CNN Humiliates Itself with ‘Fact Check’ Admitting McCarthy’s Impeachment Inquiry Evidence Is True

CNN humiliated itself Wednesday with a “fact check” admitting impeachment inquiry evidence put forth by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is true.

“I appreciate CNN actually acknowledged that,” McCarthy told reporters Thursday. “They had to acknowledge that every alleged accusation that put us into impeachment inquiry is true.”

“What was interesting was the headline, but more interesting was the fact checks. It was all true,” he added.

CNN’s Annie Grayer, Marshall Cohen, and Daniel Dale published a fact check article titled “Fact-checking McCarthy’s claims while launching Biden impeachment inquiry.”

The CNN reporters fact checked six allegations leveled by McCarthy during his Tuesday impeachment inquiry announcement. Some allegations were found true, while CNN found others to be lacking context.

None of the McCarthy claims, the CNN reporters found, proved false.

Claim 1: CNN fact checked if Biden family members and associates received $20 million through a complex web of shell companies, as McCarthy alleged. The conclusion was “this is true” regarding the family members and associates of Biden, but CNN argues there is not evidence — at least not yet — about Joe Biden himself getting any of this. Of course, that is the point of an impeachment inquiry — an investigation — to get at whether or not such evidence exists.

Claim 2: CNN fact checked the allegation that an informant alleged Joe and Hunter Biden received bribes. “It’s true that an informant gave a tip of this nature to the FBI in 2020, and that the bureau had viewed him as a credible informant,” CNN wrote about this one. “But the underlying allegation that the Biden family was given a bribe is totally unproven; the informant was merely reporting something he said he had been told by a Ukrainian businessman.”

Again, the point of an impeachment inquiry is to actually investigate this claim that the FBI found to be from a “credible informant.”

Claim 3: CNN fact checked whether Joe Biden participated in calls and dinners with his son’s business partners. CNN did not note if the claim was true or false but said the allegation “omits key context.” Obviously, however, the claim from McCarthy is true as it has been revealed Biden attended dinners and participated in conference calls with such individuals — and yet again, the point of an impeachment inquiry is to nail down the context of what exactly Joe Biden’s involvement in such matters really amounted to.

Claim 4: CNN fact checked if Biden family members’ financial transactions were flagged as suspicious. Again, the article did not say whether or not the fact was true or false — but it is inherently true. There were dozens of suspicious activity reports filed about Biden family member financial transactions. CNN’s argument is that the reports themselves do not prove wrongdoing. “The existence of these suspicious activity reports don’t prove wrongdoing on their own,” the article stated.

That is true, but as with the other claims the actual point of an impeachment inquiry is to investigate these further and determine if there was wrongdoing associated with these financial transactions. Investigators will need to nail that down in the coming weeks and months ahead.

Claim 5: CNN fact checked if then-Vice President Joe Biden “used his powers to help his son’s business.” CNN did not report the allegation was false. CNN said the “allegations from House Republicans are still evolving” on this point, but that there was “no public evidence that Joe Biden abused his government powers to help his family.” Yet again, the point of an impeachment inquiry is to investigate this and nail down the facts before lawmakers decide whether to proceed with articles of impeachment or not.

Claim 6: CNN fact checked if Joe Biden lied about his knowledge of family’s business deals. In this one, CNN admits that “Joe Biden’s unequivocal denials of any business-related contact with his son have been undercut over time.” In other words, McCarthy is right: Biden lied about this. CNN’s further argument on this point — that “so far there is no public evidence that his occasional interactions with Hunter Biden’s business partners led to him getting substantively involved in his son’s financial arrangements” — is yet again another piece of why an impeachment inquiry is important to allow the set of facts and questions such an inquiry would be designed to uncover and answer.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.