The so-called “elite three” mainstream fact checkers, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact and the Washington Post Fact Checker, all followed the mainstream press in making a serious error reporting on the Inspector General’s report on the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation.
What the IG Report Said
The IG report repeatedly said investigators failed to find “documentary or testimonial evidence” of political bias.
But the report’s early section on methodology explained its approach to the question of political bias:
If the explanations we were given for a particular decision were consistent with legal requirements, policies, procedures, and not unreasonable, we did not conclude that the decision was based on improper considerations in the absence of documentary or testimonial evidence to the contrary.
The report’s description of its methodology colors every use of the repeated phrase “documentary or testimonial evidence.” Mainstream news reports, as in this example from National Public Radio, tended to misleadingly translate “no documentary or testimonial evidence” as “no evidence.”
In effect, the IG Report gave the FBI a wide realm within which it could exercise politically biased discretion, as this line from the report illustrates (bold emphasis added):
(G)iven the low threshold for predication in the AG Guidelines and the DIOG, we concluded that the FFG information, provided by a government the United States Intelligence Community (USIC) deems trustworthy, and describing a first-hand account from an FFG employee of a conversation with Papadopoulos, was sufficient to predicate the investigation.
The IG report, then, would not conclude that a thin predicate for investigation represented political bias unless it had documentary or testimonial evidence to the contrary.
We find nothing from the report where it would conclude bias was absent from FBI decision-making.
The Senate Testimony of Inspector General Michael Horowitz
If the IG’s report failed to make its conclusions clear, Inspector General Horowitz did much to correct the problem with his testimony before the Senate.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) questioned Horowitz regarding the FISA applications leading to the surveillance of Trump advisor Carter Page (via C-SPAN):
(C-SPAN embeds so far don’t work on Substack, sorry!)
SEN. PETERS
So, if I recall from your testimony here today, is that the errors that were occurring, the fundamental errors, the basic errors related to the FISA process, you didn’t find any evidence that there was political bias there–no documentary evidence. The errors occurred, and those are troublesome, but you didn’t necessarily link those to any political bias, is that accurate?
IG HOROWITZ
So, I want to draw a distinction now. We did not, what we didn’t find was they were considering in August and September whether to seek a FISA, we didn’t see evidence there in those communications, but as to the failures that occurred, we didn’t find any of the explanations particularly satisfactory, in fact unsatisfactory across the board. In the absence of satisfactory answers I can’t tell you as I sit here whether it was gross incompetence, and I think with the volume of errors you could make an argument that would be a hard sell that it was just gross incompetence, to intentional, to somewhere in between and what the motivations were. I can think of plenty of motivations that could have caused that to occur, but we didn’t have any hard evidence that I can sit here and tell you why did these occur. I can tell you they occurred, I can tell you we didn’t get good explanations, but I can’t tell you why.
IG Horowitz, in short, did not conclude that political bias played no role in the Carter Page FISA applications.
Horowitz’s response to questioning by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kent.) likewise conveyed his report’s true position on the question of political bias (C-SPAN):
(To repeat, unfortunately C-SPAN videos don’t work on Substack as we’re porting this post from Wordpress)
SEN. PAUL
I would say that, um, when we look at bias I guess the first question would be a short question to reiterate and make sure it’s very clear. You did find evidence of biased individuals who were involved with the, uh, involved with the investigation.
IG HOROWITZ
That’s correct.
SEN. PAUL
Okay. I think that’s very clear, and is it difficult to determine what people’s motives are and whether they’re biased or not biased?
IG HOROWITZ
It’s very difficult.
SEN. PAUL
Right. And so just by saying you didn’t find it doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, it doesn’t mean you couldn’t have had 15 people very biased who influence every one of their decisions, you just can’t prove it.
IG HOROWITZ
We could not prove it. We lay out here what we can prove.
SEN. PAUL
One specific instance I’d like to ask you about, though. The OGC attorney is the one I think you’ve referred for criminal evaluation. Correct?
IG HOROWITZ
I’ll just say we’ve referred to the Attorney General and FBI–
SEN. PAUL
Okay. Right. For possible criminal evaluation. He also had text messages that said, uh, viva the resistance. Did you interpret those to be, or what was your opinion? Does that show that he might have had some bias? Against the Trump administration?
IG HOROWITZ
Well, he was one of the individuals last, in last year’s report precisely for those text messages that we referred to the FBI, precisely for that concern.
SEN. PAUL
So you interpreted that as an evidence of bias. But I guess my question would be if you saw that he was biased, he’s obviously made errors that you think actually may have been intentional, why in that instance would you not be free to say that there’s documentary evidence of not only bias but then malfeasance?
IG HOROWITZ
That’s precisely why we don’t say that, as to the errors, the failures in the FISA process.
