Law Professors Slam Press for Distorting Biden Document Report
Americans' trust of the media is at an all-time low. Here's an example of why.
New York Times printing plant
Upon the release of Special Counsel Robert Hur's report, the media uniformly fastened on the page 1 sentence,
"President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen."
This did not rise to the level of prosecution because, said the report,
"Mr. Biden would present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory."
Andrew Weissmann and Ryan Goodman, law professors at New York University, found the press coverage so shoddy that they wrote a 4,300-word report of their own on Hur's 382-page effort to show, as Weissman put it in an interview, "the reliable laziness of most of the American news media".
The media left that page 1 sentence hanging, as did Hur, and didn't make it to page 6 where he said there are “innocent explanations” for the retention of documents that the report “cannot refute.” The Goodman/Weissmann report says, "Unrefuted innocent explanations are the sine qua non of not just a case that does not meet the standard for criminal prosecution – it means innocence."
IF YOU CAN'T SAY SOMETHING NICE
The prosecutorial norm is, if you don't have a case, you say nothing. But Hur was charged by Attorney General Merrick Garland with writing a report. Hur, a Republican chosen by Garland so he wouldn't be accused of protecting his boss, when he found nothing to charge Biden with, indulged in what Washington Monthly calls "prosecutorial abuse", salting the report with a number of personal comments about the president's mental acuity that were widely, and only mildly, labeled "inappropriate" and "gratuitous".
Biden’s lawyers "exchanged confrontational letters with top Justice Department officials before and after last week’s explosive report", says The Washington Post, contending that Hur’s comments “openly, obviously, and blatantly violate Department policy and practice.” But unlike Trump's attorney general, Bill Barr, who … Click to continue reading
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