After more than 27 years at The Washington Post, including almost 15 as The Fact Checker, I will be leaving on July 31, having taken a buyout.... he financial considerations were impossible to dismiss."

Writes Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post "fact checker," over at LinkedIn.

"So what’s next for The Fact Checker? I’m not sure. As many people at The Post know, I tried to arrange a short-term contract that would have given the editors time to find a worthy successor and allow me to train him or her. I didn’t want The Post to have a gap in fact-checking coverage during this fraught period in U.S. history. But we couldn’t work out an agreement."

Kessler tells us he plans to write books and in fact, he's already written a novel. It's "about a love triangle set in 1920s Dutch East Indies (colonial Indonesia), based on State Department cables I found in the National Archives."

Why did the WaPo Fact Checker call it "false" to say — as Trump did — "We have hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have not been showing up to work"?

I'm reading Glenn Kessler's "Fact-checking 26 suspect claims in Trump’s address to Congress/President makes false claims about border crossings, regulations, the economy, inflation and many other issues" (free-access link).

Kessler explains his judgment of falsity like this:

This is false. Trump appears to equate teleworking with not showing up for work. But he often uses inflated numbers for how many federal workers work from home. The White House budget office reported in August that 54 percent of federal employees “worked fully on-site, as their jobs require them to be physically present during all working hours,” while just 10 percent worked only from their homes. Meanwhile the Congressional Budget Office reported in April that 22 percent of federal employees usually teleworked — compared to 25 percent of private sector employees.

There are 2 problems with this fact check.

First, the numbers Kessler gives do not undermine the assertion that there are hundreds of thousands who don't come into work. There are something like 2.1 million federal employees (if you leave out the military and the postal service). Even if we restrict ourselves to the 10% who work only from home, there are over 200,000. If you add in the people who telework most of the time, that's another 400,000+. Kessler makes it look as though his numbers are powerful, but they support Trump! 

Second — and harder to notice — there's a quibble about the meaning of "not... showing up to work."

"[T]he FAA under Trump in 2019 launched a program to hire controllers using the very criteria he decried at his news conference."

"'FAA Provides Aviation Careers to People with Disabilities,' the agency announced on April 11, 2019.... The link under 'targeted disabilities' is now dead, but the Wayback Machine retains links from June 2017 and January 2021 that show the page was unchanged during Trump’s tenure. The list included: Hearing (total deafness in both ears), Vision (Blind), Missing Extremities, Partial Paralysis, Complete Paralysis, Epilepsy, Severe intellectual disability, Psychiatric disability, Dwarfism...."

Writes Glenn Kessler, awarding 4 Pinocchios, in "Trump launched air controller diversity program that he now decries/At news conference, Trump read a list of disabilities he calls disqualifying, but his administration started such hiring in 2019" (WaPo)(free-access link).

The Washington Post gives Tim Walz 4 Pinnochios.

"Speaking to a union audience, Walz swung too hard for the fences. He claimed that Vance has not voted for any 'pro-worker bills,' and his source was a union report card that covered only two bills in one year. As we have documented, Vance has voted for at least two bills that helped workers and had union support. On top of that, claiming that Vance knows nothing about working people, when that’s the subject of his book, is also false."

Writes Glenn Kessler.

"Republicans are attacking...."

From the Washington Post "Fact Checker," Glenn Kessler: "Assessing claims about Tim Walz’s military service/Republicans are attacking the Democratic vice-presidential nominee on his retirement timing and with allegations of 'stolen valor.'"

There's no "Pinocchio" rating. I'm not going to expend one of my gift links on this piece. I don't think it says anything inconsistent with my effort at reading the news yesterday, "The New York Times and The Washington Post address J.D. Vance's attack on Tim Walz's military credentials."

There may be some new info, such as:

"During the coronavirus hearing this week, [Marjorie Taylor] Greene attacked [Anthony] Fauci as she held up a photo of two sedated puppies, their heads placed in mesh cages..."

"... as they lie on a table while being swarmed by sand flies.... [I]t’s silly to personally blame Fauci for the design of research studies... endorsed many levels below the director..... Female sand flies carry a parasite that produces zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis (ZVL), an often-neglected tropical disease in humans. Domestic dogs are the main reservoir host and sand flies are the main vector.... [T]here is something about using dogs... that make many people squeamish.... [N]early 16,000 dogs in 2019 were subjected to pain in the United States during research experiments — and nearly 400 received no pain medication. The White Coat Waste Project hit a nerve when it publicized the Tunisia sand fly study in 2021, emphasizing the dramatic photo that Greene waved at Fauci. The Post reported that Fauci’s office got 3,600 phone calls in 36 hours.... The emails show that NIH was not fully transparent as it tried to handle a public-relations nightmare...."

