Coverage of Sexual Assault Allegations: ‘Double Standard’ Favored Democrat Fairfax Over Brett Kavanaugh

'The Ingraham Angle' addressed The Post's decisions

By Kathryn Blackhurst | February 5, 2019

The Washington Post used a “double standard” when it initially chose not to publish uncorroborated sexual assault allegations against Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) — but broke the story of Christine Blasey Ford’s uncorroborated allegations last year against then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Fox News host Laura Ingraham declared Monday on “The Ingraham Angle.”

Associate Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation process last year descended into chaos following the last-minute sexual assault allegations leveled against him — all of which he vehemently denied.

Ford was the first woman to come forward publicly on September 16 in a Washington Post article, alleging that Kavanaugh (pictured above left) sexually assaulted her during a high school gathering 36 years before in Maryland, when they were both high school teens.

Kavanaugh denied the allegations unequivocally; President Donald Trump stood by his nominee.

The FBI investigated the claims but found no corroboration for them.

Related: You’ll Never Guess What Christine Blasey Ford Did with the GoFundMe Money That Was Raised for Her

Fairfax (above right) became prominent in the national discourse this past weekend as Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam found himself embroiled in controversy.

A picture from Northam’s 1984 medical school yearbook page depicting someone in blackface and someone in a Ku Klux Klan outfit surfaced last week. Northam initially apologized for being in the picture on Friday — but the very next day backtracked and claimed he wasn’t actually in it.

Instead, Northam insisted, oddly, that he would have remembered being in such a photo — because he remembered dressing up in blackface as Michael Jackson for a dance contest around that same time.

Despite widespread calls for his resignation from members of both parties, Northam thus far has refused to step down from the position he won in 2017.

The Washington Post reported shortly thereafter that an unnamed woman had accused Fairfax of sexually assaulting her in a hotel room in 2004 during the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Fairfax admitted to engaging in a sexual encounter with her but says it was consensual.

No witnesses have been able to corroborate the Fairfax accuser’s story — just as no witnesses could corroborate Ford’s story last year.

The publication on Monday said the following: “The Washington Post, in phone calls to people who knew Fairfax from college, law school and through political circles, found no similar complaints of sexual misconduct against him. Without that, or the ability to corroborate the woman’s account — in part because she had not told anyone what happened — The Washington Post did not run a story.”

Ingraham said this represented a “pretty clear-cut double standard” in The Post’s reporting.

“If you were looking for yet another stark example of media hypocrisy, look no further than The Washington Post,” Ingraham said on Monday night.

“Now this is the paper that first brought us the completely … uncorroborated accusations against now-sitting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. They did not publish accusations against the current lieutenant governor, however, and potential Northam successor Justin Fairfax,” Ingraham added.

Related: Unreal: MSNBC Commentators Blame Trump for Northam’s Blackface Controversy

“So why wasn’t that standard applied to Kavanaugh?” Ingraham asked. “We reached out to the The Post and asked for, you know, someone from The Post to come on tonight. They simply referred us to a statement about Fairfax while ignoring our questions about Kavanaugh.”

Conservative author and strategist Jeffrey Lord, a former Reagan staffer, told Ingraham this sort of media hypocrisy “has been going on for decades — absolute decades.”

“And they will do two things. There’s the sin of commission, in which they will go after somebody like Brett Kavanaugh. And then there’s the sin of omission, in which they will not go” and “out the appropriate liberal,” Lord said. “They do it all of the time.”

Candace Owens, a conservative commentator and the communications director for Turning Point USA, told Ingraham that “this happens over and over again on the Left.”

“There was no corroboration. They were trolling for this information.”

“They ignored the allegations completely party-wide … and yet Christine Blasey Ford had not a shred of evidence and they all decided that she was an incredibly credible witness,” Owens said. “Because at the end of the day, this has nothing to do with sexism, racism, misogyny. OK? The Left doesn’t care about any of that.”

“It’s just a mad quest for power. And ultimately it’s harming this country,” Owens warned.

The media “were so aggressively curious about Kavanaugh,” Ingraham said. “Blasey Ford is lucky if she doesn’t get slapped with a defamation suit after all this, OK? There was no corroboration. They were trolling for this information.”

Check out more in the video below:

This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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