Analysis: Fact Checkers Fail to React to New Facts on Hunter Biden Emails

So-called fact-checkers should be eating crow following authentication of the emails from Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop by The New York Times. But a new analysis shows they’re being as brazen as ever by not updating old articles challenging the credibility of the story.

PolitiFact, FactCheck.org and Lead Stories are leftist fact-checkers that published articles in the last two years trying to discredit the organization. New York Post bombshell. The outlets did this by either referring to the story as coming from “questionable sources;” labeling the emails as “unverified” or outright doubting their authenticity. The Times reported that emails from a cache discovered on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop in Delaware “were authenticated by people familiar with them” and tied the documents to an ongoing federal investigation. It has been 12 days since The Times The report about the Biden laptop was released by FactCheck.org. PolitiFact, LeadStories, and FactCheck.org have not updated their reports. Meta is Meta’s liberal Big Tech parent company and Meta has fact-checking partnerships with all three outlets.

FactCheck.org was arguably the worst of the three in a story headlined, “Trump Revives False Narrative on Biden and Ukraine.” The outlet castigated former President Donald Trump for citing the Post “to revive his widely discredited claim that Biden ‘went to Ukraine and threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid if they did not fire the prosecutor that was investigating his son and the company that his son worked for.’” FactCheck.org ripped Trump for citing “unverified emails that were allegedly obtained in a bizarre way by his own lawyer.” [Emphasis added.]

In addition, the phony fact-check spun that this wasn’t the first time Trump was cited “using material obtained from questionable sources.” It even tried to smear the whole story as part of an elaborate scheme by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani working with foreign contacts “to obtain information damaging to Biden.” Now that The Times verified the “unverified emails,” FactCheck.org still has yet to update its story saying otherwise. [Emphasis added.]

Lead Stories in particular, targeted an “exclusive” Daily Caller story on one of the laptop emails considered to be the “smoking gun” in the Post story.  The Daily Caller reported in tweet of its story that a cybersecurity expert concluded the “@nypost’s smoking gun April 2015 Hunter Biden email from a Burisma executive discussing an introduction to then-Vice President Joe Biden is 100% authentic.” It is a specific example, the expert that the Daily Caller cited used a “cryptographic signature [DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)]  found in the email’s metadata” to verify Burisma advisor Vadym Pozharskyi thanking Hunter for “‘inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic]Spend some quality time with your partner.’” Lead Stories tried to swat the story down in a fact-check: “This is not true. DKIM validates who sent the email, and which text was attached. However, it doesn’t prove that the contents contain true statements..” According to Proofpoint, DKIM is a “protocol that allows an organization to take responsibility for transmitting a message by signing it in a way that mailbox providers can verify.” [Emphasis added.] 

Here’s the problem: Not only did The Times You can verify the content of emails but you should also Politico’s national political correspondent Ben Schreckinger specifically verified the “smoking gun” email in September 2021. “A person who had independent access to Hunter Biden’s emails confirmed he did receive a 2015 email from a Ukrainian businessman thanking him for the chance to meet Joe Biden,” PoliticoPlaybook reported. The New York Post editorial board — citing Schreckinger’s verification of the email — slammed how this was the “perfect example of how Democrats weaponize ‘fact checkers’ to deflect criticism and enlist social media to censor articles. Nothing to see here!”

The Lead Stories fact-check claimed the cybersecurity expert’s verification “doesn’t tell the whole story.” Lead Stories even alleged that the email addresses appearing to belong to Hunter and the Burisma advisor connected to the emails in question could be fake:

[The cybersecurity expert’s analysis] It doesn’t verify the authenticity of accounts, and it does not show who managed them at that time.The email could have been sent by someone who claimed to be Pozharskyi.

PolitiFact dismissed the emails by claiming it wasn’t able to “verify” them in an Oct. 15, 2020 story. The outlet also tried to gaslight readers on the “smoking gun” email between Hunter and the Burisma advisor by accusing the Post of poor work:

However, none of the emails in the article indicate that a meeting took place. And an image in the article of the email that the Post calls ‘blockbuster correspondence’ does not contain any of the metadata — such as a message ID number, and the time and date the email was created —  That would verify the email’s authenticity.,” [emphasis added.]

PolitiFact!

Conservatives are being attacked.Call Lead Stories on (323) 762 3215 PolitiFact, and demand it update its fact-check on the Daily Caller’s report on Hunter Biden’s emails.

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