Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has a problem with reporting dubious claims that later turn out to be completely false, then leaving the original claim on its website uncorrected.
So we have this anonymously written March 14 article:
Former President Obama used the British to spy on President Trump – both as a presidential candidate and as president-elect – to avoid having American “fingerprints” on the scandal, according to Fox News judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano.
He says three intelligence sources have confirmed the bombshell revelations.
Napolitano explained that statues allow the president to surveil anyone in the U.S. without suspicion, probable cause or a warrant, but doing so would leave a trail of evidence.
Instead, he said, Obama deliberately chose to use Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, the British spying agency with “24-7 access to the NSA database.”
He told “Fox & Friends” Tuesday:Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI, and he didn’t use the Department of Justice… He used GCHQ. What the heck is GCHQ? That’s the initials for the British spying agency. They have 24/7 access to the NSA database. So by simply having two people go to them and say ‘President Obama needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump, conversations involving President-elect Trump,’ [Obama’s] able to get it, and there’s no American fingerprints on this.
Napolitano claimed the GCHQ was approached on behalf of Obama. He said the unnamed man who ordered the surveillance quit his job in January.
“President Obama needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump, conversations involving President-elect Trump, he’s able to get it,” Napolitano said. “What happened to the guy who ordered this? Resigned three days after Donald Trump was inaugurated.”
Not only has everyone forcefully denied this claim -- including the GCHQ -- Napolitano has been apparently pulled off the air at Fox News over the false claim, which was actually just him regurgitating something said on Russian state-owned channel RT by Larry Johnson, the guy best known for promoting a nonexistent Michelle Obama "whitey tape."
Yet this utterly false story remains at WND, live and uncorrected. That's an egregious journalistic violation.
What was that WND editor Joseph Farah was saying about WND being staffed with "journalism professionals" with "collectively hundreds of years of experience" that, if true, would have kept them from committing such an egregious journalistic violation? Never mind.
