Joy Reid’s Attorney Claims FBI Investigating Alleged ‘Hacking’

MSNBC host Joy Reid’s attorney claimed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into Reid’s claim that controversial homophobic content posted to her blog is the result of being “hacked.”

The alleged investigation will attempt to determine whether posts to Reid’s now-defunct blog are, in fact, the result of a bizarre security breach into archived posts which closely resemble the broader surrounding content. Reid said that she had “notified federal law enforcement officials of the breach” in a statement.

Reid’s attorney, John Reichman, released another statement on April 25: “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,” he claimed. “Our own investigation and monitoring of the situation will continue in parallel, and we are cooperating with law enforcement as their investigation proceeds.” The FBI has not made a statement regarding the investigation, as is their general policy.

Skepticism toward Reid’s claims has reached an all-time high, especially after the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine refused to delete the archived posts, citing a lack of evidence that they were fraudulent. Still, at some point thereafter, it seems that an automatic process removed the offending material.

Analyst Jonathan Nichols, employed by Reid to support her claims, claimed on April 24 asserting that he possessed “significant evidence indicating that not only was Ms. Reid’s old blog compromised,” and even “may be the result of screenshot manipulation with the intent to tarnish Ms. Reid’s character.” Somehow, this does not apply to the non-profit company that recorded the posts. “We are claiming that Joy Reid’s blog was hacked, and that anybody who archived it has the fraudulent post on their website.”

Meanwhile, The Daily Beast has “paused” Reid’s column, and LGBT advocacy group PFLAG has decided not to honor her with an award as previously planned. MSNBC continues to quietly defend their embattled host but have yet to release an official statement on the matter.