NEW YORK — Whenever President Donald Trump is about to embark on a major diplomatic initiative, like clockwork CNN, the Washington Post or the New York Times drop a leak about the Trump-Russia conspiracy narrative seemingly designed to taint the presidency with the aura of treason. With Trump’s major foreign policy speech today at the United Nations General Assembly, it was only a matter of which of those three news media outlets would drop an anonymously sourced story attempting to once again tie Trump to Russia despite the lack of any actual evidence. As we learned last night, it was CNN’s turn. Lo and behold, the cable network that played a critical role in originally publicizing the existence of a largely discredited 35-page dossier on Trump released a new story last night trying to ratchet up the Russia conspiracy storyline. CNN cited “three sources familiar with” the Russia investigation revealing that the government utilized a FISA court warrant to secretly snoop on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort before and after the 2016 presidential election, including during periods when Manafort was known to have communicated with Trump. One has to read to the bottom of the story to discover that
