UPDATED: The REAL Story

I avoid stories that I can't possibly keep up with, but this is one you've all read about and which is worth pointing to. I'm talking about the Fake News--or maybe I should just come out and say Hoax Journalism--about Trump's supposed "obstruction" in his phone call to the GA Secretary of State's lead investigator. The WaPo, which ran with the story has, as you know, tried to slip a retraction past John Q. Public after their fraud was exposed by the WSJ--I won't be resubscribing to the WSJ, but a hat tip to them nevertheless.

Now enterprising journalists are taking a closer look to see what this means. Obviously, the fact that the Dems actually referred to this hoax at their Hoax Impeachment 2.0 is a rather big part of the story--what the hell kind of "impeachment" is it that goes with unverified newspaper articles attributed to anonymous sources? But that may be only part of the bigger picture.

Here's a tweet by the Washington Examiner's Beckett Adams that points toward that bigger picture:

you all are missing the real story re: WaPo's correction of its Trump/Ga. investigations chief "scoop."

the real scandal is that a bunch of newsrooms claimed at the time they “confirmed” the details of the "scoop" with their own anon sourcing.https://t.co/4Xqxt3mcHk

— tsar becket adams (@BecketAdams) March 15, 2021

The link in the tweet, of course, is to Adams' full article on this story. Here's what he's referring, citing chapter and verse of the "news" organizations that were in on the hoax:

NBC News reported it “confirmed The Post’s characterization of the Dec. 23 call through a source familiar with the conversation.”

USA Today claimed a “Georgia official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters confirmed the details of the call.”

ABC News reported: "President Donald Trump phoned a chief investigator in Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office asking the official to 'find the fraud' and telling this person they would be a 'national hero' for it, an individual familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News."

PBS NewsHour and CNN likewise seemingly claimed they independently “confirmed” the story through their own anonymous sources.

But Trump never said those things. The sources either were mistaken or lying.

Read the whole article to get up to speed on all the details.

The bottom line appears to be something along these lines: Five separate "news" organizations "confirmed" that the moon is made from green cheese. Funny how that works. In their own interests, it would seem to me, they should reveal who lied to them--that is, if that's what actually happened.

In the meantime, Sarah Lee bakes the story just right at The Federalist--The Story of the WaPo 'Scoop' and the Discovery of the Trump Recording Is So Much Worse Than It Appears and GA's Sec of State Ofc Has Some Explaining to Do:

That’s incredibly significant, and not just from a media malfeasance perspective (but that’s, of course, part of it). Here’s why: it was reported in January that Georgia State officials didn’t think a recording of the call existed, which is presumably why WaPo took bad quotes from a source they wouldn’t name but who was familiar with the conversation. They wanted the story and didn’t have the recording, so they reported what they were told. Not particularly impressive journalism.

That was readily apparent after the Wall Street Journal got their hands on the recording and published it last week, proving that the anonymous source essentially made up quotes and attributed them to the former president. And where was this recording discovered? In the trash folder on a device belonging to the lead investigator in the Secretary of State’s office, the very person Trump called.

Back in January, “state officials said they did not believe that a recording existed,” the Post reports. “Officials located the recording on a trash folder on Watson’s device while responding to a public records request, according to a person familiar with the situation.”

What that means, of course, is that not only did the conversation exist in a recording, the lead investigator was presumably aware of it and apparently tried to get rid of it (perhaps innocently, in fairness). But worse, she never tried to correct the record as WaPo and many other outlets misreported the details. Which is all bad enough; but when the investigation into whether Trump had engaged in obstruction is factored in, well, it lends credence to something Trump has been claiming for some time: there’s a witch hunt afoot and he’s the target.

That "investigator", Frances Watson, should be made to answer some questions. Or maybe that's just me.

UPDATE: H/T Commenter Mojlnir. Will this story have legs? Redstate has the story:

Once it became obvious that the Washington Post had the Piltdown Man of journalism on its hands (read The Washington Post Quietly Corrects Months-Old Propaganda About Trump’s GA Call), it had to burn its source or admit that it didn’t have one.

The Washington Post reported on the substance of Trump’s Dec. 23 call in January, describing him saying that Watson should “find the fraud” and that she would be a “national hero,” based on an account from Jordan Fuchs, the deputy secretary of state, whom Watson briefed on his comments.

Fuchs is Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s former campaign manager, both for his successful 2015 run for the Georgia legislature and his 2018 run for Secretary of State. She’ll have to answer for her own motives in making up a conversation and seeking out a national media outlet to distribute the falsehood. Just joking. Of course, she won’t have to answer for squat because “believe women” and #OrangeManBad. I’d just note that if you check the story archive of Amy Gardner, it looks like Gardner was using Fuchs for stories for some months. And there is also the small matter of how the only recording of this call was deleted and discovered in a computer “trash” folder. Because you delete copies of phone calls from the President of the United States to state election functionaries all the time, but, I suspect, any innate sense of curiosity over this will be suppressed.

Now that the Washington Post has burned Fuchs down, there is still unresolved business. NBC, ABC, USA Today, and CNN all claim to have independently verified Fuchs’s story (read The Real Scandal Behind the Washington Post-Trump Scandal).