SEN. PAUL
Well, could you then specifically say the opposite, that actually in this instance there actually was evidence of political bias and evidence of record changing that looks like malfeasance?
IG HOROWITZ
There’s evidence of both, I agree with you, but we will let–I want to make sure there’s a fair process–
SEN. PAUL
That’s fine. And I think the Chairman’s very correct that the media has [sic] misinterpreted what you’ve said and drawn conclusions that I don’t think are accurate as to what you’re saying.
Though Horowitz admitted to seeing evidence of political bias in the FBI’s handling of the Carter Page FISA applications, the IG report made that point only subtly and implicitly.
The mainstream media overlooked it, often in favor of seeing the report’s statements about lack of evidence as an evidence of lack (the fallacy of appeal to ignorance).
We found mainstream fact checkers no better than the mainstream media at reporting on the IG report.
Page 2
How Fact Checkers Handled the IG Report’s Finding on Political Bias
FactCheck.org
On Dec. 10, 2019 FactCheck.org published an article in response to the release of the IG report, titled “How Old Claims Compare to IG Report.”
The article listed four claims it reviewed in light of the IG report. The fourth dealt with the issue of political bias:
The IG report also debunked Trump’s claims that the investigation was motivated by political bias on the part of FBI staff. The report found no “documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation” influenced the opening of the investigation or decision-making during it.
As our reporting demonstrated, the IG report did not debunk claims that the investigation was motivated by political bias.
The report did say it found no “documentary or testimonial evidence” that political bias influenced the opening of the investigation, but that does not debunk claims that the investigation was influenced by political bias.
In the article’s section addressing the issue of bias, FactCheck.org focused on the opening of the investigation along with the roles played by Peter Stzok and Lisa Page, two FBI employees whose text messages showed an anti-Trump bias.
FactCheck.org’s article was silent on the ease with which the FBI can justify an investigation according to its traditional set of procedures. FactCheck.org did not address the FISA warrants on Carter Page in its section on political bias.
FactCheck.org erred. The IG report did not debunk the notion that political bias affected the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
PolitiFact
PolitiFact’s treatment of the IG report’s handling of the political bias issue occurred when PolitiFact fact checked a statement from Attorney General William Barr. Politi
Fact’s Dec. 11, 2019 fact check looked at Barr’s claim that “The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions.”
PolitiFact had this to say on the topic of political bias at the FBI:
The investigation was not politically motivated
The IG report … dismissed the notion that the investigation was politically motivated.
PolitiFact’s following paragraphs, as with the FactCheck.org article discussed above, focus on the opening of the investigation and on the roles played by Strzok and Lisa Page.
But even supposing PolitiFact limited its view of the FBI’s political bias to the opening of the investigation, the IG report does not support PolitiFact’s claim that “The investigation was not politically motivated.”
The methodology of the IG report would stop it from considering a role for political bias, absent “documentary or testimonial evidence to the contrary,” so long as the predicate for investigation met the FBI’s “low threshold.” When the IG report said it found “no documentary or testimonial evidence” of political bias, it was not ruling out the possibility that political bias affected the investigation.
PolitiFact erred.
The Washington Post Fact Checker
On Dec. 11, 2019 the Washington Post published an article by its fact checker, Glenn Kessler, titled “A guide to the misleading spin on the IG report.”
Kessler referred three times to “political bias.”
In the first instance, Kessler trimmed the IG report’s language describing the type of evidence it failed to find:
The report said: “This information provided the FBI with an articulable factual basis that, if true, reasonably indicated activity constituting either a federal crime or a threat to national security, or both, may have occurred or may be occurring.” The report added that investigators found no “evidence that political bias or improper motivation” influenced the decision to open the probe.
Was the Fact Checker justified in assuming that “no documentary or testimonial evidence” equals “no ‘evidence’”? We think the IG report would have said “no evidence” if that is what it meant.
In his second reference to “political bias,” Kessler more fully articulated a position that matches the form of the fallacy of appeal to ignorance:
In fact, as we noted, the IG found that political bias did not factor into the start of the probe.
Kessler’s interpretation has the IG report concluding that lack of evidence equals evidence of lack. But the IG report consistently stopped short of drawing any such conclusion. The Fact Checker took that one extra fallacious step.
Kessler’s third reference to “political bias” repeated his fallacious conclusion:
(Attorney General William) Barr, in an interview, dismissed the findings of no political bias but embraced the findings of what he called “gross abuses” of the FISA process.
The IG report, in fact, had no finding of “no political bias” for Barr to dismiss.
The Washington Post Fact Checker erred.
Fact Checkers Promptly Correct Their Mistakes, Right?
We contacted each of the “elite three” fact checkers to point out their errors and request corrections or clarifications.
Not one of the “elite three” has thus far acted to correct those errors or offer a defense of their conclusions.