Politifact Arrogantly Dismisses Late-Night Biden Ballot Dump Despite Evidence
- Politifact ‘debunks’ a vital claim about Detroit election fraud with zero investigation
- Reporter talks to one person and on the basis of that quote, rates an entire claim as ‘false’
- By not talking to key witnesses, Reporter Hendrickson gets the story wrong, the fact-check wrong, and misses an enormous story that she seems willful, and financially interested, in suppressing
OUR RATING: Journalistic Malpractice. Even Salon.com is ashamed.
Indicted Outlet: Clara Hendrickson | Politifact | Link | Archive | 11/5/20
Right after election day 2020, when dozens of witnesses were reporting that a suspicious late-night van delivered suspicious ballots at 3:30AM, Politifact purposefully muddied the waters with this exceptionally negligent fact check that was wrong in several critical ways. If they had done just a little bit of investigation they would have seen that the narrative was wrong. Instead, this Politifact fact check by Clara Hendrickson was substantially wrong, and has never been corrected.
Clara Hendrickson, it should be noted, works for the Detroit Free Press.[1] The funding for her position appears to come from another organization, “Report for America” [2] that looks like an organizational knock-off of Teach for America. The funding for Report for America is unclear.
The funders they list and publicly report are predominantly left-wing foundations.[3] Multiple ‘anonymous’ donations are listed at every donor level. These unreported funders of Hendrickson create a serious financial conflict of interest for Hendrickson when covering topics that might offend those donors. Her funding comes from left-wing donors who put into doubt the quality of her reporting. If she were to report the truth about voter fraud, would she lose her funding? Is she being funded by Dominion Voting Systems or by allies of Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer?
Reviewing her recent work [4], you can notice that her tone and perspective is one of a Democrat operative. Every story is approached from a default left-wing position and vantage point. The Republicans are the ones constantly upsetting the perceived center-left mainstream and her stories are consistently supposedly ‘debunking’ claims about voter fraud. No original content reveals anything that challenges the basic left-wing narrative. This shows she is fundamentally not objective. When a reporter’s cumulative output is only favorable to one partisan or ideological position, it shows their inability to be objective. Look at this story for an insight into Hendrickson, covering the leak of the Roe v. Wade leaked draft opinion [5], where she interviews politicians for their reaction. She lopsidedly interviews 7 Democrats and 3 Republicans. And of those she interviews, 6/7 of the Democrats interviewed were women, and only 1/3 Republicans interviewed were women. It’s a cute way to reinforce the false left-wing meme that women are pro-abortion and old men are pro-life. [6]
Major Violations:
- Financial Conflict of Interest
- Not Objective
- Premature Conclusions
- Opinion as Fact
- Superficial Investigation
- Willfully Ignorant
- Negligent Ignorance
On election night 2020 in Michigan election observers, called poll challengers, noticed a wide variety of suspicious vote tabulation activity in Detroit. Witnesses interviewed by the Gateway Pundit describe a wide variety of suspicious behavior that witnesses weren’t sure how to report or what to do with their observations.
Some witnesses went to the Republican attorneys on-site at the TCF Center where votes were being tabulated after being verified at the Detroit Department of Elections. Some witnesses wrote out their observations and signed sworn affidavits.
Detroit has a history in Michigan politics of having very suspicious election returns and election practices.
One example: even though winning a ‘write-in’ campaign is virtually unheard of, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan won one in 2013 despite being kicked off the ballot previously. [7]
A third example: In 2017, Garlin Gilchrist was ahead on election day with in-person voting, then a surge of late-night absentees [9] delivered via a white van to the TCF Center gave the victory to incumbent Detroit Clerk Janice Winfrey. Gilchrist requested a recount and called the situation a “catastrophe.” [10]
One way this fraud was observed was through the time-stamped vote totals. Media outlets are offered a paid service showing vote totals as they come in on election night, this service is branded as the Edison Research Service. [11] You can actually see the time-stamped data tracking Michigan returns still present on the New York Times website. [12]
This is the data stream that provided the interesting graphs from the night of the election, showing the vote totals between Trump and Biden over time.
In all of these charts it’s hard not to notice the large late-night leap for Joe Biden. Where did those Biden surges come from?
What’s even harder to explain is how it happened so late in the night considering that most counties had already reported their full totals for election night.
The most charitable explanation is that those votes came from counties, like Wayne County, that are known for being reliably Democrat, where the votes are often 90% in favor of Democrats. But why would those votes be the ones that come in the latest?
Those suspicious ballots showed up in the middle of the night, as you can see in the timestamps. Now we know they were smuggled into the TCF Center just as patriots described: in a white van that showed up in the middle of the night. Patriot Shane Trejo saw the 3:30AM Biden Ballot Dump, he saw the white van arrive. [13]
Trejo and other witnesses have consistently and reliably said the same thing: they saw a van arrive at 3:30AM in the underground ramp at the TCF Center in Detroit.
If Clara Hendrickson had spoken with any Republicans who were present, they would have told her the same thing they told us: the van arrived at 3:30AM. The Republican witnesses consistently said they thought they were watching voter fraud happen in front of their eyes and felt powerless to do anything about it.
So what does Hendrickson do? Does she talk to these witnesses or attempt to verify whether a van came in as described?
Nope. She ‘fact-checks’ the claim that a van arrived in the middle of the night with ballots, but identifies the wrong van.
She does zero actual investigation, she takes an article published by the Texas Scorecard that says a suspicious van arrived around 2:40AM, and finds a single colleague in the media who says it’s camera equipment, and then rates the entire claim about late-night ballot vans false.
