Why Bombshell News Never Seems To Break Democrats' Way. By Brian Beutler

Read time: 6 minutes

Why Bombshell News Never Seems To Break Democrats' Way

The parties' different responses to the Hur report provides a study in unflattering contrasts

A depiction of Republicans when Democrats ignore yet another GOP scandal. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

When reporters got wind that Special Counsel Robert Hur had submitted his final report to Attorney General Merrick Garland, the White House counsel’s office, and parties of interest on Capitol Hill, scuttlebutt was that this wouldn’t be some dry, by-the-book declination decision.

I was busy writing up my wrap piece on Supreme Court arguments over whether Donald Trump should be disqualified for engaging in insurrection. I didn’t know Hur had chosen to smear Biden; I suspected he, like James Comey before him, had instead chosen to opine on Biden’s document security practices. 

Here was my reaction:

Within an hour or so, the ensuing feeding frenzy had taken a slightly unexpected turn. Most Republicans recognized Hur’s freelance musing about Biden’s memory as more potent political material than Biden’s infosec practices. Donald Trump is under indictment for stealing and concealing classified information, after all—which is why he, unlike the rest of his party, careened off into a lonely rant about how Biden was the real state secrets thief. 

But my general instinct has been vindicated. 

Hur is now negotiating with his fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill over what he can testify to and when he can appear at a hearing. Those same Republicans have insisted that the Justice Department release a transcript of Biden’s interview with Hur, so they can clip and circulate any instance in which Biden’s memory failed him. 

They are, in other words, a party that cares about the power of information and partisan combat, and they are seizing this opportunity rather than bypassing it.

The contrast with Democratic senators couldn’t be starker or less flattering. 

Reporters didn’t actually have to wait for an official response to know Republicans would milk Hur’s editorializing. Studying Republican conduct is a big part of the job. Of course Republicans would treat these asides in Hur’s report as “fodder” for political attacks. The press corps thus preemptively molded its coverage around that angle. 

It is more than reasonable for critics to find this method of adjudging newsworthiness frustrating. Over at the New Republic, Greg Sargent dinged the press corps for it. But the sickness is old. Back in 2012, the White House press corps hounded President Obama to take more questions from the podium; at some point he obliged them with a wide-ranging press conference in the briefing room. But every substantive thing he said that day is lost to history because in the course of explaining how a contraction of the public sector had hurt the broader labor market, he uttered the words “the private sector is doing fine,” and the game was lost. Reporters identified it as “fodder” for the “other side” and stopped the presses. Google provides a fossil record of that passing kerfuffle. 

Refer a friend

It is a bad professional habit. Political journalists should strive for better. But as ingrained and well understood as these tendencies are, it raises the question of why only Republicans exploit them.

Hur’s report includes this line, too.

With one exception, there is no record of the Department ofJustice prosecuting a former president or vice president for mishandling classified documents from his own administration. The exception is former President Trump. 

It is not our role to assess the criminal charges pending against Mr. Trump, but several material distinctions between Mr. Trump's case and Mr. Biden's are clear. Unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts. Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. In contrast, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview. and in other ways cooperated with the investigation. 

Why didn’t reporters swarm to this unflattering contrast between Trump and Biden, noting it would provide “fodder” for Dems to attack Republicans over Trump’s criminality? Because Democrats have ignored Trump’s crimes almost entirely.

There are many, many angles Senate Democrats could have pursued. A wide range of reporting, including this recent bombshell, indicates Trump may have retained state secrets even after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago. We know he discussed highly sensitive national-security information with private parties, including at least one foreign oligarch. But these matters aren’t central to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case. 

Senate Democrats would endanger nothing by demanding information from the executive branch about the kinds of documents that remain missing, and the risk Trump’s thefts pose to national security. One Senate panel, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has unlimited jurisdiction and grants its chairman unilateral subpoena power. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) holds that gavel, but he hardly wields it; his predecessor, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) was somehow even less proactive. 

They and other chairmen could draw attention to so much more than the narrow questions of which candidate has worse infosec practices (Trump) or a worse memory (also Trump).

On Thursday, Tucker Carlson conducted a live, fawning interview with Vladimir Putin, who, over the course of 30 meandering minutes, took special interest in Poland, a country recently liberated from far-right rule. 

Days later, Donald Trump told Putin, in essence, if I become president, and you invade Poland, I will cheer you on. 

“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?,’” Trump said, dubiously, at a rally in South Carolina. “I said, ‘You didn’t pay. You’re delinquent.’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.”

Is there something more going on behind the scenes of this dangerous, alfresco collusion? Have U.S. security services seen an uptick in contacts between Trump and Putin cutouts? In hacking efforts or other forms of subversion? Is this connected to ever-more desperate House GOP efforts to betray Ukraine? These are questions senators should want to ask, and that the public deserves answers to. 

Leave a comment

As near as I can tell, most senior Senate Democrats find the idea of taking interest in anything partisan to be uncouth. 

Former Obama adviser notes Trump legal woes are perhaps a greater liability than Biden’s age. “Focusing only on fixing Biden’s problems has a massive opportunity cost,” he writes. “In some ways, Trump’s trials may be a bigger concern for voters than Biden’s age.” 

Absolutely true. But Trump has a federal judge in Florida, one of his own appointees, protecting him from one trial, and four or five Supreme Court justices who may protect him from another. It is obviously not in Democrats’ power to force those judges to behave ethically. But they could prime the public to understand any effort by those judges to delay Trump’s trials as a corrupt fix. A theoretically impeachable offense. They could investigate Aileen Cannon—what has she been promised and by whom? They could build public pressure on the Supreme Court to treat Trump’s January 6 trial with the same urgency they demonstrate when they’re doing favors for the right-wing billionaires who bribe them. They should do these things because the public won’t focus on Trump’s trials otherwise, and the trials themselves may thus never happen.

They are instead doing nothing. They are not a party that cares about the power of information or partisan combat, and they are (thus) bypassing these opportunities rather than seizing them. Perhaps we could overlook their dereliction if everything else were going according to plan. But unless the plan included Biden running a couple points behind Trump in mid February of the election year, it’s not.

Update your profile

Only paid subscribers can comment on this post

Check your email

For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.

Click the link we sent to tka.lee@gmail.com, or click here to sign in.