Let’s start with this:
By nearly all accounts, Joy Reid’s claims that her blog was hacked — and that the homophobic posts attributed to her blog were posted by some nefarious force seeking to undermine her — are not true. It’s a story she made up (or somehow believes) to cover for her own homophobic tendencies of a decade ago.
Judging by the diaries on the subject of Reid’s hacking claims and numerous comments in those diaries, it is apparent that many folks here have either chosen not to read the very thorough and detailed debunkings of Reid’s claims from credible sources, or simply refuse to believe the overwhelming evidence that her hacking claims are fabricated.
Presented here are six detailed reports from reliable sources (none of them right wing news sites) that thoroughly undermine Reid’s hacking claims.
Let’s begin with this highly detailed and thorough debunking of her hacking claim by Kevin Poulsen (a great reporter) at the very media site, Daily Beast, that hosted Reid’s column:
The Daily Beast investigated the MSNBC host’s claims that someone hacked her old blogs to make her appear homophobic and found that the evidence provided crumbles under scrutiny.
MSNBC host Joy Reid claims that recently unearthed homophobic articles attributed to her are fakes. And she says a cybersecurity consultant has proof that her old blog has been hacked.
But that consultant, Jonathan Nichols, had trouble producing the promised evidence. And what he did produce failed to withstand scrutiny, according to a Daily Beast analysis. Blog posts that Nichols claimed do not appear on the Internet Archive are, in fact, there. The indicators of hacked posts don’t bear out.
The piece is long, well-researched and highly detailed. Everyone should read it. It concludes:
It’s possible that in the end Reid will discover her adversary isn’t a determined hacker, but a far more dogged foe: The Joy-Ann Reid of years past, writing in a voice she can no longer recognize as her own.
Next, let’s look at a detailed piece from master debunker Jacob Weindling at Paste, another meticulous reporter who has done great work debunking conspiracy theories and unmasking grifters:
After reviewing Reid’s earlier apology for her decade-old homophobic comments about former Florida governor Charlie Crist that had been unearthed in December of last year, Weindling notes:
With that, the controversy went away. Reid expressed legitimate contrition over her hurtful words, and everyone moved on. People change, and they shouldn't be shunned for expressing opinions in the past that they now acknowledge were “insensitive, tone deaf and dumb.” The reason this is still in the news? Reid found herself in the same situation again recently, but instead fired off a defense that doesn't pass the sniff test.
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Instead of pointing to her previous apology for her “insensitive, tone deaf and dumb” posts, Reid impugned the very core of the Wayback Machine's existence, and claimed that it had been hacked.
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After getting called out by the Wayback Machine, Reid's lawyer announced that the FBI is investigating her claim. On top of this, a whole host of allies spoke up to defend Reid in what looked like a scripted circling of the wagons, despite the fact that she had previously admitted to writing the posts.
Weindling goes on to point out that there are three options:
We don’t really know for certain, but we can whittle it down to three options:
1. Joy Reid did get hacked.
2. She didn’t and therefore she lied to the FBI.
3. The charge that an FBI investigation was launched is BS, meaning Joy Reid lied, just not to the FBI.
He then offers a point-by-point dissection of the three points:
So let’s investigate why we should believe Joy Reid. First and foremost, her defense makes no sense, and getting hacked is actually one of the simplest explanations for what happened. She apologized the first time this issue was brought up, and if she had replied to the newest evidence with something like “these are part of the dumb and insensitive posts I said I was sorry for back in December,” I wouldn’t be writing this explainer right now.
It’s precisely because Joy Reid fought back (while accusing the Internet Archive of failing at their core duty) that this is a big story now. Given the ledge she put herself on, she better be right, as MSNBC is not backing up her hacking claim, and has resorted to simply forwarding statements from her lawyer. Frankly, it’s hard to see how she’s right that she was hacked, given that the Library of Congress also archives the internet, and they let CNN review their records, showing the same posts unearthed through the Wayback Machine by Jaime_Maz. For Joy Reid to credibly claim that she was hacked, both the Internet Archive and the Library of Congress would need to be compromised, and both are denying that they were.
So what about number two? Why would she apologize in December “to all who are disappointed by the content of blogs I wrote a decade ago, for which my choice of words and tone have legitimately been criticized,” then turn around four months later and say “in December I learned that an unknown, external party accessed and manipulated material from my now-defunct blog.”
