'Pretty telling': James Hasson rips apart the NY Times' spin on Grenell's DNI hires & the Nunes memo

Doug P. | 1:17 PM on February 22, 2020

A New York Times story about personnel the new acting DNI Richard Grenell is bringing into the intelligence office contains these two paragraphs:

One of his first hires was Kashyap Patel, a senior National Security Council staff member and former key aide to Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California and the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Mr. Patel will have a mandate to “clean house,” CBS News reported, citing a person close to the matter.

Mr. Patel was best known as the lead author of a politically charged memo two years ago that accused F.B.I. and Justice Department leaders of abusing their surveillance powers to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser. The memo was widely criticized as misleading, though an inspector general later found other problems with aspects of the surveillance.

There’s some Olympic-level spin gymnastics in that article, as James Hasson pointed out:

This article says that @RichardGrenell just hired “an expert on Trump conspiracy theories.”

The evidence? The aide wrote “a politically charged memo” that “was widely criticized as misleading.”

That was the Nunes memo, which turned out to be accurate.https://t.co/7l3Kyp4lER

— James Hasson (@JamesHasson20) February 22, 2020

We see what you did there, NY Times:

It’s pretty telling that the NYT chose to focus on how the Nunes memo was portrayed at the time it was published (“widely criticized,” “politically charged”) instead of focusing on whether the memo actually turned out be an accurate summary. Which it was.

— James Hasson (@JamesHasson20) February 22, 2020

“Pretty telling” indeed, though perhaps not too surprising considering the source.

A memo that was validated by the DoJ IG investigation report.

[Editor's Note: Be mindful of the weasel words "politically charged" which is a @nytimes Leftist's way of saying "it was true but we didn't like it because it undermined our narrative."]https://t.co/UVshWA1aMB

— Joseph Toomey (@JosephEToomey) February 22, 2020