In early October, the Washington Free Beacon broke the story that county records disproved the pregnancy discrimination claim repeatedly made by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

The National Review is now reporting that a New York Times reporter received these documents on April 10th and sat on the story. It’s not clear whether or not he pitched this story to either the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times.

SCOOP with @jackrcrowe: For months, the @NYT failed to report on the Riverdale BOE records which challenge @ewarren’s pregnancy discrimination claim. A Times reporter discovered the story in April, but never broke it over concerns it was “inconclusive”https://t.co/dcFpE7iyIV — Tobias Hoonhout (@TJHoonhout) October 31, 2019

The National Review reports:

A reporter who now works for the New York Times failed to report on public records, which he obtained in April, that cut against Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D., Mass.) claim that she was fired from a teaching position in 1971 due to pregnancy discrimination. Reid Epstein, who was then working for the Wall Street Journal, filed an open-records request with the Riverdale Board of Education on April 2 seeking “to inspect or obtain” copies of public records relating to Warren’s time teaching at Riverdale during the 1970-1971 school year. In response to his request, Epstein on April 10 received school-board minutes that challenge Warren’s story, according to documents obtained by National Review through the New Jersey Open Records Act. Epstein, who moved to the Times on April 19, never broke the story. Reached for comment, a Times spokeswoman said that the “records were inconclusive” and the potential story required further sourcing. . . . . Epstein continued to publish articles at the Journal until May 4, none of which included reporting on the school-board minutes. His final byline was published more than three weeks after he received the relevant documents. He declined to comment when asked why he failed to report the story. New York Times vice president of communications Danielle Rhoades Ha explained that the paper did not feel comfortable publishing the contents of the school-board minutes given that the documents may not fully explain the circumstances of Warren’s departure.

Furthermore, Epstein, reportedly having seen these county records [embedded below], contributed to a NY Times article about Warren’s claim. The article frames her claim as part of a larger problem for pregnant women in the workplace and skims over the damaging evidence Epstein reportedly had in his possession since April.

The National Review continues:

Earlier this month, the Washington Free Beacon obtained the aforementioned school-board minutes showing that the Riverdale Board of Education had approved a second-year teaching contract for a young Elizabeth Warren in April 1971. Rather than accepting the board’s offer of continued employment, Warren chose to tender her resignation, which was “accepted with regret,” according to minutes from a school-board meeting held two months after the offer was extended. One day after the Free Beacon reported on the apparent discrepancy, the Times published an article that listed Epstein as a contributor. The Times’ reporting frames the story around “the discrimination that many pregnant women have faced on the job” and highlights Warren’s statement, which dismissed the evidence gathered by the Beacon as lacking in context. “I was pregnant, but nobody knew it. And then a couple of months later when I was six months pregnant and it was pretty obvious, the principal called me in, wished me luck, and said he was going to hire someone else for the job,” Warren told CBS News on October 7. . . . . The Wall Street Journal communications departments failed to respond to a request for comment by press time.

Considering how quickly the NY Times publishes apparently unsubstantiated rumors and other things they end up retracting (or adding “editor’s notes”/corrections to) if it relates to President Trump, their assertion that they cared about context in this case stretches credulity.

You can read the county document below:

Riverdale Board of Educatio… by Washington Free Beacon on Scribd



