A few weeks back, we wrote a post noting that David Barton’s supporters and defenders had been saying that the criticism of his pseudo-scholarship simply boiled down to disagreements over matters of interpretation. We agreed and pointed out that Barton’s documented inability to accurately “interpret” events and information is precisely the problem.
And today Barton again demonstrated the fundamental disregard he has for facts or accuracy when he and co-host Rick Green welcomed Rep. Louie Gohmert onto “WallBuilders Live” to defend the witch hunt that he and several other Republicans members of Congress launched against Huma Abedin under the guise of investigating the Muslim’s Brotherhood’s infiltration of the government.
Here is how Barton framed it:
And so what happened is you have some really high people in the State Department that, it turns out, man they’ve got some real direct ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
And so what happens is Louie [Gohmert,] and Michele [Bachmann,] and Trent Franks and some others write a letter and say “have you guys actually investigated these ties?” And so all they did was ask a question and of course the administration when they got that letter, instead of answering the question, they released it to the media and said “look what these guys are doing, it’s a witch hunt.”
And so they suddenly get attacked for having accused a person of being a part of the Muslim Brotherhood and that’s clearly not what the letter said, the letter is out there, easy to read.
On one level, Barton is correct: the letter is out there and easy to read … but not because the administration leaked it to the media, but because Michele Bachmann posted it on her website!
As a matter of fact, Bachmann and crew sent five different letters to the Inspectors General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Department of State in which they named several high-ranking advisors who are alleged to have “extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.”
So it seems that Barton’s “interpretation” of events is pretty accurate – except for the two central claims of his statement.
As we have said several times before, if Barton cannot be relied upon to accurately “interpret” information pertaining to recent events that anyone with access to Google can easily check and verify, why should anyone trust anything that he says about complex events in early American history?
