For all the liberal-media agonizing over accusations of "fake news," there’s been almost no one picking up on The Guardian’s report from Britain that popular Trump critics on Twitter ended up spreading the anti-Trump claims of a hoaxer. Louise Mensch, who until recently ran the Murdoch-owned site Heat Street, and Claude Taylor, a former Clinton White House aide with the Twitter handle “TrueFactsStated,” ended up as examples of the joke “Too good to check.”
Jon Swaine reported that thousands of people have re-circulated the false claims tweeted by Taylor. Mensch, a former member of the British Parliament, retweeted at least 18 posts by Taylor that were based on the hoaxer’s false information. The pair have described themselves as co-writers and have a big fan base: Taylor has about 200,000 followers on Twitter and Mensch has 267,000 followers.
The only liberal-media mention I've seen outside Twitter is a paragraph in the CNN Media Unit's "Reliable Sources" e-mail newsletter on Monday night. The headline was "Hoaxer targets popular anti-Trump tweeters."
The Swaine story began:
Explosive allegations about Donald Trump made by online writers with large followings among Trump critics were based on bogus information from a hoaxer who falsely claimed to work in law enforcement.
Claude Taylor tweeted fake details of criminal inquiries into Trump that were invented by a source whose claim to work for the New York attorney general was not checked, according to emails seen by the Guardian. The allegations were endorsed as authentic and retweeted by his co-writer Louise Mensch.
The source’s false tips included an allegation, which has been aggressively circulated by Mensch and Taylor, that Trump’s inactive fashion model agency is under investigation by New York authorities for possible sex trafficking. [They liked using the hashtag "#PIMPOTUS".]
The hoaxer, who fed the information to Taylor by email, said she acted out of frustration over the “dissemination of fake news” by Taylor and Mensch. Their false stories about Trump have included a claim that he was already being replaced as president by Senator Orrin Hatch in a process kept secret from the American public.
“Taylor asked no questions to verify my identity, did no vetting whatsoever, sought no confirmation from a second source – but instead asked leading questions to support his various theories, asking me to verify them,” the source said in an email.
On the left and on the right, people need to dig deeper than Twitter for their scandal scoops. The fake source claimed to be an official named “Caitlin” in the office of Eric Schneiderman, New York’s liberal Democrat attorney general. She shared details of her hoax with the Guardian anonymously to avoid harassment from Taylor and Mensch's fans. "The Guardian verified her true identity and confirmed that she is not named Caitlin and does not work for Schneiderman."
Swaine also pointed out that Democrats have stumbled into spreading the Mensch-Taylor claims in the "mainstream" media, including Senator Ed Markey claiming a grand jury was empaneled in New York to investigate Trump in a CNN interview on the morning of May 10. In a story that week, Swaine compared Mensch to Trumpkin blogger Mike Cernovich, who drew a large measure of the attention in a March 60 Minutes story on bogus news. Markey didn't look good as a fact-checker:
When asked whether Markey had confirmed this to be true, an aide to the senator told the Guardian that he was simply referring – though not by name – to Mensch’s post and two related articles published by Palmer Report, a leftwing site whose record for accuracy has also come under fire.
A spokeswoman later emailed to say that Markey’s remarks had been erroneous and that he apologized for causing confusion. “Senator Markey believes it is of the utmost importance that solid facts and unimpeachable information are the foundation for all investigations into this matter,” said the spokeswoman.
The story broke Monday night, but the major media haven't noted it, outside that CNN email.
Despite The Guardian exposing Mensch and Taylor in May, the liberal "fact checkers" haven't caught on. On Twitter, I suggested PolitiFact should be flagging this as Pants on Fire material, and mocked them for instead flagging CNN's Jake Tapper as "Mostly False" for claiming there's one true origin story for Batman's nemesis The Joker in the comic books. A search for any "Truth-o-Meter" mentions of Mensch on PolitiFact came us as "Sorry, no results were found." On Tuesday, they instead evaluated the claims of a Marco Rubio heckler and a fake quote by Adam Sandler about Mormons.
The Washington Post "Fact Checker" page seems hyper-dedicated to evaluating Trump, and not so much attacks on Trump. (Abby Ohlheiser blogged a story in June on reckless lefty bogus news, including Mensch and Taylor...but it wasn't in the paper.) Over at Snopes.com, the fact-checkers are checking the religion-satire site Babylon Bee and their mockery of Joel Osteen, but haven't found the Mensch-hoaxer story.
