The Washington Post was forced to issue another correction this week after “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler accused Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., of lying about how convicted felons would receive a COVID stimulus check.
Fact check: true. https://t.co/im5atTaXbv
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) January 7, 2022
In a March 2021 article, Kessler gave Cotton “Two Pinocchios” for claiming the $1,400 checks Congress approved in its second stimulus package would go to people not qualified for them.
“On March 8, [Cotton] tweeted that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston bomber, would also get benefits and declared, ‘Get ready for campaign ads,’” Kessler wrote at the time.
“But for all the hype, there’s less to these claims than one might imagine—particularly because the previous stimulus bills passed last year under GOP control also did not bar payments to prisoners and the small subset of undocumented immigrants,” he added.
However, this week it was reported that Cotton was right, and that Tsarnaev, who was convicted and sentenced to death for carrying out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds, did receive a $1,400 stimulus check.
Kessler admitted on Thursday that Cotton had been correct, and said he had adjusted the Washington Post’s “Pinocchio” rating to only “One Pinocchio.”
It turns out Tom Cotton predicted correctly — Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston bomber, did get a stimulus check. So we’ve adjusted the Pinocchio rating on this 2021 fact check. https://t.co/L87j8TvFjn
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) January 6, 2022
“Cotton’s predictive powers should be acknowledged. He said the Boston bomber would get a stimulus check—and Tsarnaev did. Now, if the government is successful, this money will go to victims,” Kessler wrote in the udpated article.
“So Tsarnaev still will not keep it. But in retrospect, the use of the phrase of ‘scaremongering’ was inappropriate,” the article continued. “Cotton had raised a legitimate issue of concern, even if he framed it in a political way. The term ‘hyped up’ in the headline went too far as well.”
Federal prosecutors are working to retrieve the $1,400 stimulus check from Tsarnaev’s inmate trust account.
Earlier this week, a U.S. District Court judge OK-ed their efforts and said they could use all the money in his account to help pay the millions of dollars he was ordered to pay his victims.
