Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jerome Corsi discredits himself and his employer, WorldNetDaily, every time he dives into the cesspool of the sleaziest smears of Barack Obama and treats them with reverence -- but his hatred of Obama is so obsessive that he does so with glee. He dives in once more by again championing the cause of discredited felon Larry Sinclair.
If you'll recall, in 2008 WND enthusiastically embraced Sinclair's tale that he once did drugs and had sex with Obama, despite the facts that no corroborating evidence was presented to back up his claims and WND itself made no effort whatsoever to check him out. WND quietly backed away from Sinclair after he failed lie-detector tests, he turned out to be a convicted criminal, and he held a press conference one observer called "the single most stupefying event on any single day, what with the diversity of inanity on display from coast to coast in an election year," complete with a kilt-wearing attorney who justified his wardrobe decision by discussing the size of his "male genitalia."
Earlier this year, Corsi began promoting Sinclair's never-proven claims, ignoring the complete lack of credibility he has displayed. Corsi is back on the case by claiming in a June 5 WND article that "Two recent developments have bolstered a campaign by Larry Sinclair to advance the sensational claim in his 2009 book 'Barack Obama & Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies & Murder' that he and Barack Obama twice engaged in homosexual acts accompanied by cocaine use."
Neither of these "recent developments," however, does anything of the sort. The first is that the man who conducted the lie-detector test that Sinclair failed -- and whom Sinclair is now accusing of having been paid $750,000 by Obama adviser David Axelrod to rig the test -- "was indicted in an unrelated matter by federal authorities and charged with conspiring to conceal campaign donations." The fact that even Corsi admits this case is "an unrelated matter" to Sinclair proves its speciousness. Corsi also makes no mention of what evidence, if any, Sinclair cites as proof that the lie-detector test was rigged.
The other "development" Corsi claims is significant is a brief by Amazon.com in a lawsuit over Sinclair's book claiming that the book has not been proven defamatory. That doesn't mean it isn't, of course, or that it has been documented to be factual. As Corsi reported, Amazon is simply invoking the case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which established modern libel law by setting a higher bar of libel against public figures and setting the standard that a publisher of a defamatory statement know that the statement is false or acted in reckless disregard as a condition of conviction.
It's pretty standard procedure for a publisher or distributor of a potentially libelous or defamatory statement to invoke Sullivan in defense. Heck, Esquire probably did that in response to sue-happy defamer Larry Klayman's defamation lawsuit on behalf of WorldNetDaily, which was uncerimoniously tossed out of court earlier this week. The fact that Amazon does so here proves nothing about the veracity of Sinclair's book.
