CV NEWS FEED // Veteran, author, and former Republican congressional candidate Sean Parnell took to X (formerly Twitter) to expose the left-wing bias of “fact-checking” company PolitiFact.
Parnell wrote Friday that PolitiFact and the website’s Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman “are nothing more than regime propagandists” who “are harming the country with … lies.”
“When you see a ‘fact check’ realize it’s about defending the narrative not the truth,” the veteran emphasized.
Parnell began his series of X posts describing how PolitiFact and Sherman “tried to fact check” one of his recent Instagram posts.
“I knew they would,” he stressed. “They walked right into this.”
The post in question stated that almost 20 years ago, the Commission on Federal Election Reform “found vote by mail to be ‘the largest source of potential voter fraud.”
As Parnell noted, former President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, co-chaired the now-defunct bipartisan commission.
He also quoted a recent X post by the Las Vegas Review-Journal reporting: “Numerous Nevada voters looked at their voter history and found that their mail ballots were counted in the [state’s February 6, 2024 presidential] primary, even though they didn’t participate in it.”
The Review-Journal is Nevada’s largest newspaper and is widely considered to be a centrist publication.
“The media will try to gaslight you into believing there are no issues with [vote by mail] but they are misleading the American people,” Parnell’s post continued.
Via a “fact-check,” Sherman flagged the post as “false.”
Parnell included an email Sherman sent him regarding the Instagram post in his Friday X thread.
In the email, the PolitiFact employee wrote:
I have read the news coverage and [Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s] explanation and I don’t see any signs of fraud from the [Nevada Presidential Preference Primary (PPP)].
If you have evidence that the Nevada voter history problem is evidence of fraud, including the number of fraudulent ballots cast, please email it to me today by 4 pm EST.
Parnell explained on X: “You can see by [Sherman’s] questions that she’s already prejudged the issue.”
He indicated that Sherman based her stance on “[l]oose references to her reading the news [and] asking the [Democratic] Secretary of State about it, who I guess she took uncritically at his word.”
In an email replying to Sherman, Parnell wrote: “The premise of your question is flawed and ultimately misses the point of my post on Instagram and the core of the issue itself.”
“That is, mail in voting is not the best way to conduct an election,” he went on:
It is also not the best way to build confidence in the electorate, the latest issue in Nevada is just one recent example.
Serious concerns regarding mail in voting were found in the Commission on Federal Election Reform, which was chaired by former President Jimmy Carter.
Parnell also pointed out that this “was also the position held by the New York Times in 2012.” He linked the Times article he referenced.
“It’s also reasonable to assume that these concerns are the basis for why mail in voting is banned in most developed countries,” Parnell’s email continued.
“With these concerns in mind it’s fairly easy to conclude that we have issues here in America as well, is it not?” he asked Sherman.
“Given our government’s long history of misrepresenting the truth, perhaps we should not trust any Secretary of State’s explanation as the final word on the matter since they usually are interested in protecting a narrative and not the truth,” the Republican added.
“Perhaps we should allow for an open and honest discourse in the service of reforming institutions paid for by US taxpayers, especially when it’s about an issue as important as election integrity,” Parnell concluded.
Parnell wrote that in Sherman’s official fact check of his post, she “attribute[d] a false quote to” him, which he maintains he “never said.”
In addition, Parnell noted that in her fact check, Sherman claimed that she did not “receive a reply” from him, after she contacted him for a comment.
Sherman had requested that Parnell reply by 4:00 pm EST. A screenshot of Parnell’s reply to Sherman indicated that he had sent it, over two hours before her imposed deadline.
Even before Parnell’s series of X posts, PolitiFact had widely garnered a reputation for being left-leaning. The nonprofit website has maintained that it is “not biased.”
PolitiFact describes itself as “a nonpartisan fact-checking website to sort out the truth in American politics.”
The Tampa Bay Times founded the site back in 2007. St. Petersburg, FL-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies (“Poynter”) has run PolitiFact since 2018.
According to PolitiFact, Poynter is “a nonprofit school for journalists.” Poynter also runs the Tampa Bay Times.
Sherman’s biography from the PolitiFact website states that the longtime employee was “part of the team that launched PolitiFact Florida in 2010 and was part of the PolitiFact team during the 2016 election.”
Parnell is Catholic. He is a decorated U.S. army combat veteran and the author of several books including novel Man of War and war memoir Outlaw Platoon, a New York Times bestseller.
In 2020, he was the Republican nominee for Pennsylvania’s 17th District. He narrowly lost the race to Democratic incumbent Rep. Conor Lamb.
The following year, Parnell ran in the 2022 election for Pennsylvania’s then-open U.S. Senate seat. He was considered the frontrunner to win the party’s nomination, before withdrawing from the race due to personal reasons.
