JRL NEWSWATCH: “What the Press Doesn’t Know About Ukraine; Reporters will have to ask a lot more questions to understand the missing context of the Trump call” – Wall Street Journal/ Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

October 3, 2019 JRL Russia List JRL NewsBlog, Ukraine, Russo-Ukrainian War, United States, U.S.-Russian Relations

“We might not be here if the mainstream media, which loved the Steele Dossier when it seemed to incriminate … Trump, had later shown an equal interest in investigating its origins as a partisan fabrication. In his now-famous transcript … Trump mainly presses Ukraine’s new president for dirt not on the Bidens but on the known unknowns of 2016. ‘I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine,’ he says. ‘There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation.’ This is the ‘favor’ he actually seeks from Ukraine’s president. … [H]e may be [focusing on] Ukrainian legislator Serhiy Leshchenko, who injected into the U.S. race a secret document on Paul Manafort’s finances that later became a major factor in the Mueller investigation. Only intermittently have outlets like Politico and the Hill ever shown interest in the alleged pro-Clinton efforts of the previous Ukrainian government. …”