The headline of the story in Ukraine reads: “Trump Chose an Ex-Congresswoman Who Is ‘On the Payroll’ of the Kremlin as the Director of U.S. National Intelligence.” It targets Trump’s nomination of four-term former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard to be his Director of National Intelligence. It is published yesterday by Zerkalo Nedeli (ZN,ua) (“Mirror of the Week”), the online version of Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, said by Wikipedia to be “partially funded by Western non-governmental organizations.”
Needless to say, there are no paychecks, there are no attempts to find any paychecks. The article is based in total on Kiev’s infamous “Center for Countering Disinformation” (CCD). The article states: “In 2022, the Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine reported that Gabbard has been working for foreign audiences for several years with the Kremlin’s money. In particular, the former congresswoman said that ‘the United States is guilty of Russia’s military aggression’ because it has been ‘provoking’ the aggressor for many years. She stated that ‘the ruling elite of Washington wants to kill as many Russians as possible with the hands of Ukrainians.’”
It then quotes the CCD directly: “Tulsi Gabbard has been repeatedly accused of having ties to Vladimir Putin, but this does not prevent her from acting as an expert on Fox News. In addition to the topic of war, Gabbard is actively misinforming the world about the presence of weapons of mass destruction developments in Ukraine’s biolaboratories.”
Also yesterday, Ukrainska Pravda followed suit and made the story their online lead. They also provided no evidence and simply repeated the same CCD formulation.
