Biden camp blasts CBS' Catherine Herridge as 'partisan, rightwing hack' after unmasking scoop

The director of rapid response for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign deleted a tweet Wednesday that slammed CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge as a “partisan, right-wing hack” after she obtained a document listing the former vice president as one of the Obama-era officials who reportedly requested the “unmasking” of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

“SCOOP: Catherine Herridge is a partisan, rightwing hack who is a regular conduit for conservative media manipulation ploys because she agrees to publicize things before contacting the target to ask for comment,” Andrew Bates wrote in the now-deleted tweet.

Mr. Bates was responding to Ms. Herridge’s “scoop” in which she obtained acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell’s notification to Congress, which included a declassified list of dozens of Obama-era officials who reportedly sought to “unmask” Flynn’s identity in intelligence reports.

In a later statement, Mr. Bates shrugged off Ms. Herridge’s revelations and said it was another attempt by the Trump administration to deflect from its coronavirus response.

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[“While many presidents have been unhappy with their media coverage, only Donald Trump has attacked the independence of journalists and launched an all-out assault on the media. He bullies and berates individual members of the press, rather than take responsibility for his failures of leadership. His efforts to undermine public confidence in the integrity of fact-based reporting violate our core American values and threaten our very system of government.” --Democrat presidential candidate Joseph Biden on World Press Freedom Day.]