CHRIS HAYES (HOST): The key part of this. I want to go back to May 2013. We were on air, we'd been on air for about a month. Big new piece on ABC: “Exclusive: Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions Scrubbed Of Terror Reference.” And again, this was coming, pretty clearly, from a Republican member of Congress. Then the original full e-mail chain showed the source was completely wrong about it. And again it was the same thing. It was a full day story, three day story, four day story and then finally the actual e-mail chain came out and it was totally debunked.
ERIC BOEHLERT: We see this over and over again. Republican staffers just feeding this stuff, feeding this stuff.
HAYES: This piece was a member of Congress. The citation here is “lawmaker.”
BOEHLERT: That's right, that's right, that's a good point. We saw the pattern with Benghazi. We've seen it with e-mails. If you want to get nostalgic go back to Whitewater, go back to travel-gate, go back to the Clinton pardons. This is over and over again. We create these investigations. Republicans are briefed on them and then they spin these fantastic tales to the press who types it up because they think it's a great story.
HAYES: Well if it was true it's a story. I mean if it was true --
BOEHLERT: Every time, every time when we go through it, these facts don't hold up. Then The Washington Post. They're not going to make any change in their anonymous sourcing policy according to Media Matters and according to The Washington Post. So we're just going to keep doing this. New York Times last summer, Hillary is the target of a criminal investigation.
HAYES: Famous leak. And then criminal was walked back. And then it was revised in the story.
BOEHLERT: But, once you put that in the pipeline, once you put that out there, wait, Hillary is going to be indicted? You can't walk that back. 150 agents? You can't really effectively walk that back. I haven't seen many news organizations try to walk it back in the last 48 hours.
