Washington Post Admits It Botched Big Story That Accused Trump of Trying to Flip Election in GA

ABOVE:  Mark Hemingway with Real Clear Investigations appeared on the Wednesday edition of CBN Newswatch to talk more about The Washington Post article and the impact it has on public trust. Newswatch is seen weekdays on the CBN News Channel.

During the height of all the confusion and questions surrounding the 2020 election, the Washington Post reported a damaging story against President Trump. It was so damaging that House Democrats cited it while trying to impeach Trump a second time. Now it turns out it wasn't exactly true.

It centered around a December conference call with former President Donald Trump and Georgia's lead elections investigator. The actual call has finally been made public after the Georgia secretary of state released an audiotape of the conversation.

The recording shows that The Washington Post misquoted President Trump's comments from the phone call, making it sound like he was telling the Georgia election official to overturn the election results in his favor, but he never actually said that. 

Trump insisted that the 2020 presidential election results for Georgia were compromised and urged the investigator to figure out what happened. 

The Post originally reported an unnamed source told them Trump told the investigator to "find the fraud" and that she'd be "a national hero" if she did. But those weren't his actual words.

It turns out he encouraged the state investigator to thoroughly examine the ballots in Fulton County, then contended that she would likely find "dishonesty" there. And Trump told her that she had "the most important job in the country right now." 

Here's part of the correction issued by the Washington Post: 

"The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump's comments on the call, based on information provided by a source. Trump did not tell the investigator to 'find the fraud' or say she would be 'a national hero' if she did so." 

"Trump did not tell the investigator to “find the fraud” or say she would be “a national hero” if she did so."https://t.co/PnQm0aJyOu pic.twitter.com/GEzAJmhWDY

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) March 15, 2021

.@cammcwhirter tracked down the actual recording of the call which led to Wapo's correction (but not the other outlets yet). https://t.co/Gx9DbjqVQl

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) March 15, 2021

During the six-minute conversation with the investigator, Trump asserted that he won the election in Georgia but "something bad happened."

But the chief investigator, Francis Watson told Trump, "I can assure you that our team and the (Georgia Bureau of Investigation), that we are only interested in the truth and finding the information that is based on the facts."

Meanwhile, during a hand recount in Georgia's DeKalb County, there was a serious error that occurred that would have given Biden 9,000 extra votes, but it was caught at the last minute by an election monitor and corrected. The mistake was never applied to the final tally, but GOP recount monitors argued that they weren't allowed to have enough watchers to prevent other potential problems like that one. 

In addition, Trump and his lawyers were partly concerned about surveillance footage that was released in December of Fulton County election workers. They appeared to be potentially carting in thousands of mystery ballots, but it was difficult to verify whether the ballots were clean from the footage.

In a hearing last year, Trump team volunteer, lawyer Jackie Pick, played surveillance video allegedly showing election workers clearing the room, then secretly pulling suitcases full of ballots out from under a table. Videos like that were just one example of the questions that fueled public concern after the election.

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