Byron York’s Daily Memo: The era of resistance journalism

THE ERA OF RESISTANCE JOURNALISM: In a new article, New York Times media columnist Ben Smith casts doubt on some of the high-impact stories written by Ronan Farrow, who has become a star in what Smith calls the “era of resistance journalism.” Smith cites a May 2018 New Yorker story in which Farrow reported that a source who leaked secret financial documents relating to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had been concerned that government officials were hiding the documents from law enforcement.

The problem? It wasn’t true. “Two years after publication, little of Mr. Farrow’s article holds up, writes Smith. Other stories on Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer had weaknesses as well. Farrow’s work, Smith concludes, “reveals the weakness of a kind of resistance journalism that has thrived in the age of Donald Trump: That if reporters swim ably along with the tides of social media and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices, the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness can seem more like impediments than essential journalistic imperatives.”

Here’s the odd thing. Smith goes through a number of Farrow stories, as well as Farrow’s book, but never mentions his role in one of the most appalling stories published during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation battle. In September 2018, Farrow and the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer published the tale of Deborah Ramirez, who claimed that 35 years earlier, when both she and Kavanaugh were 18 year-old freshmen at Yale, there was a small dorm-room party at which Ramirez — drunk, ‘on the floor, foggy and slurring her words’ — remembered Kavanaugh exposing himself to her. Ramirez admitted she only recalled the incident after consulting with her attorney. Farrow and Mayer could not find any eyewitnesses. Nor were there any real witnesses at all. Later reporters tried to substantiate the story and found a bunch of “witnesses” who had heard something from somebody who might have known something about something they heard might have happened. The story was embarrassingly weak.

It was “resistance journalism” at its worst. And it should not be forgotten.

Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine that will keep you up to date with what’s going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue!

CHATTER, CHATTER, CHATTER ABOUT FLYNN: It wasn’t a big deal on the Sunday shows — NBC and CBS ignored it altogether — but a lot of Washington lawyers and politicos are buzzing about the next moves in the Michael Flynn case. Judge Emmet Sullivan has so far not accepted the Justice Department’s decision to drop charges against Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in a January 24, 2017 White House interview. Sullivan has appointed a retired federal judge, John Gleeson, to essentially make the case against Flynn that the Justice Department no longer had the confidence to make. Will Sullivan ultimately relent and let the case go? No one seems clear.

Meanwhile, a post by the anonymous Twitter account “Undercover Huber” looks deep into the documents underlying the legal arguments in the Flynn case. They showed prosecutors working for Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller repeatedly denied the Flynn defense a look at the original FBI FD-302 — the writeup of Flynn’s interview on which the entire case was based. There could be no more critical document; after all, the charge was that Flynn lied to the FBI during that interview. But prosecutors never revealed to the defense precisely what Flynn said.

On November 1, 2017 — one month before Flynn pleaded guilty — defense lawyers asked to see the FD-302. “Flynn hasn’t pled guilty to anything at this point,” “Undercover Huber” writes. “His lawyers are adamant he’s *innocent.* And the [special counsel] won’t even turn over the edited FD-302, never mind the original one, for them to look at.”

“Would you be willing to give us the 302?” a Flynn lawyer asked, according to defense notes of a meeting with the special counsel’s staff. “We’re not currently in a posture where we’re providing that information,” a prosecutor answered. It was an incredible situation; the government would not produce the document said to show that Flynn had lied. But it was apparently OK with Judge Sullivan.

Meanwhile, look for more media declarations that the Flynn news is just a diversion. “This is all a smokescreen to actually cover up, and in fact deny, what happened in the first nine weeks of dealing with the flu and this virus,” Democratic pol Rahm Emanuel said on ABC. “So the president is now trying to create a distraction.” It’s an easy talking point. But everyone knows, or should know, that questions about the Flynn case have existed since the beginning of the publicly-known parts of the Flynn case, in January 2017. That was long, long before the coronavirus crisis came to America. And the public still needs to know more about what happened.