Let’s look at the sophistry she deployed to do this little hat trick:
Here’s Hendrickson’s central claim:
“No evidence ballots were smuggled into Detroit counting hub”
This is objectively false because there were a wide variety of eyewitnesses who saw ballots being smuggled into the TCF Center.
It’s also objectively false because there was video of the 3:30AM Biden Ballot Dump that Hendrickson was too lazy and negligent to procure.
The Gateway Pundit interviewed the witnesses and documented their claims. [14] The Gateway Pundit then requested the footage from the TCF Center to verify whether there was a 3:30AM van delivering suspicious ballots past the 8:00PM deadline. [15] Then the Gateway Pundit received the footage, reviewed it, and discovered that there was now video evidence backing up the witness statement evidence that ballots were smuggled into the Detroit counting hub on election night. [16]
To our surprise there were at least TWO deliveries, one at 3:30AM and one at 4:30AM. [17]
So, there’s not just ‘no evidence’ there’s now incontrovertible evidence.
In fact, there’s so much evidence that Detroit was forced to change its explanation. Instead of denying that such a van existed, now they admit there were late night absentee ballots delivered at 3:30AM.
Meaning that, Detroit takes a more honest position than this Politifact fact-check because they now admit that ballots were brought into Detroit late at night.
But what is truly most hilarious about all of this is that even Clara Hendrickson now admits that there were late night deliveries of ballots to the TCF Center.[18]
She never updated or amended this original ‘debunk’ of the claim because that would require admitting that pro-Trump conservatives were right all along: a suspicious van was delivering possibly illegal ballots in the middle of the night.
Hendrickson’s original article debunked a van delivering ballots, and she will likely now claim she didn’t mean the 3:30AM Biden Ballot Dump. But she doesn’t clarify that in the original article, and it’s obvious by the timeline that she never admitted to it until it was proven by the Gateway Pundit.
And most important: her Politifact fact-check debunking any claim to a late-night van delivering ballots, was used to shoot down the eyewitnesses who claimed they saw a late-night van full of ballots.
Hendrickson can claim malice or negligence as her defense, but it’s one or the other: she was either covering up the 3:30AM van, or she was so sloppy that she ignored every eyewitness who was very clear about the van arriving an hour after the 2:40AM van and that it arrived at the underground receiving dock and not up on the street.
They were also clear it was a white van and not a red van.
The pathetic left-wing fact-check narrative only moves the goalposts once the old narrative is proven false.
Election integrity patriots have had to fight for every inch of ground since election night 2020 to get the media to admit even obvious facts about the evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Hendrickson in November 2020 was laying one of the most oppressive fakenews narratives at the time: by arrogantly saying there was no van smuggling in ballots. Hendrickson in February 2021 is saying the van smuggling in ballots were only smuggling in legal ballots.
Notice that her slide from “no van” to “legal ballots” without ever acknowledging “I was completely wrong before.”
It’s also dishonest to say that there’s ‘no evidence’ when the media clearly never bothered to ask any of the witnesses. I asked patriot Shane Trejo if Clara Hendrickson has ever asked him about the 3:30AM TCF Center van. You won’t be surprised to learn that the answer is no.
If Hendrickson ever reported the truth, her paymasters at Report for America would probably pull her paycheck, so it’s clear why she can’t be honest, thorough, objective, balanced, or write stories in good faith.
OUR RATING: Journalistic Malpractice. Even Salon.com is ashamed.
Bibliography:
1 ] https://www.freep.com/staff/5301324002/clara-hendrickson/
2 ] https://www.reportforamerica.org/members/clara-hendrickson/
3 ] https://www.reportforamerica.org/supporters/#:~:text=Where%20the%20Money%20Goes,%2C%20evaluation%2C%20recruitment%20and%20more.
4 ] https://www.freep.com/staff/5301324002/clara-hendrickson/
5 ] https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/2022/05/03/roe-v-wade-supreme-court-michigan-abortion/9627495002/
6 ] https://www.vox.com/2019/5/20/18629644/abortion-gender-gap-public-opinion
7 ] https://www.michiganradio.org/politics-government/2013-08-07/duggan-makes-history-with-winning-write-in-campaign-napoleon-rallies-supporters
8 ] https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/08/james-okeefe-voter-fraud-videos-prove-voter-id-laws-needed/
9 ] https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/elections/2017/11/07/detroit-clerk-race-winfrey-gilchrist/107447530/
10 ] https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2017/11/02/detroit-winfrey-gilchrist-election-mishaps/107267124/
11 ] https://www.edisonresearch.com/election-polling/
12 ] https://static01.nyt.com/elections-assets/2020/data/api/2020-11-03/race-page/michigan/president.json
13 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/stunning-testimony-michigan-election-observer-shane-trejo-witnessed-drivers-bring-50-boxes-absentee-ballots-midnight-deadline-detroit-tcf-center-330am/
14 ] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCekdKDk6d8opUrUEXtXD4XQ
15 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/weeks-delays-detroit-tcf-center-turns-requested-footage-330-biden-ballot-dump-gateway-pundit/
16 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/exclusive-suspicious-vehicle-seen-escorting-late-night-biden-ballot-van-tcf-center-election-night-video/
17 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/exclusive-tcf-center-election-fraud-newly-recovered-video-shows-late-night-deliveries-tens-thousands-illegal-ballots-michigan-arena/
18 ] https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2021/02/05/gateway-pundit-video-doesnt-show-election-fraud-detroit/4411975001/
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