MSNBC anchor Joy Reid on her Saturday show "AM Joy" addressed the controversy surrounding posts disparaging the LGBT community on her old website, admitting her claims that she was hacked had not been substantiated.
"A community I support and deeply care about is hurting because of despicable and truly offensive posts being attributed to me," Reid said at the start of her show. "Many of you have seen the blog posts circulating online and social media. Many of them are homophobic and disc in a discriminatory and hateful."
Earlier this week, Reid claimed articles that were homophobic and mocking gay people on her old blog, The Reid Report, were fabricated and claimed her old website was hacked. The Free Beacon has uncovered more old posts by Reid where she made homophobic jokes, praised an Islamophobic blog post, and agreed with Donald Trump's mocking of Rosie O'Donnell.
Reid has yet to provide any evidence that she was hacked. The Daily Beast, a publication that suspended Reid as a columnist as the controversy broke, analyzed Reid's hacking claims and found they do not hold up to scrutiny.
"When a friend found them and sent them to me I was stunned. Frankly, I couldn't imagine where they came from and whose voice that was," Reid said. "I hired cyber security experts to see if somebody manipulated my words or former blog and the reality is they have not been able to prove it."
Reid continued to insist that she believe she didn't write those "hateful things."
"I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things because they are completely alien to me, but I can definitely understand based on things I have tweeted and I have written in the past why some people don't believe me," Reid said. "I have not been exempt from being dumb or cruel or hurtful to the very people I want to advocate for. I own that. I get it. And for that I am truly, truly sorry."
Reid went on to apologize for a tweet she sent comparing conservative commentator Anne Coulter to a drag queen and shared experiences of people close to her coming out and her reaction to them.
"I can only say that the person I am now is not the person I was then. I like to think I have gotten better as a person overtime, that I am still growing, that I'm not the same person I was 10 or five or even one year ago and I know that my goal is to try to be a better person or a better ally," Reid said. "Now the reality is, I have to own the things that I have written and tweeted and said, and I'm hoping out of all of this there's an opportunity to talk about the ways in which hurtful speech really does imperil marginalized communities."
Reid didn't address whether the FBI was investigating whether her old blog was hacked. Earlier in the week, her lawyer John H. Reichman released a statement that said the FBI has an open investigation into whether Reid was hacked.
"We have received confirmation the FBI has opened an investigation into potential criminal activities surrounding several online accounts, including personal email and blog accounts, belonging to Joy-Ann Reid," Reichman said in the statement. "Our own investigation and monitoring of the situation will continue in parallel, and we are cooperating with law enforcement as their investigation proceeds."