Judicial Watch is a conservative website well-known for stretching the truth at best and outright lying at worst. It has a long history of inventing conspiracies out of thin air, and their latest is a doozy.
New Clinton Email ‘Scandal’
Desperate to knock Hillary Clinton down a few pegs, Judicial Watch put out a press release today stating, in part:
“The new documents reveal that in April 2009 controversial Clinton Foundation official Doug Band pushed for a job for an associate. In the email Band tells Hillary Clinton’s former aides at the State Department Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin that it is ‘important to take care of [Redacted].’ Band is reassured by Abedin that ‘Personnel has been sending him options.’ Band was co-founder of Teneo Strategy with Bill Clinton and a top official of the Clinton Foundation, including its Clinton Global Initiative.”
This press release was picked up by several major news organizations, including the New York Times. The Times ran a story on August 9 regurgitating a lot of the information from the Judicial Watch release. To their credit, the Times then ran a follow-up story on August 10 in which they included more information regarding the exchange. They also included statements clarifying some of the wild accusations made by Judicial Watch.
There’s No ‘There’ There
Judicial Watch knows their readers are easily fooled. They know their readers will lap up any negative information about their arch-nemesis, Hillary Clinton. Their readers love conspiracies and rarely fact-check the stories they read there.
This new email “scandal” is not really a scandal at all.
As reported by Media Matters,
“…Neither the emails nor the news reports provide any evidence that Clinton Foundation donors impacted decisions Clinton made at the State Department…The Clinton surrogates fact sheet states that Chagoury, who is of Lebanese descent, ‘was simply seeking to share his insights on the upcoming Lebanese election with the right person at the Department of State for whom this information might be helpful. In seeking to provide information, he was not seeking action by the Department.’”
The Media Matters report goes on to tear apart the manufactured “scandal” from there. They easily lay out the case as to why there really is nothing untoward in these reports.
Conspiracies, Past And Present
This is not the first time that a major news media outlet has run with a story from Judicial Watch. Several instances documented by Media Matters show how the conservative group promoted false stories which were then picked up by national media.
“For example, on September 24, Judicial Watch released records it had received from the State Department which it claimed “reveal former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally signed the authorization for Huma Abedin, her then-deputy chief of staff, to become a special government employee.”
The New York Times reported on Judicial Watch’s findings, writing that the documents “show that Mrs. Clinton personally signed forms establishing a new title and position for the aide, Huma Abedin, in March 2012.” Politico, Fox News, and other outlets also published stories based on the document.
Those stories were wrong.”
Judicial Watch also has a long history of inventing conspiracies on their website. As Media Matters has documented,
“Judicial Watch claimed that the Justice Department was helping to “organize and manage rallies and protests against George Zimmerman”… In reality, the unit of the DOJ was sent to Florida in order to defuse tensions in the community, and as the Orlando Sentinel reported, they “reached out to the city’s spiritual and civic leaders to help cool heated emotions.”
They also released this lie about ISIS:
“Judicial Watch claimed that the Islamic State (ISIS) had set up a terrorist camp in Mexico ‘just a few miles from El Paso, Texas,’ facilitating the smuggling of terrorists into the United States. Conservative media outlets picked up Judicial Watch’s claim … PolitiFact rated the claim as ‘false.’”
In other words, Judicial Watch is yet another right wing smear site that exists to promote falsehoods.
This is seen so often on the conservative sites. I am an unabashed liberal writing for an unabashedly liberal website, but I always double- and triple-check sources. What we have going for us is that facts and history tend to have a liberal bias. If their ideas were so great, why would they have to lie all the time?
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