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It’s just all so weird, and if she did lie to the FBI about getting hacked—hoo boy—has this saga taken a turn.
It’s pretty easy to see how she thought she could use partisanship to squirrel her way out of this, and now that defense is gone, so she’s essentially pivoting to “the dog ate my homework” (but remember, sometimes dogs do eat homework, which is the only reason why I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt right now). She better be right, or lying about the existence of an FBI investigation, because if she did ask the FBI to open up an probe in order to make it look like her lie has legitimacy, then the world of legal hurt coming her way will make the social media dogpile she presently resides under look like a massage by comparison. Just ask Michael Flynn or George Papadopoulos or Rick Gates how lying to the FBI usually ends.
Personally, I think the claim that she and her attorney asked the FBI to investigate is bogus, for the very reasons Weindling cites. Everyone should read Weindling’s detailed piece.
Huffington Post media reporter Hayley Miller also debunks Reid’s hacking claim:
Only a pretty bizarre course of events would have led to those allegedly “fraudulent” homophobic blog posts.
Hayley offers a step-by-step debunking of the claims from Jonathan Nichols, a cybersecurity consultant hired by Reid. Another must read.
Next, we have Vox reporter German Lopez taking the hacking claims apart in yet another highly detailed piece:
Joy-Ann Reid is, depending on who you believe, either the victim of an elaborate hack or someone with a long history of homophobic remarks.
The host of MSNBC’s weekend show AM Joy has been under fire in recent days for newly uncovered blog posts posted on Reid’s now-defunct blog, the Reid Report, in the mid-to late 2000s that repeatedly mocked gay people and specific individuals who were allegedly gay.
The posts, for example, suggested — without much, if any, evidence — that Tom Cruise, Karl Rove, and Chief Justice John Robert’s son are gay. Other posts made derogatory remarks about gay people, claiming that “most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing” and that “adult gay men tend to be attracted to very young, post-pubescent types.” One post acknowledged, “Does that make me homophobic? Probably.”
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There’s reason to be skeptical of the claim. For one, the blog posts were archived by internet crawlers and, in those archives, really dated to the mid-to-late 2000s — a time when Reid wasn’t an MSNBC host or even a widely known national figure, raising questions about why someone would bother hacking her. Some of Reid’s claims have also fallen apart under scrutiny. This has helped elevate the controversy further, as even some of Reid’s supporters have questioned why she didn’t just apologize instead of making assertions that many find literally unbelievable.
Then there’s this debunking from Brian Feldman of New York Magazine’s “select/all” column:
Feldman concludes his piece with this:
What should be clear about this whole situation is that absolutely nothing lines up. The archive likely wasn’t hacked, and Reid’s own security consultant backs that up. But Reid’s website was edited recently to remove the blog archives from the Wayback Machine, meaning that she didn’t want people to see her old posts — suspect behavior from an innocent hacking victim. It’s also a move that, consequently, also prevents her from presenting any record of the unhacked posts. And, of course, Reid already apologized for previous homophobic posts, authenticating some of them in the process. What this looks like is a very elaborate, incoherent smokescreen to avoid taking responsibility.
Maggie Serota of Spin added more information to the story with this piece:
After detailing many of the posts Reid claimed were placed into her blog by hackers, Serota notes some unsavory tweets by Reid’s cybersecurity consultant, Nichols:
On Wednesday, the saga took a batshit turn when it was revealed that Reid’s supposed “cyber security expert” left a damning Twitter trail bragging about his relationship with high-profile neo-Nazi and The Daily Stormer webmaster Andrew Auernheimer, aka “weev.” Mediaite shared screenshots from Nichols’s Twitter account, which has since been locked down.
I wish people would quit reflexively defending Reid’s bullshit claim that her blog was hacked. That has been thoroughly debunked in great detail by experts who are not right wing media outlets in any way, shape or form.
How about expecting and demanding a little accountability from Reid? And how about an apology from her for her own worldview that, apparently, has evolved over the past decade?
It is always disappointing (but not surprising) to me how many supposedly informed people here will put their fingers in their ears and hum loudly when it comes to demanding accountability of those we consider allies. The denial of reality is as strong as anything we see from the true believers of Fox News.