Stories about how homeless veterans are being displaced by migrants.
Is that true or is that false?
>> It is really troubling and I'm asking our local and
state authorities to investigate what happened here.
It was clearly fabricated and
it was a conscious decision to fabricate it from what we are getting.
>> New York City Mayor Eric Adams says that the claims regarding veterans
getting displaced from housing by migrants in homeless shelters and
other housing was completely made up.
In fact, even Laura Ingraham, of all people,
made a correction in regard to that story on Fox News.
Let's take a look at that.
>> A little update on a story we brought you this week about homeless vets being
displaced from hotels so that illegals could move in,
turns out the group behind the claim made it up.
We have no clue as to why anyone would do such a thing, but
we'll bring you any updates should they come.
>> Now, we're gonna get to the group that made it up.
Particularly one nonprofit and
one specific individual who went to great lengths to not only make up that story,
but to make up evidence for proving what her claims were.
But before we get to that, Eric Adams is calling for something to be done.
Let's take a look at what he says here.
>> Those who put together this scheme and
put together this plan to really put a negative light on what
we coordinated to do to send migrants throughout the entire state.
A real decompression strategy, not think that decompression strategy should
be throughout the entire country at all.
But we never displaced veterans.
Someone fabricated that story and
it was blasted across our local tabloids and papers.
And it's really unfortunate that someone would do something like this.
>> Not only is it disgusting and unfortunate,
you need to make up something like that to push for, let's say,
resources in some of the cities where migrants are being sent to.
These cities are struggling with lack of resources to deal with an influx
of migrants coming to their cities.
And I think the federal government needs to do something about that.
But before we get to the person who lied about this and the extreme lengths in
which she went to in order to lie about this, I wanted to get your thoughts, Cenk.
>> Yeah, there's a shocking twist in the story and you saw half of it.
One is that a Republican legislator got really mad that he got tricked by
this right wing organization and he's partner of the folks who exposed it.
And then Fox News, you saw their retraction.
I'm totally shocked by that.
>> Me too.
>> Because there are false stories like this in right wing press nonstop.
There's just a giant pipeline of total BS that they make
up 24/7 that goes right onto Fox News.
No one cares.
No one ever corrects anything.
The Republican legislators are in on it.
They love the BS and they press the BS forward, etc.
So for a legislator to go, hey, you know what?
It turns out this was a lie.
And I don't like the lie, even though it helps me politically,
so I'm gonna expose it.
I was like, I haven't seen that in decades.
And partly I think it's because it's at the local level.
>> Mm-hm. >> At the national level,
they do this stuff on a regular basis.
And so Project Veritas will edit videos in the old days, completely out of context.
They'll target a certain group.
The Republicans will use it knowing that it's totally BS, and
they'll crush that group.
They'll strip it of all its funding, the Democrats will go along, etc.
That's how this game is usually.
Fox will all hype it up knowing that it's total BS.
I don't know if the Dominion lawsuit affected Fox at all in this regard, but
this is pretty unprecedented for the right wing to go.
Yes, sorry, we were making that up, cuz that's what they usually do and
never admit.
>> And look, I don't think Fox News had any role in making this story up.
The heart of this is one woman who runs an organization, a nonprofit,
who lied to everyone and even used homeless people to push the lie.
So I'll get to that detail in just a moment.
But first, who am I talking about here?
Well, Sharon Toney-Finch, the CEO of the nonprofit Yerik Israel Toney Foundation
said that homeless veterans under its care had been kicked out of
upstate hotels to make room for migrants bust from New York City.
But the story has fallen apart culminating with state Assemblyman and
this is who Cenk was talking about, Brian Maher or Maher, who's a Republican.
Who had been advocating for the veterans in national media and
in the state legislature, denouncing it as false in a call with the Times Union.
So Times Union debunked the story and they did so
with the help of this Republican Assemblyman in New York.
And so here's how he was duped.
