Washington Post fact-checkers allowed Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to get away with falsely claiming that "doctored" versions of the bizarre Green New Deal FAQ document released with her resolution last week were floating around on the internet.
She received no "Pinocchios" for lying, and her claim was merely deemed "misleading," concluded fact-checker Salvador Rizzo, the Daily Caller reported.
"No one created 'doctored' versions of the Green New Deal that included these outlandish proposals," he wrote.
The FAQ accompanying the Green New Deal resolution Thursday proposed eliminating "farting cows" and airplanes, and providing welfare for people "unwilling to work."
Ocasio-Cortez reacted to widespread ridicule by removing the FAQÂ from her congressional website by Thursday afternoon.
Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, said the office mistakenly published a gaffe-riddled FAQ that didn't match the Green New Deal's legislative text, the Daily Caller reported. But she also insisted a "doctored" FAQ was circulating around the internet.
The George Soros-backed, left-wing group Media Matters also promoted the false claim.
And an adviser to Ocasio-Cortez, Cornell law professor Robert Hockett, claimed Friday that the statement about protections for people "unwilling to work" came from a "doctored document" that "apparently, some Republicans have put it out there."
But Hockett later admitted to the Daily Caller he was wrong.
Rizzo explained he didn't assign any "Pinocchios" for lying, because Ocasio-Cortez has now "disowned the FAQs and the statements that went beyond the resolution." And he reasoned that the line "about providing for people 'unwilling to work' has been walked back completely."