Author of Ben Carson Hit Piece: ‘I Was In Guantánamo for 12 Hours’

Kyle D. Cheney, the Politico reporter who wrote last Friday’s discredited hit piece on Republican presidential frontrunner Ben Carson, has a flair for hyperbole, writing about a 2004 arrest: “I was in Guantánamo for 12 Hours.”

Cheney was arrested during an anti-war protest at the Republican National Convention in 2004. Though he was, at the time, an editor for the student newspaper at Boston University, he seems to have joined the protest as a demonstrator.

Later, Cheney wrote an angry op-ed about his detention. He attacked “the Bushies” and “Republican demagogues.” He decried the “amBush” in which he was arrested–during a protest he admits he knew had no permit–and attacked “the New York City Police Department and its henchmen,” slamming “the steady stream of outright lies and unmitigated praise for the law enforcement effort spewing from the bowels of Madison Square Garden.”

Cheney complained about his detention with dozens of others in Pier 57, “Guantanamo on the Hudson.” He later agreed to a deal, along with other defendants, in which charges were dismissed “if we stay out of trouble for half a year.” Still resentful weeks later, Cheney claimed that America “can never claim to be what it once was: A land that cherished freedom of expression, distinguished between peaceful protesters and malicious terrorists…”.

At Politico, Cheney has covered Obamacare, but his most recent efforts have included wide-ranging political coverage, including premature cheerleading for Donald Trump’s decline. Cheney’s original article claimed Carson admitted misleading the public about applying and being accepted to West Point, but in fact Carson never made those claims, and never admitted wrongdoing. Politico was forced to revise the initial claims in Cheney’s story.

Over the weekend, Cheney took to Twitter to defend his reporting, claiming that he had caught Carson claiming falsely that he had a “scholarship offer” to West Point–though that was uncertain, as West Point does recruit with offers of financial aid, and there is no evidence to suggest Carson lied about being recruited.

.@RealBenCarson said for 25 years he had scholarship offer to W. Point. Yesterday he said that was false. Everything else is semantic.

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) November 7, 2015

Cheney also claimed Carson’s “claim of scholarship offer diminishes cadets who went through rigorous process to get offer.”