MSNBC host Joy Reid accused of 'pulling a Smollett' with blog hacking claim
Reid claimed that an 'unknown, external party accessed and manipulated material' on her old blog
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Nearly four years after MSNBC host Joy Reid claimed to be a victim of a cyber attack targeting her now-defunct blog, the identity of the alleged perpetrator remains unknown, journalist and editor-in-chief of Outspoken Chadwick Moore said Thursday.
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In December 2017, Mediaite unearthed a series of anti-gay articles written by Reid from 2007-2009 on a political blog called "The Reid Report" years before she was hired by MSNBC. Reid initially apologized, calling her remarks "tone-deaf" and "insensitive."
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But when Mediaite found even more homophobic articles in April 2018, Reid claimed that an "unknown, external party accessed and manipulated material" on her old blog and "fabricated" the offensive entries and that she was working with a "cyber-security expert" and "notified federal law enforcement officials."
Mediaite unearthed a series of bombshell anti-gay articles written by Joy Reid from 2007-2009 on a political blog called "The Reid Report" years before she was hired by MSNBC. ((Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images Ms. Foundation for Women))
The FBI later looked into potential criminal activities surrounding the online account belonging to the MSNBC host. But, as of March 2022, the investigation doesn't appear to have yielded any conclusive findings, fueling skeptical critics who've long said Reid’s claims don’t pass muster.
"The person who wrote this blog, we still don’t know who it is, was virulently homophobic, obsessed with gay people, really, obsessed with outing gay people," Moore told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Thursday.
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The Daily Beast, which had suspended Reid as a contributor, conducted its own investigation and concluded that claims made by Reid’s cyber-security expert Jonathan Nichols that "screenshot manipulation" took place were false.
MSNBC's Joy Reid once blamed old blog posts on hackers, but that claim quickly fell apart.
"She had a hired gun claim that yes, it was hacked," Moore said. "Then her employer, the far-left Daily Beast did their own investigation and said, no, it was not hacked. That's coming from them."
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"Then the FBI got involved, and we still haven't heard what came from that," Moore said.
"We do however have a name for when someone fakes a crime, gets law enforcement involved, and wastes money, government resources when they know it’s fake. It’s called pulling a Smolett," he quipped, referencing the former Empire star Jussie Smollett who was convicted of lying to Chicago police about a hate crime he orchestrated.
"Makes you wonder if she went to the officers and went, ‘Look, I wrote it. I had to do this for the cameras,’" Moore told Carlson.
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"Maybe she pulled some kind of deal or maybe she has a liberal media privilege…she made such a big deal that she was going to get to the bottom of this, and it appears it was either Joy Reid who wrote these very homophobic blog posts, or Vladimir Putin," Moore quipped.
Fox News' Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.