ABC News released a statement following the damning Project Veritas video that suggested it quashed a massive story on billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, claiming the story did not meet its’ “standards.”
Yet the network did not appear to apply its so-called standards in the case of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, eagerly providing a platform for the unfounded allegations of sexual assault against the then-nominee.
Both ABC News and Amy Robach released statements following the emergence of a video showing an irritated Robach suggesting the network quashed a bombshell interview with an Epstein accuser who had, according to Robach, “pictures” and “everything.”
“I’ve had this interview with Virginia [Guiffre],” Robach said. “We would not put it on the air. I was told, ‘Who’s Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story.’”
“I had it all three years ago,” she adds. “She had pictures. She had everything.”
“It was unbelievable what we had. We had Clinton. We had everything,” she repeated:
Robach said in a statement on Tuesday that she was “caught in a private moment of frustration.”
“I was upset that an important interview I had conducted with Virginia Roberts didn’t air because we could not obtain sufficient corroborating evidence to meet ABC’s editorial standards about her allegations,” she said.
ABC News issued a similar statement, denying any wrongdoing and asserting the story simply did not meet its “standards”:
At the time, not all of our reporting met our standards to air, but we never stopped investigating the story. Ever since we’ve had a team on this investigation and substantial resources dedicated to it. That work has led to a two-hour documentary and 6-part podcast that will air in the new year.
However, ABC News did not seem to have the same concerns throughout Kavanaugh’s contentious nomination process, eagerly offering its network as a platform for the unfounded allegations.
For example, ABC chose to highlight remarks from an unnamed woman who was “involved in a second allegation of sexual misconduct by Brett Kavanaugh during his freshmen year at Yale University.”
The outlet did not name the alleged witness but quoted her saying, “All I can say is, ask Brett.”
ABC reported at the time:
The woman, who ABC News is not naming at this time, said Sunday she “can’t do it again” referring to speaking about the allegations. The alleged incident was not widely reported on until the New York Times published a story that a former classmate said he saw Kavanagh “with his pants down” at a dormitory “where friends pushed [Kavanaugh’s] penis into the hand of a female student.”
That classmate, named in the Times as Max Stier, who now runs a non-profit, nonpartisan organization in Washington called “Partnership for Public Service,” declined to comment to ABC News.
It also highlighted the accusations from Julie Swetnick, who claimed she was gang-raped at a party that Kavanaugh attended.
Per ABC:
“I observed Brett Kavanaugh drink excessively at many of these parties and engage in abusive and highly physically aggressive behavior toward girls,” Swetnick writes in the declaration, “including pressing girls against him without their consent, ‘grinding’ against girls, and attempting to remove or shift girls’ clothing to expose private body parts.”
The declaration also includes an allegation that she was raped at a party in 1982 by multiple boys while she was incapacitated and unable to consent.
ABC is not alone in its hypocrisy. NBC News, which essentially covered for Harvey Weinstein, also ran with the unfounded allegations against Kavanaugh, not seeming to give a second thought to its purported editorial standards:
NBC even opted to run a one-on-one interview with Swetnick while admitting that it could not corroborate any of the accuser’s claims:
“He was very aggressive — very sloppy drunk, very mean drunk. I saw him — go up to girls and paw on them, try to, you know, get a little too handsy, touching them in private parts. I saw him try to shift clothing,” Swetnick told NBC’s Kate Snow.
She went on to say that she was “shoved into a room” and gang-raped, claiming that Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were at the party but adding, “I cannot specifically say that he was one of the ones who assaulted me.”
As the Washingon Examiner’s Becket Adams noted (emphasis added):
On Oct. 1, NBC aired a one-on-one interview with Swetnick wherein the alleged victim made statements that were inconsistent with her Sept. 26 affidavit. NBC’s Kate Snow prefaced and concluded the interview by noting they couldn’t verify a single thing in the alleged victim’s story. That alone should have been reason enough to kill the interview, but NBC aired it anyway. Later, on Oct. 2, Avenatti published a sworn declaration bearing the witness’ name, claiming she had first-hand knowledge of Kavanaugh’s attempts to drug and sexually abuse vulnerable partygoers.
Tom Bevan, co-founder & president of RealClearPolitics, summarized the mainstream media phenomenon thusly:
“They cover this up for 3 years and they’re not the enemy of the people???” Donald Trump Jr. remarked. “I truly hope people wake up and see what the media truly is. This is sickening”:
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