Just before the stroke of midnight Thursday,
New York Times reporters Michael Schmidt and Matt Apuzzo dropped what looked like a bombshell story: Two inspectors general had supposedly asked the Department of Justice
to launch a criminal investigation as to whether Hillary Clinton herself had "mishandled sensitive government information" by using a private email account while serving as secretary of state.
With in an hour, though, the paper made a major stealth edit to this incendiary accusation, immediately rendering the whole thing incoherent. This supposed request for a criminal inquiry was not about anything Clinton did but rather whether classified information "was mishandled in connection with" Clinton's email account. The use of the passive voice ("was mishandled") made it impossible to indentify just exactly who was being charged with improper actions here, and the phrase "in connection with" is simply Dadaesque gobbledygook that can mean anything.
Further rendering the Times' original claims hollow, a DoJ official told the Associated Press on Friday that the referral "didn't necessarily suggest any wrongdoing by Clinton." In other words, it could have been about anyone.
And now, with Clinton eased out of the frame, a new statement from the Justice Department itself says that the other explosive prong of the Times' original reporting is also entirely wrong: the request they received did not seek a criminal investigation. No hedging, no weasel words, no passive voice: "It is not a criminal referral." Period.
So what on earth happened here? How could the Times screw this story up so utterly and royally? Rep. Elijah Cummings, who is the most senior Democrat on the House Select Committee on Benghazi, has a compelling theory:
"This is the latest example in a series of inaccurate leaks to generate false front-page headlines—only to be corrected later—and they have absolutely nothing to do with the attacks in Benghazi or protecting our diplomatic corps overseas."
It's not hard to believe that Rep. Trey Gowdy, the GOP's Inspector Javert of Benghazi, would do whatever he can to ignite this non-story that's failed to catch fire in the three years Republicans have desperately spent trying to kindle it. But for the paper of record to fall for this kind of garbage, well ... let's just say it gives even more fodder to those who think the
Times has waged a two-decade campaign of hostility toward the Clinton family.
No matter what you think, though, the New York Times really botched this one, going so far as to rewrite the article without so much as an editor's note to readers to let them know it had changed. (And yet despite the edits, it still claims there was a request for a criminal inquiry.) This is all completely unacceptable. You'd like to think this debacle would spur greater caution in the future, but that seems almost too much to hope for.
11:32 AM PT: The Times has finally added an editor's note explaining how they tried to fix their botched lede. But the piece still talks about a "criminal" referral. How can you add a note about one major error but somehow not correct another major error? It boggles.
