ldsuttonjr Loc: ShangriLa

PolitiFact Makes an Extraordinary Claim About Hillary Clinton and the FBI
December 8, 2017

The late, great film critic Roger Ebert used to grumble about being forced to provide star ratings for the movies he reviewed, saying there was no way to accurately characterize his thoughts on any given movie using such a restrictive system. When readers would complain about one star rating Ebert gave compared to another, he would implore them to ignore the stars as best they could and instead focus on what he had actually written about the films.

That’s not only good advice when it comes to movie reviews; it’s good advice when it comes to reading PolitiFact.

The difference being that you wouldn’t read a scathing Ebert review and then scroll to the bottom of the page to see he’d given the movie in question four stars. To one degree or another, the rating he slapped on the film would be consistent with the text. There was an internal logic to it.

That’s not the case with PolitiFact. Regardless of whether or not you agree with their partisan views – which are undeniably liberal – you should at least be able to discern their Truth-O-Meter rating from their own text on a given question. All too often, however, that’s not the case. And a recent fact-check illustrates the problem perfectly.

The fact to be checked? Donald Trump’s December 4th contention: “Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI.”

Here’s some of what PolitiFact had to say about that claim:

“Clinton exclusively used personal email when she was secretary of state between 2009 and 2013, the New York Times revealed, choosing to rely on two email servers in the basement of her home in Chappaqua, N.Y,” they wrote. “Clinton repeatedly claimed she did not have any classified emails on her server from time at the State Department, but an FBI investigation found some classified information ended up on her private server, which was an unclassified system.”

This is called a lie.

Okay, but the claim is not that she lied to the American people but that she lied to the FBI, a point PolitiFact later highlights.

“The distinction between what Clinton told the FBI and what she told the public is important,” they wrote. “Clinton earned a Pants on Fire for claiming that, regarding the presence of classified information in her email, ‘Comey said my answers were truthful, and what I’ve said is consistent with what I have told the American people.’”

Here, without any evidence at all, they are making the following case: That Hillary lied to the American people and then lied AGAIN by telling them that she told the FBI the same thing. But PolitiFact themselves admit that they have no idea what she told the FBI: “There is no transcript of the interview that FBI agents had with Clinton on July 2, 2016, about her email usage.”

Furthermore: “[FBI Director James] Comey was not present for the discussion.”

Mmm-hmm. So how do we end up with this conclusion?

“We at PolitiFact don’t know exactly what Clinton told FBI investigators. We also know, however, that Trump failed to back up his allegation. Former FBI director Comey in congressional testimony said there was no basis to conclude she lied to the FBI. We rate Trump’s claim False.”

Uhhh…

This isn’t “fact checking.” This is choosing to believe one individual who wasn’t present for Clinton’s interrogation over another individual who wasn’t present for Clinton’s interrogation. Worse, it is choosing to ignore the one person – Clinton – who WAS present and insists that what she told the FBI was consistent with what she told the public. And what she told the public was not “inaccurate”…was not “misleading”…but was an outright LIE.

We can’t say with any more certainty than PolitiFact whether or not Clinton lied to the FBI during that soft, just-to-say-we-did-it interview last summer; the FBI probably didn’t even question her hard enough to make it necessary. But we can say that PolitFact did NOT prove that what Trump said was “false” by any stretch of the imagination. And that earns them the Fix This Nation Truth-O-Meter rating of FAKE NEWS.

E

Thanks for analyzing that so well. And that is all to often the case with other agencies that purport to decipher what is true and what is not.
Biased from the start, they try to spin it as much as possible to make the left look good or not to bad, while they spin it to make the right look bad or not so good. Pathetic that that is what we have to deal with in America these days. Reporters and news organizations don't dig for facts and report them, they dig for opinions they can spin to justify their previously conceived opinions.

Manning345 Loc: Richmond, Virginia

moldyoldy

You left out the part about papers becoming classified after the fact.

ldsuttonjr Loc: ShangriLa

moldy: You left out the part about the fact you can't read!

Larry the Legend Loc: Not hiding in Milton

Oh, for the love of God! Classified is classified whether it has a mark on the page or not. Those who deal in classified information recognize classified information at inception, regardless of who sent it or what they said about it. How do you suppose information becomes 'classified'? Hmm? Answer me that why don't you?

moldyoldy

You can pretend not to understand, but situations change and innocuous writings can become important later as situations change.

Larry the Legend Loc: Not hiding in Milton

That's right, keep apologizing for her Gross Negligence. The plain fact is that there are highly secure systems in place for US government officials to communicate over that she ignored in favor of the insecure system she set up in her bathroom/basement/wherever. That screams corruption right there. She provides the email trails she wants to the archives and 'bleachbits' the rest. What was on there that she didn't want anyone to see? What did she do that she didn't want others to know about?

You can claim that she did nothing wrong all day, that does not detract from the fact that her actions point to something different. Something corrupt and nefarious. Something we will probably never find out about because she didn't use her 'official' email to conduct business, preferring to control who saw what, and when, instead.

Many people were less than pleased with her nomination as Secretary of State to start with. They were laughed at. Seems they were proven right in the long run.

moldyoldy

Those secure servers were hacked, she was not.


Federal agencies have the ability to classify information after the fact. So some of the emails weren’t classified when Clinton sent or received them, but they are classified now.
Also, there are rules for handling information from foreign governments. Some of those rules have been confused in media reports. And while Clinton’s team seems to have tried to keep classified information off her server, there are grey areas that they may have missed.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/sep/10/hillary-clintons-emails-classified-or-not/

E

there are grey areas that they may have missed.
Well excuse me. Those gray areas wouldn't have existed if she did her job right and used the government servers and system.

Larry the Legend Loc: Not hiding in Milton

Every single problem with her emails as Secretary of State are a direct result of her Grossly Negligent decision to use a private server for official government business instead of the perfectly secure government system that was already in place and available for use at the flick of a switch. You can argue 'classified/ unclassified/when/where/before until the cows come home; the plain fact is that this would have never even been a question if she had used her official '.gov' email address to begin with. But she didn't. And now there's questions. Lots of questions. The biggest and most important question in my mind is 'why?'. If you have a logical, definitive answer to that question, then I strongly suggest that you contact the FBI and tell them what you know. Until then, please quit defending a decision that has no basis in logic and makes no sense.

Iamdjchrys Loc: Decatur, Texas

Unfortunately, this is true of both the right and left leaning rreporters and news organizations!

debeda

Whay do we even have these conversations. She had a government email to use to do government business. My question is WHY the private server AT ALL? As far as I'm concerned the "classified/not classified " conversation is a deflection from the issue.

Larry the Legend Loc: Not hiding in Milton

Ta-Da! This is the second-last stage in the Hillary 'Scandal Avoidance and Suppression Protocol'. It goes like this:

Ignore it.
If interest persists, deny it.
When asked about it, act clueless.
Get your friends in the media to defend you.
Obscure the facts.
Twist the narrative.
Smear the character of your accuser(s) (another useful media function).
Redefine the language.
Get your friends to hold a sham investigation, and 'exonerate' you. Trumpet your innocence every chance you get.
Ridicule your accuser(s) (yet another useful media function).
Ask in exasperation "What difference, at this point, does it make?".
Deflect.
And finally, if all else fails, kill the witnesses. As Bart Simpson said "I didn't do it!" before whispering "even if I did, nobody saw me".

debeda

You say it so much better☺☺☺