Last week, someone found old, homophobic posts that were published on MSNBC host Joy Reid’s personal blog. Reid used an age-old excuse to try and get out of it: She was hacked. But after widespread criticism regarding her claims, Reid and her employer provided analysis from her own cybersecurity consultant, who said that the posts were indeed the result of nefarious activity, reports CNN. Reid said Monday that the posts were placed online by an “external party.” But the claim was met with immediate and widespread criticism, which was emphasized when a representative from the Wayback Machine, a digital archive that stores old content, said that a review “found nothing to indicate tampering or hacking of the Wayback Machine versions.”
After the backlash, an LGBTQ advocacy group, PFLAG National, said it would no longer give Reid an award they had intended to present her with next month.
However, on Tuesday night, MSNBC shared documents with CNNMoney, including a statement from independent security consultant named Jonathan Nichols, who said he has “significant evidence” that some of the posts were not valid. Nichols said that he “discovered that login information used to access the blog was available on the Dark Web and that fraudulent entries — featuring offensive statements — were entered with suspicious formatting and time stamps,” according to CNN. He said the inflammatory blog entries did not have reader comments, and if they were real, they would have “undoubtedly elicited responses from Ms. Reid’s base.”
However, the Wayback Machine rebutted Reid’s claim Tuesday afternoon. “When we reviewed the archives, we found nothing to indicate tampering or hacking of the Wayback Machine versions,” wrote Chris Butler on the Wayback Machine’s blog. “At least some of the examples of allegedly fraudulent posts provided to us had been archived at different dates and by different entities.”
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