Remember the Presidential Address, and questions raised about Trump’s terrorism statistics, subsequently addressed by Ellingsen and Daniels? Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare suggests that either it was an out and out lie on Trump’s part – or the Department of Justice delivered false data to him.
I’m going to be very blunt here: I not only believe that the White House made up “alternative facts” about the substance of this matter in a Presidential address to a Joint Session of Congress, I don’t believe that the National Security Division of the Justice Department provided any data or analysis to the White House that could reasonably be read to support the President’s claim. In other words, I believe the President was lying not merely about the underlying facts but about his own Justice Department. Or, in the alternative, I believe it’s possible that the Office of the Attorney General may have supported the White House’s claim. But I think it extraordinarily unlikely that the folks at NSD actually provided data in support of this presidential statement.
Here’s why I believe this: I know a lot of people at NSD, and they are not the sort of people who grossly mischaracterize facts in order to make political points. Indeed, I believe that the folks there have the integrity to raise internally the very issues that Ellingsen and Daniels raised in these pieces.
And what is Ben going to do about this? He’s filing an Freedom of Information Act request. This should prove interesting.
