Politico reported Tuesday that Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson who frequently made false statements about violent incidents involving federal immigration officers, is leaving the agency.
McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, is stepping down after less than a year on the job amid reports of internal conflict at DHS. The agency came under bipartisan criticism and fierce public backlash last month over comments by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and other top officials defending the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers.
But on a day-to-day basis, McLaughlin was the combative voice of DHS in statements to the press. Her quotes raised eyebrows not just because they often contained non sequitur attacks on media and other subjects of the administration's ire, but because they included accusations that were either unsupported, contradicted by video, or later tossed out of court.
The statements in some instances were so obviously false that they created problems for the mainstream media, where objectivity standards and fear of losing access traditionally led many newsrooms to avoid calling such things outright lies.
As The Washington Post carefully wrote in its article on McLaughlin's departure, relegating the key point to a subordinate clause, "Her forceful pronouncements have drawn criticism from Democrats and immigrant rights groups, who point to incidents in which statements she...
Politico reported Tuesday that Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson who frequently made false statements about violent incidents involving federal immigration of...