Washington Post Fact Checker Roasted for Fake Claims of Intimidation Against Judge’s Daughter 

FSU Libraries/YouTube
FSU Libraries/YouTube
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton

Washington Post’s lead fact checker, Glenn Kessler, was roasted on social media after he falsely claimed Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were trying to “intimidate” the judge in their father’s criminal case by tweeting out reports that the judge’s daughter worked on the Biden-Harris campaign. 

After former President Donald Trump was arraigned in judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom in Manhattan, reports broke that Merchan’s daughter, Loren, is president and partner of Authentic Campaigns, a company that runs digital campaigns for Democrat candidates.

As Breitbart News reported:

According to Merchan’s archived LinkedIn account, she worked as the “Director of Digital Persuasion” for “Kamala Harris For The People” from February 2019 through December 2019 — which was during the 2020 presidential election. And according to the company’s website, the “Biden-Harris” campaign was also a client.

Both of Trump’s sons posted links to the story on Twitter.

“Seems relevant… yet another connection in this hand picked democrat show trial. The BS never ends folks,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted along with a link to Breitbart News’ coverage.

“They are all hand picked. It is all pre-arranged. This corruption is on a different level,” Eric Trump tweeted. 

Naturally, the links to the stories included a photo of Loren Merchan. However, Kessler accused them of trying to “intimidate” the judge and his family by tweeting out those reports. 

“Both Trump sons have now posted photos of the judge’s adult daughter. Totally irrelevant — and obviously intended to intimidate,” Kessler tweeted along with screenshots of the tweets.

Interestingly, Kesslers’s screenshots left out links to the stories that featured Loren Merchan’s photo. 

Journalists and political pundits quickly roasted the fact checker for omitting the context behind the photo. 

“Both were linking to a news story, thereby already putting the photo and information into the public domain,” The Hill columnist Joe Concha tweeted. “But for whatever reason, the WaPo “fact-checker” cropped that part out. Why is that?” 

Real Clear Investigations reporter Benjamin Weingarten sarcastically quoted Kessler’s “totally irrelevant” language in response to the tweet. 

“Did you really just deceptively edit these tweets in order to falsely portray the LINKING OF A NEWS STORY ABOUT A PUBLIC FIGURE as the posting of a private individual’s photo?” Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway asked Kessler. “Wow, BANNER FREAKING WEEK, GLENN.” 

Washington Free Beacon reported Chuck Ross accurately noted that the Trump sons tweets included links to reports about the judge’s daughter’s political connections. “They linked to a news article that has a photo of the judge’s daughter,” Ross said in response to Kessler. 

Jack Posobiec urged Twitter’s Community Notes to put a disclaimer on Kessler’s tweet that would explain the missing context.  

“Don tweeted a link to a story reporting on the judge’s family’s democrat political connections — connections that this actual descendant of Nazi war criminals & heir to a Nazi fortune is trying to hide,” GOP strategist Arthur Schwartz tweeted at Kessler.

Republican Strategist Andrew Surabian said in a “sane world” Kessler would be immediately fired for intentionally lying. 

“You’re a liar. They both posted a Breitbart story about the judge’s daughter working for Kamala Harris, not a picture. Last I checked, reporters considered political staffers to be public figures,” Surabian tweeted. “In a sane world, a ‘fact checker’ who knowingly lies would be fired on the spot.”

“You call yourself a fact checker,” Surabian added. “You routinely fact check people for things like leaving context out of their statements – so why did you lie and say Don Jr. and Eric posted a picture of the judges daughter instead of telling the truth that they posted a link to a news story?”

Nearly two hours after sending his original tweet, Kessler claimed he did not include the links the Trump sons tweeted out “so as not to spread the image further.”

Surabian also criticized MSNBC’s Joyce Alene for claiming Donald Trump Jr. “posted a picture of the judge’s daughter.”

“This tweet is a lie. Don posted a Breitbart story about the Judge’s daughter working for Kamala Harris,” Surabian noted. “But of course Joyce is a dishonest hack so she’ll leave this tweet up instead of deleting it.” 

State Freedom Caucus Network communication director Greg Price harped on Alene’s claims that his daughter’s connection to the Biden-Harris campaign is “not a conflict for the judge.”

“Don Jr. posted a news story showing that the judge presiding over the case against Trump is a Dem donor whose daughter worked for Biden and Kamala,” Price tweeted. “Normally, that would be a massive conflict of interest that would cause a judge to recuse himself but not when you’re a Stalinist.”

CNN’s John King similarly sparked outrage when he falsely claimed that Donald Trump Jr. “tweeted a picture of the judge’s daughter,” as a way to “intimidate” and “attack” the judge and his family.

King said:

Donald Trump Jr. just tweeted a picture of the judge’s daughter, saying she works for the Biden Harris campaign seems to be relevant. It is not relevant. It is not relevant. She’s an individual adult. But this is what I was about to say. This is the game they play. It’s not a game. This is how they play, right? They try to intimidate, they attack and they put at risk people who should not be dragged into this process.  Donald Trump is presumed innocent. If he can beat these charges, good for him. The judge’s daughter has nothing to do with this but this is what they do, this is how he they have so taken this country off the rails and outside the norms.

“Disgraceful how willing @cnn/@JohnKingCNN are to knowingly lie on TV,” Surabian tweeted. “Multiple outlets wrote about the judge’s daughter working for Kamala Harris. Don tweeted a link to one of those stories. He didn’t post a pic or threaten her. So dishonest, but the ‘fact checkers’ will ignore.”

Former Trump administration official Richard Grenell accused CNN of “trying to hide this story.”

“CNN is trying to hide this story – because their colleague Jim Sciutto worked for Obama-Biden,” Grenell tweeted. “@JohnKingCNN & @DanaBashCNN also tried to cover up the Biden laptop story because Dana’s now husband interfered in the 2020 election on behalf of Biden with a Russia hoax letter.”

Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.