Time to fact-check the fact-checkers

Hillary Clinton, how do you lie to us? Let me count the ways. Liberal fact checkers are providing cover for Clinton's lies. Much of the media's so-called fact checking is more like Media Matters efforts to propagandize for the Democrats than something Snopes has had a reliable record of - refuting urban myths. At the recent Presidential Candidates' Debate, there was considerable "fact-checking" going on by liberal media sources, where their fact-checking included as much or more opinionating about their disagreements with Donald Trump than actual referenced facts to dispute what he said. Of course they left out numerous glaring lies by Hillary Clinton, as well.

Here is an excerpt of a Breitbart article from September 27 that pointed out a number of discrepancies of various "fact-checkers":

"9:58 p.m. EDT: Trump fact-checks Clinton when she claims crime is down in New York, including murder. "Trump is right. Crime was down overall in New York last year, but murder, rape, and robbery were up, according to the Wall Street Journal." "9:49 p.m. EDT: Trump fact-checks the moderator. "Holt: Stop and frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York‚,,, "Trump: No, you're wrong. It went before a judge, who was a very against-police judge. It was taken away from her and our mayor, our new mayor, refused to go forward with the case. "Fact Wreck rating: Trump is 100% right, according to the New York Times and Holt's collusion with Clinton is becoming hard to ignore."

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In the last several months I've been pointing out a number of political "fact-checks" on sites such as Politi-fact and Snopes that were essentially opinion pieces. And I pointed out the difficulty of objective fact-checking when it comes to political issues: "...those who say they are fact-checking political debate, whatever their political perspective, can't help but inject a political perspective into what they consider to be falsehood and truth. A non-political political perspective is an oxymoron. Back in June, The Daily Caller pointed out the left-wing bias of Snopes: "Snopes' 'fact-checking' looks more like playing defense for prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton," In an article titled "Fact-Checking Snopes: Website's Political 'Fact-Checker' Is Just A Failed Liberal Blogger," the article had this to say about one of Snopes' writers, Kim Lacapria: "Before writing for Snopes, Lacapria wrote for Inquisitr, a blog that--oddly enough--is known for publishing fake quotes and even downright hoaxes as much as anything else.

"While at Inquisitr, the future "fact-checker" consistently displayed clear partisanship."

Now I would assert as a fact that Hillary Clinton was most responsible for the deaths of an Ambassador and three heroes who died in a 13-hour battle against an attack that could have been prevented. It is not a fact-check to call it false because Hillary Clinton denied it. Yet quite often that is the depth of the fact-checking. Liberal falsehoods disguised as fact-checking which I have found include 1) it really did have something to do with a video, 2) Republicans cut spending, 3) people died at embassies when GW Bush was President 4) nothing really could have been done about it anyway.

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There has been plenty of political opinion or propaganda posing as fact-checking when it comes to the investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for government business when she was Secretary of State. Let me conclude with an actual fact-check (not just political opinion) that shows how Hillary Clinton lied during her testimony before a Congressional hearing, and how FBI Director James Comey dismissed her criminal behavior with her emails as non-prosecutable. FBI Director James Comey stated several examples of violations of the use of classified emails. First, numerous emails were sent that were classified as Top Secret, Secret, or Confidential: "From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification." "With respect to the thousands of e-mails we found that were not among those produced to State, agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential level." Comey further explained that "seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received," and that 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." "None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff." Pointing out the standard of guilt went beyond emails that were marked with the various forms of Classified: "But 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." Saying "still obligated to protect it" of course means still LEGALLY obligated to protect it. There were several times Comey clearly contradicted himself. For example, he said: "It is also likely that there are other work-related e-mails that they did not produce to State and that we did not find elsewhere, and that are now gone because they deleted all e-mails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery." Yet in the next paragraph concluded: "we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort." Somehow, the deliberate deleting of emails that pertained to the investigation was described by Comey as "no intentional misconduct"! Amazingly enough, although in hindsight we've gotten to expect this from the discredited FBI Director, Comey explained that Clinton's actions were misdeeds that didn't meet up to the standard of prosecution: "All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice." Notice he uses "or," meaning some, but not necessarily all, of the four reasons for prosecution. So even if we give Ms. Clinton the benefit of the doubt on the "disloyalty to the United States" (which personally, I don't), there are still plenty of prosecuted cases that were the equivalent of Clinton's violations. Then at the end of his statement, after reducing his reliability to rubble by repeatedly contradicting himself, he expects us to believe this: "What I can assure the American people is that this investigation was done competently, honestly, and independently. No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear." Yet Ms. Clinton found that taking Director Comey at his word for declaring her actions unprosecutable wasn't enough, so she needed to lie about his statement that was intended to clear her name. Two days after giving his summary statement, Comey was questioned at a House panel by Representative Trey Gowdy about the veracity of Ms. Clinton's testimony several weeks earlier. I think I can say without a hint of hyperbole that Comey repeatedly pointed out, when questioned, that Clinton had lied during her testimony. Here's a transcript of part of the exchange:

"Gowdy: Good morning, Director Comey. Secretary Clinton said she never sent or received any classified information over her private e-mail, was that true? "Comey: Our investigation found that there was classified information sent. "Gowdy: It was not true? "Comey: That's what I said. "Gowdy: OK. Well, I'm looking for a shorter answer so you and I are not here quite as long. Secretary Clinton said there was nothing marked classified on her e-mails sent or received. Was that true? "Comey: That's not true. There were a small number of portion markings on I think three of the documents. "Gowdy: Secretary Clinton said "I did not e-mail any classified information to anyone on my e-mail there was no classified material." That is true? "Comey: There was classified information emailed. "Gowdy: Secretary Clinton used one device, was that true? "Comey: She used multiple devices during the four years of her term as Secretary of State. "Gowdy: Secretary Clinton said all work related emails were returned to the State Department. Was that true? "Comey: No. We found work related email, thousands, that were not returned."

And so it continued. We've gone through nearly eight years of a Presidential administration that campaigned about being the most transparent yet has been the most secretive administration in history. So who do they make their next proposed President but someone who is worse than the current President at lying, stonewalling and hiding what they are actually doing.