And that's where Maddow's faux-outrage breaks down.
You see, if it's clear that Maddow received her forgery after the intercept published their documents then there's really no 'there' there. Pretty much anyone with an internet connection could have simply taken the Reality Winner documents from The Intercept website and used them create a forgery to send to Maddow.
Of course, Maddow knew that her whole story was bullshit unless she could convince her viewers that the forgery she received was created before The Intercept published it for the world to see. If she could prove that, then she could insist the forged document must have come from someone on the 'inside.'
So, she decided to get 'technical' and take a look at the "metadata" on the document she received. As it turns out, the "creation date" on the document she received was roughly 3.5 hours before The Intercept published their Reality Winner story. See, it's all laid out right here on this lovely timeline graphic. Checkmate, Mr. Trump!
Except, not. Ironically, by stretching the truth in an attempt to prove that her story was in any way relevant, Maddow unwittingly proved exactly the opposite.
As The Intercept has subsequently pointed out, the "creation date" on the document received by Maddow (see the timeline above) perfectly matches, to the exact second, the "creation date" on The Intercept's Reality Winner document.
Why? Because that is the exact time in which The Intercept created their document and published it to their cloud server.
All of which simply proves that Maddow's source didn't have a sneak peak at the Reality Winner documents...they actually used The Intercept document as their source for creating their forgery.
Now, we could be wrong here...but, if the Trump administration wanted to dupe Rachel Maddow we suspect they could have gotten their hands on clean copies of the Reality Winner docs without having to lift them from The Intercept's website.
