Fact-Checking Glenn Kessler

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Washington Post fact-checking icon Glenn Kessler doesn’t think much of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard or her criticism of John Brennan, James Comey, and the rest of the Rectitude Avengers:

Why did the intelligence community become more convinced that Putin directed the effort to swing the election to Trump, instead of just seeking to inject turmoil in the U.S. elections? As the news reports misquoted by Gabbard show — and as subsequent investigations confirmed — additional, credible intelligence showed that Putin decided to back Trump over Clinton. That’s not a conspiracy but a natural evolution from careful investigative work.

Careful. Investigative. Work.

Strictly speaking, “careful investigative work” isn’t a checkable phrase. It doesn’t contain a time or date, the length of an Ibex horn, even a pierceable superlative like “greatest economy in history.” But Kessler in the past has asserted the power to measure the mathematical velocity of human wrongness (“the Fact Checker database shows the dramatic escalation in the rate of Trump’s dishonesty over time…”), so we may as well take a whack. Did the intelligence community reach its fateful conclusion that Putin “aspired” to help Donald Trump, for whom he’d developed a “clear preference,” through “careful investigative work”?

Of course, Kessler when he wrote that line didn’t have the benefit of the just-released House Intelligence Committee report on the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that’s at issue, but let’s review anyway: