On Christmas Day, the Washington Post published this long front-page article titled* “Trump’s pick for attorney general is shadowed by race and history.” The article begins by insinuating that Senator Jeff Sessions, back when he was U.S. Attorney in Alabama in the 1980s, sought to send Evelyn Turner, a “mother of four,” and “her husband [Albert Turner], an aide to Martin Luther King Jr., to prison for 150 years” for voter fraud because “black Americans were gaining ground in elective offices across the South.” (The article of course doesn’t say “because”; that’s just what it insinuates.)
Only in paragraph 31 does the reader finally learn that the “case arose out of complaints to the district attorney brought by local black officials that [Albert] Turner … and associates were taking absentee ballot and altering the votes” and that “there was a split between two factions, both black, that were vying for power in the county.” Even that information is couched amidst claims that the case “was emblematic, voting rights advocates say, of a push by officials in several southern states to try to disenfranchise black voters” and that, per Turner’s brother, Sessions “wanted to use [Turner’s] visibility to send a message.”
To be clear: I am not maintaining that the fact that Sessions acted in response to “complaints … brought by local black officials” categorically disproves the possibility that he might have acted from illicit motives. I am maintaining, rather, that that fact deserves to be highlighted up front and that the Post’s failure to do so, coupled with its inflammatory insinuation, strongly suggests that it is acting from illicit motives.
* That’s the online title, at least; I don’t recall whether it was also the print title.