Confusion Abounds In Joy Reid's Alleged Homophobic Comments & FBI Investigation Into Her Blog Hack

MSNBC host Joy Reid is again embroiled in controversy with Twitter user @Jamie_Maz about several homophobic posts a decade or more old from her now defunct blog, the Reid Report. When @Jamie_Maz first called Reid out in December 2017, she apologized for certain posts that were mild on the hot sauce menu, but clearly embarrassing given Reid's current success as a first-rate, informed and articulate progressive TV personality.

This example of an alleged Joy Reid comment, tweeted by @Jamie_Maz gets to a fundamental argument between in the 2016 Democratic primary. While he is vague about when the statement was written, this opinion attributed to Reid remains an argument today, even though Democrats are chilled out and fully committed to gay rights, gay marriage, gays in the military and all other gay rights. Today the argument continues around purity test topics like abortion and gun control. 

"In December I learned that an unknown, external party accessed and manipulated material from my now-defunct blog, The Reid Report, to include offensive and hateful references that are fabricated and run counter to my personal beliefs and ideology," Reid said in a statement provided by her employer, NBC Universal. 

At the time, the TV weekend show host also contributed to the Miami Herald and worked for The Grio, an online-news outlet aimed at an African-American audience. 

Reid, who is popular with people of color and Hillary supporters generally, is a target not only of right-wingers and Trump Loyalists, but also the Bernie Bros. Joy was critical of the ideas and efficacy of the Bernie Sanders 2016 Democratic nomination campaign. 

After her initial apology for homophobic posts found on The Reid Report, Reid turned to cybersecurity expert, Jonathan Nichols, over alleged concerns that many other posts on her blog were fraudulent. Nichols said that credentials for the Reid Report that included password information were found on the dark web. Wired writes:

Nichols said that while investigating Reid's blog, he reached out to the Internet Archive to have the posts removed, because they were fraudulent. The Internet Archive says it didn't have enough evidence to take them down.

"When we reviewed the archives, we found nothing to indicate tampering or hacking of the Wayback Machine versions. At least some of the examples of allegedly fraudulent posts provided to us had been archived at different dates and by different entities," the organization's Chris Butler said in a blog post. "We are unaware of anyone corrupting what we have captured, or when it was captured," Mark Graham, the director of the Wayback Machine project at the Internet Archive, said in an email.

Faced with the Internet Archive refusal to remove the posts, Reid or a skilled Internet professional ran an exclusion script on her blog, which automatically stops the Wayback Machine from archiving a site. The archives of her blog are now unavailable. Note that similar code can be installed on AOC advising Google not to search certain sections of this website. It's not top secret Internet intel. 

"I assess there is a near zero-chance that the claims of hacking are credible," says Jake Williams, a former National Security Agency hacker and founder of the firm Rendition Infosec. "The Internet Archive has these posts archived from multiple different nodes over a multiple-year period. While I have little doubt that Joy Reid's credentials have probably been leaked and are probably available on the dark web, this fact does not mean that she was hacked."

In a pure opinion that may or may not have its own motives, Williams further suggested that had someone actually accessed Reid's blog, they would have probably posted something far more inflammatory than they did.  Just now, Friday evening, Williams tweets: 

"Worth noting that even though Blogger told Reid's forensic expert logs were not available, there's no guarantee that didn't mean "unavailable to you" and it doesn't mean they looked very hard. Reid's expert lacked subpoena power. The FBI does not. She's playing a dangerous game." followed by "Joy Reid should be charged for making false statements if the FBI is really wasting time investigating this supposed 'hack'. Neither of those tweets suggest that Williams is a neutral party in solving this problem whirling around Joy Reid. It honestly sounds like something Donald Trump would say . . . or a hard-core Bernie Bro. Note that I searched briefly but didn't confirm that Williams has any connections to the Bernie Sanders camp. 

On Wednesday evening Reid's attorney announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened an investigation into the alleged hacking.

“We have received confirmation the FBI has opened an investigation into potential criminal activities surrounding several online accounts, including personal email and blog accounts, belonging to Joy-Ann Reid,” said her lawyer, John H. Reichman, in a statement provided by MSNBC. “Our own investigation and monitoring of the situation will continue in parallel, and we are cooperating with law enforcement as their investigation proceeds.”

Former Salon editor-in-chief Joan Walsh, who previously published Reid's work from her old blog, says "none of us ever saw the kinds of homophobic posts she's now accused of." 

Walsh is a close friend of Reid and was the first person to publish her, roughly 18 years ago. In a 10-part tweet, Walsh said that both she and Salon editors followed Reid regularly and asked her to cross-post with Salon. "Obviously, none of us ever saw the kinds of homophobic posts she's now accused of. If we had, we'd have stopped publishing her."

"Also, to my knowledge, the offensive posts had no comments on them, while the posts she acknowledges had some lively comments debates," Walsh adds in a valid point.

Many others have spoken out in support of Joy Reid and her progressive credentials. And no one is accusing Reid of being homophobic today. 

The Daily Beast has put a pause on Reid's columns, with the website’s executive editor Noah Shachtman telling staff in an internal memo on Wednesday.

“We’re going to hit pause on Reid’s columns,” said Shachtman in an email reviewed by TheWrap. “As you’re well aware, support for LGBTQ rights and respect for human dignity are core to Daily Beast. So we’re taking seriously the new allegations that one of our columnists, Joy Reid, previously wrote homophobic blog posts during her stint as a radio host.”

“Obviously, this is a difficult situation,” Shachtman added. “We’ve all said and done things in our lives that we wish we hadn’t done. We deserve the room to grow beyond our past. But these allegations are serious enough that they deserve a full examination”

We're all in a wait and see mode here, with most of us concerned that if Joy Reid wasn't hacked, that her refusal to take responsibility for the tweets is more serious than the original homophobic comments attributed to her. Because Joy is such a brainiac, it's difficult for me to believe that she would think she could get away with the ruse. Reid could have reached out to her good friend Bishop William Barber and also theologian Frank Schaeffer, admitted her transgressions and also her evolution, and created a teaching moment for the country.

Joy does come from a very religious background and can quote scripture liberally. It is possible that a decade ago she was more like the rest of the country in its resistance to gay marriage and civil rights for gays. To the best of my knowledge, Reid's alleged comments expressed her own bias and uncomfortable sate of mind over same-sex lovers. I don't believe she ever advocated against their civil rights.

For now, we are all in wait and see mode, understanding that whatever the truth of the story is, the facts surrounding it are unsettling and disturbing. ~ Anne