Joel Pollack/Breitbart: Adam Schiff Appears to Have Outed Himself as the Washington Post's Source for Its First "Whistleblower"/Impeachment Narratives

An old trick -- leak to a friendly outlet, and then cite that friendly outlet's Disinterested and Objective Reportage as evidence of the claim you're making.

Which you, of course, leaked to them.

We saw a lot of this "circular reporting" with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, leaking to Yahoo and other outlets and then citing Yahoo and other outlets as objective third-party confirmation of their claims.

Schiff seems to have done this.

Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) may have been an anonymous source for the Washington Post as it reported allegations that have led to the impeachment of President Donald Trump.

Schiff may have outed himself during his opening arguments in the Senate trial of the president on Wednesday, as he cited an opinion article written by the Post editorial board -- an odd reference in a presentation of factual evidence.

Pollack explains that Schiff probably leaked to the opinion section of the Post, rather than the reportorial section, because you don't have to fact-check opinions. Newspapers get very loose with the "facts" they present in opinion sections.

...

The Post editorial helped create an atmosphere of suspicion and anticipation that led to the complaint’s release and the impeachment itself. And on Wednesday, the Post editorial conveniently provided a "fact" -- reliably told” story -- that Schiff could cite in his case for Trump’s removal.

But Schiff did not explain why he would treat an opinion article as "fact." Editorials are not typically reliable sources of original reporting.

The most logical explanation is that Schiff considered the article "factual" because he himself was the source. He seems to have cited the Post in the same way the FBI in the “Crossfire Hurricane” case cited Yahoo! News to the FISA court without revealing Yahoo! was using the same source as the FBI.

And speaking of the Washington Post:

posted by Ace at 01:13 PM

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