NY Times Fact Checks Christie

Everyone who saw Gov. Chris Christie's "indictment" of Hillary Clinton at the Republican convention in Cleveland Tuesday night remembers the audience repeatedly shouting "GUILTY." It occurred to The New York Times to fact-check his claims of her misdeeds and, much as it must gall them, Shear and Sanger reported what they found.

Mr. Christie started in North Africa, accusing Mrs. Clinton of being the “chief engineer of the disastrous overthrow of Qaddafi in Libya.”
Fact check: Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state during the period in question, and she did make a humanitarian case for intervening to prevent Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from taking over Benghazi in 2011.

In Nigeria, Mr. Christie said, Mrs. Clinton “amazingly fought for two years to keep an Al Qaeda affiliate off the terrorist watch list.”
Fact check: The Clinton State Department did decline to add Boko Haram to its list of terrorist groups.

When Mr. Christie got to the topic of Syria, he reminded the crowd that Mrs. Clinton had called President Bashar al-Assad a reformer and “a different kind of leader.”
Fact check: Mrs. Clinton’s comments about Mr. Assad came in an interview in 2011, before much of the bloodshed.

Mr. Christie accused Mrs. Clinton of giving President Vladimir V. Putin “that stupid, symbolic reset button,” and said she had harmed the United States’ security and sought instead to strengthen Russia.
Fact check: Mrs. Clinton did support a “reset” of relations with Russia early in the Obama administration, pursuing a hope of Mr. Obama’s that the United States could pull Russia into a closer and more effective working relationship. That effort failed as Mr. Putin consolidated power.

Mr. Christie said that Mrs. Clinton had “supported concessions to the Castro brothers” as part of the Obama administration’s outreach to Cuba.
Fact check: She did express support for his efforts.

Other Christie claims were deemed to be less-well-founded. The authors tried their best to put a positive spin on a negative story, but many of Christie's charges stick all too well.