MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow didn’t learn her lesson last time, did she? Remember the infamous Trump Tax Return she hyped and ultimately failed at? Yeah, this is pretty much just like that.
As written for The Daily Caller by Chuck Ross:
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow breathlessly reported last week that someone sent her show a “fairly convincing” fake National Security Agency document alleging illicit contacts between a Trump campaign member and the Russian government.
The left-leaning TV host suggested that the hoax was intended to undercut her show’s credibility and that of other news outlets.
“Heads up,” was her word of advice to other journalists.
Maddow’s 21-minute “exclusive” segment was widely interpreted as an implication that someone in the White House, or a Republican operative, or even someone at the website The Intercept (which published a document last month on which the phony report was based) had sent Maddow the fabrication.
On June 7, two days after The Intercept published a legitimate NSA report that had been stolen by a contractor, an unidentified person emailed Maddow’s show what they claimed was an NSA report alleging potential campaign collusion between the Trump team and Kremlin.
“Somebody, for some reason, appears to be shopping a fairly convincing fake NSA document that purports to directly implicate somebody from the Trump campaign in working with the Russians in their attack in the election,” Maddow said.
“This is news, because: why is someone shopping a forged document of this kind to news organizations covering the Trump-Russia affair?” she asked.
Maddow described how her team investigated the fake document. She noted that there was some typos and errors in the report. She also said that red flags were raised because the report identified the Trump campaign team member by name, something that would not be found in a typical NSA report.
But Maddow portrayed her team’s sleuthing as intensive. She also said that metadata in the faked document showed that it was created before The Intercept published its legitimate report. The implication was that someone who had initial access to The Intercept document — perhaps someone at The Intercept — had send fabricated documents to Maddow.
It Looks Like Rachel Maddow Hilariously Exaggerated Her Fake NSA Document ‘Scoop’
