Out on Twitter, New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi ignited a controversy by announcing that she'd heard from her Deep State sources within the Trump administration that the pretext for the U.S. strike on Iranian terrorist chieftain Qassem Soleimani was pretty flimsy:

1. I’ve had a chance to check in with sources, including two US officials who had intelligence briefings after the strike on Suleimani. Here is what I’ve learned. According to them, the evidence suggesting there was to be an imminent attack on American targets is “razor thin”.

— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) January 4, 2020

Seems she couldn't wait to get that "scoop" into the paying subscription part of the Times, so out it flew on freebird Twitter.  Maybe it didn't even measure up to the Times' fact-checking standards.  The foreign desk is quite possibly tougher than the political desk.

Or maybe it was because the real point of her post was to throw out an editorial comment and get something viral going.  She's got 384,000 followers.

17. Before I go back to the pool let me just say the obvious: No one’s trying to downplay Suleimani’s crimes. The question is why now? His whereabouts have been known before. His resume of killing-by-proxy is not a secret. Hard to decouple his killing from the impeachment saga.

— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) January 4, 2020

Wag the dog, right?  Same as Bill Clinton did back when he had some impeachment problems?  That one's been blowing around for a while now, and she seems to like it.  Her 17-part story-length tweet sequence seems to be all about wanting to "prove" it, actually.  Callimachi claims to be an "ex-refugee" on her Twitter feed.  A search shows that she was originally from Romania but raised in the states.  Clinton's real wag-the-dog war happened in that region in the 1990s, so it's possible it was some defining event for her.

Two premises here: that Soleimani's killing means that war with Ira is inevitable, which is the line the left is putting out, and Trump is doing it to whip up the masses to save him from impeachment.

Enter Richard Grenell, President Trump's ambassador to Germany and probably the most effective and commonsensical voice on all foreign policy. This man has Trump's ear:

If they exist, you should never listen to your anonymous sources again. They don’t know. https://t.co/GvC9reSQPz

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) January 4, 2020

Seriously, who would really know, other than Grenell?  He probably knew all kinds of classified things on why Soleimani needed to be taken out.  And the little #NeverTrump pipsqueaks were likely too low-level and cut out of the loop.  Grenell schooled another one here:

The Pentagon doesn’t do this. This is completely fake. https://t.co/jk8n5AweAT

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) January 5, 2020

For good measure, he gave Ben Rhodes a smack-down, too.

Pompeo is right. You thought a charm offense on Iran would work - and it didn’t. Even countries that support your JCPOA admit this now. https://t.co/J0cxsbisto

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) January 6, 2020

Bottom line: Neither of Callimachi's premises is correct.  They are just the doings of the Deep State, trying to undermind President Trump.  GatewayPundit has more here. 

When you've got Grenell telling you your anonymous sources are junk, it leaves just one conclusion: they are junk.  The New York Times has gotten schooled.

Image credit: Twitter screen shot.