So at a Wingate hotel in Fishkill, Maher spoke with two people claiming
to be veterans who were displaced from the Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh,
which has received 110 migrants sent by New York City.
Now, he even spoke to a purported driver who transported the displaced vets.
However, here's what actually turned out happened.
One of the purported veterans told a reporter that he had been recruited to
take part in a scheme designed to perpetuate Toney-Finch's story.
Three men currently staying at a homeless shelter said they were among a group of
15 people recruited to portray homeless veterans displaced
from upstate hotels by incoming migrants.
So Maher started to get a little suspicious about this story and
he was like, look, I need some evidence that your nonprofit was
actually paying to house homeless veterans.
Let's start with that.
Provide some evidence of that.
So at that point, Toney-Finch goes to the bank with him.
He's in his car waiting outside the bank allegedly for three hours.
And she comes out and provides the evidence.
And this is what the evidence looked like, okay?
So it looks like a bank statement.
Let's go to graphic four.
And when he provides that evidence to his colleagues, they're like,
I don't know, that kinda looks like it might be digitally manipulated.
By the way, why was he waiting outside of the bank for three hours?
It doesn't take that long to get financial documentation proving that you are paying
for the shelter for these homeless veterans.
Nonetheless, he-.
>> I just gotta jump in for a second Anna.
>> Sure, sure. >> So
this actually has two different things.
So first he asks for evidence.
She sends what looks like that doctored credit card.
They go, hey, his staffers go, this doesn't look real.
You should go and get actual receipts with her from her bank.
That's when he waits three hours in front of the bank and
she never even shows because she don't have the receipts.
>> No, no, my understanding was that he waited outside of the bank for
three hours the first time.
The second time he goes thinking that she's gonna show up to the bank, but
then she just never does.
It doesn't matter.
There were two different occasions in which he demanded evidence.
>> Mm-hm. >> The first time,
this is what she provided in the form of evidence.
The second time, she just didn't show up to the bank.
>> Yeah, that's definitely right.
>> Yeah, so basically she was a liar.
According to Maher quote, she alluded to the fact that, quote,
maybe it's not exactly how I said it was.
So she lied.
And not only did she lie,
she used homeless people to pretend to be veterans in order to push this lie.
>> Yeah, but she probably has to be stunned thinking,
I'm the one right winger they're gonna call out on a lie.
I thought I was doing my job.
My job is to make up a story.
Then the Republican legislator picks it up, and
then Fox News calls it official because the Republican mentioned the story.
And then everybody thinks that there's litter boxes in every high school because
the kids are getting dressed up as cats and they're all furries, right?
This is how we make things up.
Now all of a sudden, I'm the bad guy.
What the hell? Why'd you turn on me?
Is my guess as to what happened in her mind, cuz this is kinda what they do 24/7.
But again, credit where credit is due.
So to that Republican legislator in New York, thank you for
caring about the truth and thank you for representing your party well.
It's the first time I've seen a Republican be honest in, like I said, decades.
So, hey, that's a tiny bit of hope.
And look at Fox News correcting something.
We correct stuff all the time, that's not new cuz a lot of times people
in the press get it wrong and then it comes to us.
A lot of that we sniff out.
We're pretty good at sniffing it out on this show.
>> Yeah, but even this, on Wednesday, you weren't on the show that day.
I was covering the migrant crisis and a lot of these cities are struggling, right?
This was a tiny part of that story.
>> Yeah, totally.
>> Yeah, we gotta correct it but I can understand why people would fall for it.
>> Yeah, I totally get it.
My point is, a normal news organization, when something gets an update and
you realize, that's not exactly how it was portrayed.
Before you come in, you say, hey, guys,
we wanna make sure you know the real story and you correct it.
But Fox, they are not well known for that [LAUGH] to say the least.
So now after the Dominion lawsuit,
here they are correcting a right wing story that turned out to be BS.
That's an interesting development.
So there's a silver lining in this story.