No actual thinking person uses The Daily Caller, a right-wing outrage porn website with numerous debunked stories and headlines, as a credible source of anything. Yet, even with the most classified intelligence available at his fingertips, Donald Trump has been pushing one of their conspiracy theories as evidence that his former political opponent, Hillary Clinton, deserves to be prosecuted for crimes.
The Daily Caller published a story claiming that inside sources confirm that Clinton’s private email server, which has been used as the source for numerous “lock her up” chants at Trump rallies, was hacked by China during her time as secretary of state under President Obama. Trump seized on the opportunity, just as he did during his presidential campaign, to promote a false narrative.
Report just out: “China hacked Hillary Clinton’s private Email Server.” Are they sure it wasn’t Russia (just kidding!)? What are the odds that the FBI and DOJ are right on top of this? Actually, a very big story. Much classified information!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018
Hillary Clinton’s Emails, many of which are Classified Information, got hacked by China. Next move better be by the FBI & DOJ or, after all of their other missteps (Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA, Dirty Dossier etc.), their credibility will be forever gone!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018
The FBI has once again had to shut down these claims in a one-sentence statement to The Washington Post:
‘The FBI has not found any evidence the servers were compromised.’
The story has, predictably, been picked up by numerous other right-wing outlets and disseminated as fact. It’s no coincidence that some of those outlets include Russian media, who began reporting on the story well before Trump tweeted about it.
Interesting route of this strange report
Daily Caller last night reported China hacked Clinton’s server according to ‘sources’ it then got picked up by Russia’s Sputnik and now ends w Trump tweeting this citing a report. Who was the source for Daily Caller? Was it Trumps source? pic.twitter.com/FoIym5h8o9
— Olga Lautman (@olgaNYC1211) August 29, 2018
The Daily Caller is infamous for its outrageous claims that have repeatedly needed fact-checking. For instance, they have claimed that a Brooklyn Law School professor said that the solar eclipse was racist, published a story saying that a “peer-reviewed” paper proved that climate change was a hoax (it was a blog post), and wrote a story saying that the Clintons deliberately fed patients in Africa “watered-down” HIV/AIDS meds through their Clinton Health Initiative to save money.
This is the “news” outlet that the current president of the United States is using to try to force the FBI and the DOJ to prosecute a woman who is now no more than a private citizen.
'Are they sure it wasn't the Russians?' Clinton's emails were reportedly hacked by China https://t.co/b5SAYY8u2s
— RT UK (@RTUKnews) August 29, 2018
The Daily Caller claimed that “anonymous sources” from the Inspector General’s Office are the source of their claims, although the IG addressed the claims back in 2018 after Comey guaranteed that the server had never been hacked.
‘A lengthy Justice Department inspector general report released in June criticized the latter part of Comey’s statement, saying that while forensics agents could not say with 100 percent confidence that Clinton’s servers had not been compromised, they were “fairly confident” that there wasn’t an intrusion.’
There is no evidence to date that proves that conclusion was ever false.
Featured image via Flickr by Michael Vadon under a Creative Commons license
