Not So Breitbart: Attack On Obama’s Attorney General Nominee Snares Wrong Victim

On Friday the White House announced that President Obama would nominate United States Attorney Loretta Lynch to succeed Eric Holder as Attorney General. Almost immediately the sharpened knives on the right came out to express their intentions to gum up the works, which is the only thing that they have proven to be adept at in the past six years. But the announcement also inspired an epic failure by a wingnut website that is no stranger to failure.

Breitbart

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The President’s critics, led by Ted Cruz (TX-Teabagger) burst out of the gate with a ridiculous insistence that the nominee preemptively declare a position on whether the President has the legal authority to issue an executive order addressing immigration. What makes it ridiculous is that there is no executive order pending that Lynch could evaluate. Additionally, it is settled law that president’s have broad authority with regard to executive orders that has never before been used to blackmail Cabinet nominees. But that won’t stop the current crop of Tea-publicans who have also floated demands related to Fast & Furious, the IRS, and Benghazi as potential ransoms for confirming Lynch.

Republicans are also complaining that Obama should wait until after the next session of Congress is seated before seeking Lynch’s confirmation or, for that matter, any judicial appointments or other critical work of the government. They are, in effect, asking to take another two month vacation where nothing of significance is accomplished on behalf of the American people they pretend to represent. It is cynical and hypocritical posturing such as this that infuriates the nation and results in Congress having an abysmal approval rating of 13%.

But sinking to the bottom of the barrel is an alleged “news” enterprise that went out of its way to attack Lynch. Breitbart News published an article with the scandalous headline “OBAMA’S ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE LORETTA LYNCH REPRESENTED CLINTONS DURING WHITEWATER.”

That is really a rather dull revelation, as scandals go. What would be wrong with an attorney performing legal services for a client, particularly when the client was later found not to have been implicated in any wrongdoing?

However, the big problem with Breitbart’s article is that it failed on one small measure of journalism: It isn’t true. The article made the amateurish mistake of confusing the AG nominee with an entirely different person who happened to have the same name. This is typical of the shoddy reporting for which Breitbart is known. Apparently it was too much of a strain to simply verify the identity of the person they were citing.

All of this would be bad enough, but Breitbart wasn’t through screwing up. Another article on the site repeated the false claims, also without bothering to verify them. Then the original article was just disappeared so as to make it look like the mistake never happened. Of course, the article still lives on in Google cache, where it can be seen with a meager attempt at a correction that appears at the end of the article. The correction said simply that…

“The Loretta Lynch identified earlier as the Whitewater attorney was, in fact, a different attorney.”

That’s an awfully timid way of saying that the entire premise of the article was a fraud. And it was so inconspicuous that anyone who didn’t bother to read all the way to the end, or neglected to pay attention to an addendum attached at the bottom, would never know the all-consuming nature of the error. And by deleting it entirely, the original false assertions remain uncorrected in the right-wing blogosphere where it had already taken root. If you have the patience (and the stomach) you may want to explore some of the 800+ comments attached to phantom article.

While the usual crackpots on Fox News and elsewhere are fulminating over whether Obama is attempting to ram another commie, lesbian, radical, gun confiscator through a lame duck Congress (and don’t forget the virulent racism spewing on Fox Nation), Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of Fox’s parent corporation, has endorsed the nominee tweeting

“Seems Obama made good choice for new AG. Reputation for fairness and strict legality.”

That, however will not prevent his wingnut roster at Fox from castigating Lynch and smearing the reputation that Murdoch praised. Fox also disagrees with Murdoch’s positions on Climate Change and immigration. Apparently it is more important (or profitable) at Fox News to attack liberal policies and values, even if it means attacking the corporate boss.

For more examples of blatant dishonesty…
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