Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann was publicly fact-checked after he mocked a Republican congresswoman for claiming that failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign previously destroyed government devices. 

“Hillary Clinton used a hammer to destroy evidence of a private e-mail server and classified information on that server and was never indicted. The same standard should apply to everyone, including Donald Trump,” Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C. tweeted Sunday. 

The claim drew a sharp response from Olbermann, who suggested that the congresswoman was not in the proper mental state to understand reality. 

“You know that didn’t happen, right? Are you ok? You seem to have been hallucinating a lot lately,” Olbermann told Mace. 

But Olbermann was subsequently fact-checked on Twitter by Community Notes, which shared three articles from CNN, Business Insider and Snopes that corroborated Mace’s tweet.

CNN published a video on Clinton’s devices scandal: “FBI: Clinton staff destroyed devices with hammers.” Business Insider covered the same story back in 2016: “FBI: Aide destroyed 2 of Clinton’s phones by ‘breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer.’” And Snopes, a fact-checking website, found that “[o]ne of Hillary Clinton’s aides told the FBI that on two occasions he disposed of her unwanted mobile devices by breaking or hammering them.”

Mace took the opportunity to declare victory in the argument with Olbermann. “Facts are a funny thing,” she wrote Monday, sharing another tweet of her breaking down the evidence against Hillary Clinton. 

“Fact. A hammer was used to destroy govt devices, and Hillary Clinton’s server was wiped out with a program called BleachBit, all fact-checked by CNN (link below). Maybe your weed is stale. Who’s hallucinating now?” Mace tweeted back at Olbermann. 

Olbermann responded yet again, this time joking that Mace must know a lot about drugs. “Dear Ms. Mace, I’m intrigued by the fact that I suggested hallucinations, which can be caused by any number of things. Yet you jumped immediately to recreational drugs and problems affecting their efficacy. I don’t use any of these drugs; I’m surprised at your expertise.”

Hillary Clinton drew ire on Twitter after she appeared to mock former President Donald Trump for his recent indictment. 

In September 2022, Clinton claimed investigators found “zero classified emails” on her private email server, despite a 2018 government report saying 193 emails that were classified when they were drafted were sent to or from her server.

One Twitter user called the incident an example of “gloating” from Clinton. “The hubris of knowing you violated the same laws Trump is being accused of breaking… and gloating about getting away with it… is egregious even for you,” the account wrote. 

Clinton was also investigated by the FBI in 2015 for holding classified information on her private email server at home.