“Others say”

This morning on Weekend Edition Sunday, Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D, CA-19) about Russian hacking of United States elections:

“I want to talk to you about Florida, because there is, uhm, a difference of opinion on this. On the one hand we have Mueller saying this did happen. There were Democrats in that state like Ben Nelson who reported that there had been an attack on the election infrastructure there. But others say that it didn’t happen.”

Lofgren replied by citing the Mueller report and noting that the Department of Homeland Security was aware of the attack. And Garcia-Navarro left it there, with no follow-up. Here’s the relevant passage from the Mueller report, volume 1, page 51, footnote numbers omitted:

In November 2016, the GRU sent spearphishing emails to over 120 email accounts used by Florida county officials responsible for administering the 2016 U.S. election. The spearphishing emails contained an attached Word document coded with malicious software (commonly referred to as a Trojan) that permitted the GRU to access the infected computer. The FBI was separately responsible for this investigation. We understand the FBI believes that this operation enabled the GRU to gain access to the network of at least one Florida county government. The Office did not independently verify that belief and, as explained above, did not undertake the investigative steps that would have been necessary to do so.

There is indeed a debate about what happened in Florida, and it appears to be a matter of semantics, about what must be accomplished for an attack to qualify as an attack, or for an attack to qualify as a hack. But if the GRU sent spearfishing e-mails to Florida county officials, NPR does its listeners no service by presenting “Others say it didn’t happen” as a legitimate point of view.

“Others say” that so many things didn’t happen: the Holocaust, the moon-landing, the Sandy Hook shooting. I could go on. Not every question has two sides.