Huffington Post Deleted Article on Hillary Indictment for Being ‘Unsourced’ Without Talking to the Author

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The liberal Huffington Post website deleted an article reporting that the FBI is prepared to recommend an indictment against Hillary Clinton because the site says the article was “unsourced.” But the site’s editors did not check with the writer, who says he has sources to back up his reporting.

Huffington Post freelance contributor Frank Huguenard, a scientist and public speaker, wrote a piece for the site Sunday entitled “Hillary Clinton to be Indicted On Federal Racketeering Charges.” But the piece was taken down later that day, replaced by a “404” screen, leaving readers on both Right and Left wondering what happened.

A Huffington Post spokesperson told Breitbart News that editors made the judgment call because the piece was “unfounded and unsourced.” The spokesperson said:

The Huffington Post is both a news site with hundreds of staff reporters and editors around the world, and separately, a publishing platform that hosts tens of thousands of voices via contributors.  We are evolving our current contributor platform to allow for even more voices via self-publishing.   As we grow the new platform, HuffPost will allow contributors to publish freely without editors as intermediaries. There will of course be instances where users abuse the new platform and violate our terms, in which case, editors will step in and remove these posts when flagged by the community.  The piece by Frank Huguenard was a self-published post flagged by the community, and after editors determined that the piece made unfounded and unsourced claims, they took it down.

Breitbart News asked if editors talked to Huguenard to check his sources before making the determination. The spokesperson indicated that editors did not reach out to Huguenard.

“The standard for factual claims in HuffPost contributor pieces has always been reputable published sources. Our rule is that blogs cannot rely on anonymous sources. There is nothing in the public record that substantiates the major claims made in the piece,” the spokesperson said.

But Huguenard told Breitbart News that the site’s editors did not contact him before the piece was pulled and that they also suspended his writing privileges.

“Huffpo has yet to respond to my request for an explanation,” Huguenard said Monday morning after the piece had already come down. “I’ve got my sources, they never asked.”

Huguenard added to Breitbart News, “I want to do another story but my HuffPo account has been temporarily disabled. Not sure what’s happening with them.”

Huguenard appears to be a vocal Bernie Sanders supporter, judging from an analysis of his Twitter account.