Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've reported on the holes in Jerome Corsi's Oct. 14 WorldNetDaily article accusing Barack Obama of donating "nearly $1 million" to Kenya's Raila Odinga.
Here's the biggest, blackest hole of the entire piece: Corsi is repeating a long-ago-discredited chain email.
From an April 18 PolitiFact item:
A chain e-mail that originates with a letter from American missionaries working in Kenya warns about Sen. Barack Obama’s ties to Kenya and its opposition party, encouraging readers “not to be taken in by those that are promoting him.”
Among the many allegations is one about Obama’s ties to Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga: “Obama under ‘friends of Obama’ gave almost a million dollars to the (Kenya) opposition campaign who just happened to be his cousin, Raila Odinga, who is a socialist trained in East Germany.”
The e-mail reads like a bad game of “telephone,” its claims drawn from assorted people and sources that have been stitched together. And yet, because it is signed by real people, who have a life in Africa, it somehow carries more credence than your average blog posting — and it’s spreading rapidly. (Read the e-mail here. )
But even with the credibility of a real author, the claims in this e-mail are as baseless as anything you’ve read from an anonymous blogger.
PolitiFact even has its own copy of the "internal document" Corsi has (here and here) -- and it looks nothing like Corsi's version.
The PolitiFact version -- which it says it obtained from the originators of the chain email, Celeste and Loren Davis, who "lived and worked in Kenya for the past 12 years" -- appears to have been run through a fax machine a few times, making the type fuzzy, while Corsi's version is clean and in an completely different typeface and format, and it appears to introduce a typo or two.
In other words, If the Davises' document is to be considered original, Corsi has a recreated copy.
Remember that Corsi said at the outset of his trip that he was going to visit "Christian missionaries." Would that be the Davises?
PolitiFact toes on to write about the document:
Loren Davis provided PolitiFact with a document that he says shows Obama gave $1-million to the Kenyan opposition campaign led by Odinga. A header at the top of the page says it’s a “consolidated statement of campaign financial activities.” Under the header is a list of “incoming resources” with entries listed in columns of “from” and “amount.”
Handwritten notes amplify the point being made. A name on the list is underlined and the words “Barak Obama” are written in the margin, suggesting that donation is from the Illinois senator, even though his name is misspelled. The amount across from this name also is underlined and next to it someone has written “$1 million,” implying Obama contributed $1-million.
The Obama campaign strongly disputes this allegation and three Kenya experts who reviewed the document at our request called it fraudulent.
If the Davises' document is "fraudulent," that means Corsi's document is too -- even more so, since it's a recreation.
PolitiFact concludes that the whole Obama donation deal is "Pants on Fire wrong." That goes for Corsi as well -- and his other purportedly incriminating Obama email.
