Topic: NewsBusters
Tim Graham is apparently the designated defense guy regarding misleading claims made by his co-author, Brent Bozell, in relation to their (factually dubious) anti-Hillary book. In response to a Media Matters (my employer) item pointing that Bozell's claim that Hillary Clinton "was behind the whole FBI-gates" (the obtaining of confidential FBI records by some administation officials) was contradicted by independent counsel Robert Ray's conclusion that she was not "engaged in criminal conduct to obtain through fraudulent means derogatory information about former White House staff," Graham retorted in a Nov. 16 NewsBusters post:
But when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald declined to indict Karl Rove in the Valerie Plame matter, Media Matters certainly didn’t find that Rove was then free of suspicion.
By contrast, of course, Graham's MRC colleagues did just that. For instance, in an Oct. 28, 2005, NewsBusters post, Brent Baker declared that Rove's non-indictment was a "vindication" for him. The numerous claims by NewsBusters posters that since Richard Armitage was revealed to be the person who leaked Valerie Plame's identity to columnist Robert Novak that it somehow negates the fact that Rove was also leaking Plame's identity to journalists play into this sense of "vindication" as well.
Ignoring this, Graham goes on to insist that he be allowed to continue to push this double standard: "Finally, consider that when Team Clinton says there's no 'evidence' of a Clinton scandal, the destruction or disappearance of evidence will always by suspected by conserrvatives." In other words, the Clintons are always guilty, even when they've been found innocent. Graham's invoking the ConWeb's Clinton Exception, in which the Clintons are held to standards not applied to others, especially conservatives.
UPDATE: Graham's post also appeared in the Nov. 16 MRC CyberAlert.
