AP's Ted Birdis Fact Checks His Own Bogus Claims, Now Being Repeated By Others, Admitting They're False

Earlier this week, we wrote about an absolutely ridiculous Associated Press story by reporter Ted Birdis, claiming that law enforcement investigating the San Bernardino shootings are being somehow held back because of the close of the NSA's Section 215 phone records program. There were all sorts of problems with that story, so it's great to see the Associated Press ask one of its enterprising young reporters -- a guy who goes by the name Ted Birdis -- to do a "fact check" piece on Republican Presidential candidates who are now repeating the very claims that Birdis himself made earlier in the week.

This "other" Ted Birdis (along with Ken Dilanian) suddenly notices that the claims that Ted Birdis of earlier this week reported are magically false when repeated by others:

In the wake of the California shootings, Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Lindsey Graham are complaining that U.S. intelligence agencies have lost their authority to collect phone records on Americans under a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program. They want the government to bring that program back.

All four candidates have overstated their case.

Their comments fail to acknowledge key provisions of a new U.S. law. While the new law ended the bulk collection of phone records, it still allows the government to obtain records on a case-by-case basis with court approval.

The new "fact check" piece even admits that Rubio, at the very least, cited Birdis' earlier report, but then tries to pretend he just didn't read it right. Except that's bullshit. The problem was with the article, which had a giant headline reading: "California terror investigators can't view NSA phone records" and includes ominous descriptions like the following:

Under a shutdown order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the government was prohibited from collecting phone records in wholesale ways starting Nov. 29.

"After November 28, 2015, no access to the BR (business record) metadata (phone records) will be permitted for intelligence analysis purposes," U.S. District Judge Michael W. Mosman of Portland ruled. "Hence, queries of the BR metadata for the purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence information will no longer be permitted."

The California shootings happened four days later. The court revealed the order publicly just hours before the shootings.

The clear -- but totally bullshit -- implications of this are that the shutting down of the Section 215 records collection somehow harms the investigation. To then come back a day or so later and pretend that politicians running with this clear implication of your own article are somehow the ones to be shamed is pretty ridiculous.

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