Writes Glenn Kessler, the WaPo "fact checker," in "Unpacking the story of Fauci and painful experiments involving dogs/Documents obtained by an animal rights group show that NIH was not fully transparent when the controversy erupted in 2021."

"Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy repeatedly challenged [Nikki] Haley to name 'three provinces in Eastern Ukraine that they [she and Biden] want to send our troops to actually fight for.'"

"Neither have said they want to send troops — Ramaswamy also falsely asserted 'these people want to send your sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine, they’ve been arguing for it for a year' — but Haley eventually mentioned these names. She missed with Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, though to be fair Ramaswamy asked her to name three provinces, not 'the three provinces' of eastern Ukraine. The third province in eastern Ukraine is Kharkiv — which Ukraine liberated in a stunning counteroffensive in 2022."

Writes Glenn Kessler, "Fact-checking the fourth Republican presidential debate" (WaPo).

ALSO:

Vivek exposed Nikki Haley for exactly what she is:

A neocon puppet of Boeing & Raytheon, with absolutely no foreign policy experience or knowledge apart from once raising her hand on command at the UN.

There's no coming back from this 👇 pic.twitter.com/NJPyldx5ge

— System Update (@SystemUpdate_) December 8, 2023

The Washington Post Fact Checker says: "So far, Trump’s rollback of regulations can’t be blamed for Ohio train wreck."

Glenn Kessler investigated Trump's statement "I had nothing to do with it."

We decided to examine every possible regulatory change made under Trump that could be related to the accident and assess whether it could have made an impact. A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident, said the Norfolk Southern crew received an alert about an overheated wheel bearing and was trying to slow the train before it came off the tracks. From our analysis, none of the regulatory changes made during the Trump administration at this point can be cited as contributing to the accident.

"There was message distortion. All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation."

"Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five."

Said former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., quoted by the WaPo fact checker Glenn Kessler in "The Hunter Biden laptop and claims of 'Russian disinfo.'"

The Politico story, published October 16, 2020, just before the last presidential debate, was "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say." 

As Glenn Kessler describes it:

"Readers may recall that during Donald Trump’s presidency, we established a new category, the Bottomless Pinocchio..."

"... to account for false or misleading statements repeated so often that they became a form of propaganda. A statement would get added to the list if it had earned a Three or Four Pinocchios rating and been repeated at least 20 times. By the end of the Trump presidency, 56 claims made by Trump had qualified. Now..."

Writes the Washington Post fact checker, Glenn Kessler in "A Bottomless Pinocchio for Biden — and other recent gaffes."

The 2022 elections are not until tomorrow, but already we see what's going to happen. Biden's about to get the bum's rush.

The WaPo Fact Checker fact-checks Stacey Abrams's denial that she was ever an election denier.

I scrolled immediately to see how many "Pinocchios" this got, but somehow this gets to be one of the statements that eludes the rating. Let's figure out why:

[A] review of numerous interviews shows that Abrams subsequently used language denying the outcome of the election that she now appears to be trying to play down.

For instance, Abrams at various times has said the election was “stolen” and even, in a New York Times interview, that “I won.” She suggested that election laws were “rigged” and that it was “not a free or fair election.” She also claimed that voter suppression was to blame for her loss, even though she admitted she could not “empirically” prove that. While she did acknowledged Kemp was the governor, she refused to say he was the “legitimate” governor.... 

The Washington Post fact-checker checks "Hillary Clinton’s claim that ‘zero emails’ were marked classified."

Here's Glenn Kessler (who does not assign Pinocchios on this one)(the boldface is mine):

During the contest between Trump and Clinton, we wrote 16 fact checks on the email issue, frequently awarding Pinocchios to Clinton for legalistic parsing. But in light of the Trump investigation, Clinton is trying to draw a distinction between Trump’s current travails and the probe that targeted her.... 

Clinton, in her tweet, suggests none of her emails were marked classified. That’s technically correct. Whether those emails contained classified information was a major focus of the investigation, but a review of the recent investigations, including new information obtained by the Fact Checker, shows Clinton has good reason for making a distinction with Trump. 

"If you wanted to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland, how better than to target them and their kids with this deadly fentanyl?..."

"It does look intentional. It’s like Joe Biden wants to punish the people who didn’t vote for him and opening up the floodgates to the border is one way to do it." 

Said J.D. Vance, quoted in "J.D. Vance’s claim that Biden is targeting ‘MAGA voters’ with fentanyl," a WaPo Fact Checker piece by Glenn Kessler.

I know this is a "4 Pinocchios" review, but I haven't read it yet. I just want to make some observations of my own before seeing how Kessler frames this.

From WaPo's Fact Checker: "Unraveling the tale of Hunter Biden and $3.5 million from Russia."

 Glenn Kessler writes: 

We interviewed people familiar with the transactions, reviewed property and real estate documents and probed for leads in the emails contained on a hard drive copy of the laptop Hunter Biden supposedly left behind for repair in a Delaware shop in April 2019. None of our sources would speak on the record because of continuing investigations of Hunter Biden and his business practices, but we sought confirmation from corporate filings and other records.

The flimsiness of the allegation was apparent from the start merely by carefully reading the Senate GOP report itself.... It’s a complicated story, involving a web of corporate entities, that eventually leads to the purchase of millions of dollars worth of real estate in Brooklyn by the Russian billionaire. We found no evidence that Hunter Biden was part of those transactions....

The WaPo Fact Checker gives Sonia Sotomayor 4 Pinocchios!

She said, "Those numbers show that omicron is as deadly and causes as much serious disease in the unvaccinated as delta did. … We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators.”

She left some major weasel room: What does "serious" mean? She didn't say 100,000 children were on ventilators, just that "many" were. So I'm surprised Glenn Kessler went the whole 4 Pinocchios on her.

Let's read:

That’s wildly incorrect, assuming she is referring to hospitalizations, given the reference to ventilators. According to HHS data, as of Jan. 8 there are about 5,000 children hospitalized in a pediatric bed, either with suspected covid or a confirmed laboratory test. This figure includes patients in observation beds. So Sotomayor’s number is at least 20 times higher than reality, even before you determine how many are in “serious condition.”

Kessler notes the special importance of accuracy for Supreme Court Justices. This isn't a place to show special respect. And her number was "absurdly high." So, "She earns Four Pinocchios."

By the way, Kessler also absolves Justice Gorsuch off the accusation that he got a number absurdly wrong. The official court transcript has him saying: “Flu kills — I believe — hundreds of thousands of people every year.” Kessler listened to the audio verifies that Gorsuch said, “flu kills, I believe, hundreds, thousands of people every year.” Wow. Correct the transcript, people. Or is correcting the transcript a dangerous, endless exercise?

"1. No, the Taliban did not seize $85 billion of U.S. weapons.... Note: This was the most popular article in The Fact Checker’s 14-year history."

From "The most popular fact checks of 2021" by Glenn Kessler, "The Fact Checker" in WaPo.

WaPo's fact checker casts doubt on Robert A. Caro's "The Power Broker."

In "Robert Moses and the saga of the racist parkway bridges" (WaPo), Glenn Kessler fact-checks something Pete Buttigieg said: 

"I’m still surprised that some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a White and a Black neighborhood or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach — or that would’ve been — in New York was — was designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices."

The question isn't whether Buttigieg got it wrong, but whether the massively respected Robert A. Caro got it wrong in his 1974 book about Robert Moses. And Kessler finds that in the years since the publication of the book, significant doubts have been raised about the part — 2 pages — containing the anecdote about the motivation for the height of the underpasses. 

Caro's only source for the story was Sidney M. Shapiro, "a close Moses associate and former chief engineer and general manager of the Long Island State Park Commission."

"No, the Taliban did not seize $83 billion of U.S. weapons."

Says WaPo Fact Checker Glenn Kessler, reacting to this statement by Donald Trump: "ALL EQUIPMENT should be demanded to be immediately returned to the United States, and that includes every penny of the $85 billion dollars in cost." 

Trump rounds the number up from $83 billion, but we've all heard that number, so why does Kessler give Trump 3 Pinocchios for that? I note that Trump calls that the "cost," and it might be a little ambiguous. "Cost" means what we paid, perhaps for everything. It's not the current resale value of whatever physical objects we left behind.

Indeed, Kessler says that the number comes from the report to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, and it refers to "all the money spent to train, equip and house the Afghan military and police" — spent over the entire 20 years of the war. We also spent another $36 billion on the Afghan government that melted into nothing. That's a statement of the cost. 

If you break out the cost of the equipment alone, it's something like $24 billion. Much of it was spent on vehicles — 76,000 of them — but that's over the entire period, so many of these are worn out (or destroyed). There were 211 aircraft, but only 167 are still usable (according to the Special Inspector).

"We generally have not awarded Pinocchios when researching how politicians speak about family myths and stories."

"We also do not play gotcha when a politician flubs a talking point they have gotten correct on other occasions. Biden went too far on Tuesday when he described his great-grandfather as a 'coal miner,' but during the presidential campaign he correctly labeled him a mining engineer. So this is not a repeat of 1988, when Biden repeatedly lifted lines from a British politician’s speech and falsely said he had ancestors who worked 12 hours underground." 

Writes Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post, in the Fact Checker piece, "Biden’s claim that his ‘great-grandpop’ was a coal miner."

"Though still early in his presidency, these three false claims have been repeated by President Biden despite previous fact-checking."

Writes WaPo fact checker Glenn Kessler, in "President Biden, recidivist": "[T]here are three claims President Biden has made that appear impervious to fact-checking, given that he’s already said them at least three times. Some readers have noticed, sending us puzzled emails about why the president keeps making these statements."