In a rare Washington Post Fact Checker,
the paper actually printed something critical of the paper’s political darling,
Hillary Clinton. Seems even Glenn
Kessler couldn’t quite some of the blatant lies Hillary was attempting to spin
on Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday on 31 July 16.
Here is what the WaPo said but you will
notice they buried it on their website without posting it on their homepage
although they did post a Trump Fact Checker on the homepage. So much for WaPo fair and balanced reposting.
Here is what Glenn had to say about
Hillary:
Clinton’s
claim that the FBI director said her email answers were ‘truthful’
By
Glenn Kessler, 31 July 2016
“Director Comey said my answers
were truthful, and what I’ve said is consistent with what I have told the
American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify
retroactively certain of the emails.”
—Hillary Clinton, interview on “Fox News Sunday,” July 31, 2016
Clinton made these remarks
after “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace
played a video of her saying: “I did not email any classified material to
anyone on my email. There is no classified materials. I am confident that I
never sent nor received any information that was classified at the time. I had
not sent classified material nor received anything marked classified.”
As Wallace put it, “After a long investigation, FBI Director James Comey said
none of those things that you told the American public were true.”
After
Clinton denied that, Wallace played another video of an exchange between Comey
and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chair of the House Select Committee on
Benghazi:
GOWDY: Secretary Clinton said there was nothing marked classified on
her emails either sent or received. Was that true?
COMEY: That’s not true.
GOWDY: Secretary Clinton said,
“I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no
classified material.” Was that true?
COMEY: There was classified material emailed.
So what’s going on here?
The
Facts
Clinton is cherry-picking statements by Comey to preserve her narrative
about the unusual setup of a private email server. This allows her to skate
past the more disturbing findings of the FBI investigation.
For instance, when Clinton asserts “my answers were truthful,” a campaign
aide said she is referring to this statement by Comey to Congress: “We have no
basis to conclude she lied to the FBI.”
But that’s not the whole story. When House Oversight Chairman Jason
Chaffetz (R-Utah) asked whether Clinton had lied to the American public, Comey
dodged: “That’s a question I’m not qualified to answer. I can speak about what
she said to the FBI.”
At another point, Comey told Congress: “I really don’t want to get in
the business of trying to parse and judge her public statements. And so I think
I’ve tried to avoid doing that sitting here. … What matters to me is what did
she say to the FBI. That’s obviously first and foremost for us.”
Comey was also asked whether Clinton broke the law: “In connection with
her use of the email server? My judgment is that she did not,” Comey said.
As for retroactive classification of emails, Comey did say many emails
were retroactively classified. But he also said that some emails were
classified at the time — and Clinton and her aides should have been aware of
that.
Here’s how Comey put it in his lengthy statement when he announced the
completion of the investigation: “Although we did not find clear evidence that
Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the
handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their
handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
Comey said “seven e-mail chains concern matters
that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they
were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about
those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters.”
He added: “There is evidence to support a conclusion that any
reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those
government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters,
should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that
conversation.” He noted that “even if
information is not marked ‘classified’ in an e-mail, participants who know or
should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to
protect it.”
In her response to Wallace, Clinton at one point appeared to deflect responsibility to
her aides: “I relied on and had every reason to rely on the
judgments of the professionals with whom I worked. And so, in retrospect, maybe
some people are saying, well, among those 300 people, they made the wrong
call.”
Testifying before Congress, Comey said it was possible Clinton was not “technically
sophisticated” enough to understand what the classified markings meant.
But he said a government official should be attentive to such a marking.
The Pinocchio Test
As we have seen repeatedly in Clinton’s explanations of the email
controversy, she
relies on excessively technical and legalistic answers to explain her actions. While Comey did say there was no evidence she lied to
the FBI, that is not the same as saying she told the truth to the American
public — which was the point of Wallace’s question. Comey has repeatedly not
taken a stand on her public statements.
And although Comey did say many emails were retroactively classified, he
also said that there were some emails that were already classified that should
not have been sent on an unclassified, private server. That’s the uncomfortable
truth that Clinton has trouble admitting.
FOUR PINOCCHIOS
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