Yesterday Brian Ross, Today Ali Watkins – New York Times Moves “Reporter #2” Out of Washington DC

Kah - Boom!

Everybody should be reading Sundance over at the Conservative Treehouse for insight like this.  You'll never hear it's like or quality on the Main Stream Media.

The executive suite corporate media are making moves of journalists who all circle around the recently indicted senate intelligence committee staffer James Wolfe.  Mr. Wolfe is charged with with the very serious crime of leaking classified information to the press.  The motivation for the moves by the media is transparent.

James Wolfe has pleaded not guilty. A trial seems likely. It is virtually guaranteed that many, if not all, of James Wolfe’s media contacts will become part of the trial record if he takes his defense all the way to criminal court without coping a plea deal. That means there are potentially dozens of reporters and corporate outlets who might find themselves in the headlines as evidence while the DOJ prosecutes Wolfe.

Today the New York Times begins dealing with "deep throat" journalist Ali Watkins.

(Via NYT) The New York Times demoted a reporter who acknowledged a romantic relationship with a Senate staffer who is suspected of leaking information to journalists.

Times editor Dean Baquet said Tuesday he would reassign the reporter, Ali Watkins, from the paper’s Washington bureau to New York in the wake of revelations that she had been involved with James Wolfe, the former head of security for the Senate Intelligence Committee. Watkins covered the committee for a number of publications, although not the Times.

Interestingly, the Times is upset with Watkins not revealing the executed search warrant that seized her records.

A secondary issue for the Times was Watkins’s failure to tell her editors for nearly four months that federal prosecutors had seized her records as part of their investigation. The Department of Justice notified Watkins in February that her records were part of the investigation, but she withheld this highly unusual — and newsworthy — information on the advice of her attorney until early June.

The indictment against Wolfe was sealed until June 7th, 2018. The feds nailed Wolfe on December 15th, 2017. Everything happening between December 15th and June 7th is six months of the FBI hunting leakers and connecting leaks to journalists.

Ms. Ali Watkins, was identified and an appropriate search warrant was authorized by the court.  Ms. Watkins was notified February 13, 2018.  [Document link]  No doubt part of that notification included her agreement, based on conversation with her lawyers, to keep quiet while the FBI continued the investigation; OR Ms. Watkins could be charged with interference and easily go from being a “subject in” to “the target of” an investigation

Why is the New York Times apoplectic about not being notified?  Because Ms. Ali Watkins was essentially a legal surveillance virus infecting all of her contacts at the newspaper for a period of four months.  All of her electronic communication was at risk of being monitored; including all of the contacts and instructions she was getting from her bosses at the New York Times HQ.

Whammo! 

Thus, all of that could potentially, maybe probably, come out at trial.   There could be huge problems with that, as we would all get to have a front row seat at a demonstration of how the foul sausage that is the news at the New York Times, and by extension the press in general, is made.  I doubt it will be pretty or that it will smell very good.

Notice how when Brian Ross was let go from his job the press made it out to be because of the General Flynn reporting he did.  It was nothing of the sort.  Classic distraction technique by a guilty media.

We are just getting started here.