Mark Hemingway writes for the Federalist about deceptive coverage of the latest scandal involving the White House.
It’s hard to read the news and not keep coming to the conclusion that the media think you’re stupid.
Case in point: On Wednesday, it was reported that the FBI was at President Biden’s home in Rehoboth, Delaware, once again scouring the place as part of its investigation into Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. It is at least the third time the FBI has searched Biden’s effects as part of the investigation, and one of those searches was done so discreetly it wasn’t public knowledge until months after the fact.
In addition to his home, classified documents were also found at the Penn-Biden center, the president’s Chinese-funded think tank. The Justice Department has also graciously trusted Biden’s personal attorneys — who did not have security clearances — to sift through his papers and identify any potentially incriminating documents without DOJ supervision.
These searches of Biden’s home and private papers came just a few months after the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago for the identical crime of mishandling classified documents. The Biden situation is arguably worse since he allegedly retained classified documents from his Senate tenure, which doesn’t have any declassification authority that comes with the presidency. But now after weeks of breathless speculation about how the Justice Department prosecution could be used to keep Trump from running for president again, the media are at pains to explain why Trump’s crimes are somehow worse than Biden’s.
And so the media haven’t coalesced so much as collapsed around a central narrative: Biden’s violations of the law are somehow excused because he’s fully cooperating with the FBI investigation. …
… So yes, they are downplaying that a sitting president is at the center of a months-long FBI investigation. This mere fact was routinely cited as disqualifying when Trump was president, regardless of how meritless the FBI’s Russia-collusion investigation proved to be. But you almost have to admire the chutzpah of framing the entire story around Biden’s exculpatory excuses. …
