Yes, the Trump-Russia “memorandum of understanding” document is real, and yes, Robert Mueller has it
Last night Palmer Report brought you the story of how Robert Mueller has obtained a copy of the secret “memorandum of understanding” that existed between Donald Trump and the Russians with regard to the election. Even though we answered the question right there in our article, we’ve nonetheless spent the day facing widespread questions about where we got it from, as well as those who are assuming it can’t be “real” because they’re not seeing it in major media headlines.
As we said in the original article, the source is respected political strategist Mike Murphy. He’s a straight shooter, he’s deeply connected in politics, he has a long and strong track record, and he doesn’t make things up. If he says the memorandum of understanding exists and Mueller has it, then it’s legitimate. In fact he announced it on MSNBC last night during Lawrence O’Donnell’s show. Murphy is a darling of the major media outlets – yet none of them ran with the memorandum of understanding story today.
We couldn’t tell you why. Maybe the major media outlets are planning to sit on the story until they can get one of their own inside sources to tell them about it, so they can then claim it as an “exclusive” story, even though Murphy had it first (this happens all the time). Maybe they don’t want to bite on it yet because they don’t know how to turn a document they haven’t read into an ongoing narrative that’s sufficiently ratings-friendly for them. Or maybe they just don’t want to take the kind of heat that we’ve been taking all day for having written about this kind of still-developing story.
In a matter of days or weeks, the mainstream media will bring you “breaking news” and “exclusive reporting” about Robert Mueller having obtained a memorandum of understanding between Donald Trump and Russia. If you’re judging Palmer Report’s credibility based on whether you’re seeing the same headlines that day from major news outlets, you’re doing it wrong. Judge us when the major media finally reports the same publicly available information that we just gave you. Then ask the major media why it sat on the story after it was already out there.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report