The Washington Post added a significant correction to conservative writer Marc Thiessen’s column slamming the media and the FBI over John Durham’s special counsel report.
The Durham investigation concluded last week with the assessment that the FBI and the Justice Department should not have launched their probe into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 election. The Durham report argued the intelligence community lacked evidence of collusion when the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was launched, that the FBI acted upon confirmation bias, and they “failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report.”
As the media covered the report and publicly debated its significance, Thiessen penned his column with the headline “The Durham Report is a damning indictment of the FBI — and the media.” In the piece, Thiessen took aim at a New York Times analysis with the headline, “After Years of Political Hype, the Durham Inquiry Failed to Deliver.”
Days after publishing Thiessen’s column, the Post added a correction to the top of the piece, which addressed several claims made by the writer:
An earlier version of this column incorrectly identified the Trump campaign as the target of an FBI FISA warrant application. The warrant application was for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. It also implied that the FBI’s statements to special counsel John Durham regarding its doubts about the case were made before the investigation started; they were made after it had begun. The earlier version also should have described the respondents to a question about the mainstream media from a New York Times-Siena College poll as “among those who say democracy is under threat.” This version has been updated.
Charlie Savage, who wrote the Times article that Thiessen decried in his op-ed, has been going after the Post columnist on Twitter in the last few days.
Savage explained that his piece addressed the fact that the Durham report did not produce evidence that led to indictments of those accused of leading a “deep state conspiracy” against Trump. He went on to call out Thiessen for omissions, misrepresenting Durham’s findings, and factual errors about the FISA warrant on Carter Page.