Gina Haspel, Trump’s nominee for CIA director, fact checked Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein during her confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
WATCH:
Feinstein began her questioning by pointing out the memoir of former CIA counsel general John Rizzo. In that memoir, Rizzo claims that deputy CIA director for operations Jose Rodriguez installed an officer from counterterrorism who had previously run the interrogation program as his chief of staff.
“Is that you?” Feinstein asked.
“Senator, I am so pleased that you asked me that question,” Haspel began. “No, and for the record if you have your staff check, Rizzo has issued a correction.”
Feinstein refused to be corrected, shooting back, “my understanding is that you recently confirmed it was you.”
“No,” Haspel repeated. “He issued a correction… The Washington Post last night — Erik Wemple, I believe — wrote a story talking about the failure of certain organizations to correct their facts and that was one of them. And he noted that Mr. Rizzo, about ten days ago, he was wrong, he didn’t fact check, and that has been corrected.”
Haspel sighed as Feinstein still insisted on reading the quote from Rizzo’s book and got more frustrated throughout their exchange.