects that
unearth inconvenient truth.

Throughout the U.S. and Europe, there has been determined effort to prevent
the American and European publics from seeing this detailed documentary that
dissects the fraudulent claims at the heart of the Magnitsky story.

The documentary - "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes" - was produced by
filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, who is known as a fierce critic of Russian
President Vladimir Putin but who in this instance found the West's widely
accepted, anti-Russian Magnitsky storyline to be a lie.

However, instead of welcoming Nekrasov's discoveries as an important part of
the debate over the West's policies toward Russia, the European Parliament
pulled the plug on a premiere in Brussels and - except for a one-time
showing at the Newseum in Washington - very few Americans have been allowed
to see the documentary.

Instead, we're fed a steady diet of the frothy myth whipped up by hedge-fund
investor William

 
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Browder-from-Twitter.
jpg>
https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Browder-from-Twitter.j
pg

Browder: Buys silence.

Browder and sold to the U.S. and European governments as the basis for
sanctioning Russian officials. For years now, Browder has been given a free
hand to spin his dog-ate-my-homework explanation about how some of his firms
got involved a $230 million tax fraud in Russia.

Browder insists that some "corrupt" Russian police officers stole his
companies' corporate seals and masterminded a convoluted conspiracy. But why
anyone would trust a hedge-fund operator who got rich exploiting Russia's
loose business standards is hard to comprehend.

The answer is that Browder has used his money and political influence to
scare off and silence anyone who dares point to the glaring contradictions
and logical gaps in his elaborate confection.

So, the hedge-fund guy who renounced his U.S. citizenship in favor of a
British passport gets the royal treatment whenever he runs to Congress. His
narrative just fits so neatly into the demonization of Russia and the frenzy
over stopping "Russian propaganda and disinformation" by whatever means
necessary.

This summer, Browder
<https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/bill-browders-testimon
y-to-the-senate-judiciary-committee/534864/> testified before the Senate
Judiciary Committee and argued that people involved in arranging the
one-time showing of Nekrasov's documentary should be prosecuted for
violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), which carries a
five-year prison term.

Meanwhile, the U.S. mainstream media helps reinforce Browder's dubious tale
by smearing anyone who dares question it as a "Moscow stooge" or a "useful
idiot."

Magnitsky and Russia-gate

The Magnitsky controversy now has
<https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/13/how-russia-gate-met-the-magnitsky-myt
h/> merged with the Russia-gate affair because Russian lawyer Natalia
Veselnitskaya, who traveled to America to challenge Browder's account,
arranged a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump campaign advisers
in June 2016 to present this other side of the story.

Though nothing apparently came from that meeting, The New York Times, which
always treats Browder's account as flat fact, led its Saturday editions with
a breathless story entitled, "
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/us/politics/trump-tower-veselnitskaya-ru
ssia.html?_r=0> A Kremlin Link to a Memo Taken to Trump Tower," citing
similarities between Veselnitskaya's memo on the Magnitsky case and an
account prepared by "one of Russia's most powerful officials, the prosecutor
general Yuri Y. Chaika." Cue the spooky music as the Times challenges
Veselnitskaya's honesty.

 <https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/director.jpg>
https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/director-400x186.jpg

Film director Andrei Nekrasov, who produced "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the
Scenes."

Yet, the Times article bows to Browder as the ultimate truth-teller,
including repetition of his assertion that Sergei Magnitsky was a
whistleblowing "tax lawyer," rather than one of Browder's accountants
implicated in the tax fraud.

While Magnitsky's profession may seem like a small detail, it gets to the
heart of the mainstream media's acceptance of Browder's depiction of
Magnitsky - as a crusading lawyer who died of medical neglect in a Russian
prison - despite overwhelming evidence that Magnitsky was really a clever
accountant caught up in the scheme.

The "lawyer" falsehood - so eagerly swallowed by the Times and other
mainstream outlets - also bears on Browder's overall credibility: If he is
lying about Magnitsky's profession, why should anyone believe his other
self-serving claims?

As investigative reporter Lucy Komisar noted in
<https://100r.org/2017/10/master-of-reinvention/> a recent article on the
case, Browder offered a different description when he testified under oath
in a New York court deposition in a related federal civil case.

In that adversarial setting, when Browder was asked if Magnitsky had a law
degree, Browder said, "I'm not aware that he did." When asked if Magnitsky
had gone to law school, Browder answered: "No."

Yet, the Times and the rest of the mainstream media accept that Magnitsky
was a "lawyer," all the better to mislead the American public regarding his
alleged role as a whistleblower.

The rest of Browder's story stretches credulity even more as he offers a
convoluted explanation of how he wasn't responsible for bogus claims made by
his companies to fraudulently sneak away with $230 million in refunded
taxes.

Rather than show any skepticism toward this smarmy hedge-fund operator and
his claims of victimhood, the U.S. Congress and mainstream media just take
him at his word because, of course, his story fits the ever-present "Russia
bad" narrative.

Plus, these influential people have repeated the falsehoods so often and
suppressed contrary evidence with such arrogance that they apparently feel
that they get to define reality, which - in many ways - is what they want to
do in the future by exploiting the Russia-gate hysteria to restore their
undisputed role as the "gatekeepers" on "approved" information.

Which is why Americans and Europeans should demand the right to see the
Nekrasov documentary and make their own judgments, possibly with Browder
given a chance after the show to rebut the overwhelming evidence of his
deceptions.

Instead, Browder has used his wealth and connections to make sure that
almost no one gets to see the deconstruction of his fable. And The New York
Times is okay with that.

[For details on the Nekrasov documentary, see Consortiumnews.com's "
<https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/02/a-blacklisted-film-and-the-new-cold-w
ar/> A Blacklisted Film and the New Cold War."]

The late investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra
stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his
last book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in
<https://org.salsalabs.com/o/1868/t/12126/shop/shop.jsp?storefront_KEY=1037>
print here or as an e-book (from
<http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Stolen-Narrative-Washington-ebook/dp/B009RXX
OIG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350755575&sr=8-1&keywords=americas+stolen+narrat
ive> Amazon and
<http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/americas-stolen-narrative?keyword=americas+
stolen+narrative&store=ebook&iehack=%E2%98%A0> barnesandnoble.com).

 

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