Cry Me a River: Justin Fairfax Says WaPo Story is a ‘Smear’

After threatening to sue Big League Politics in a desperate 3 a.m. denial of sexual assault allegations, the Democratic Lieutenant Governor of Virginia claimed that he was smeared by The Washington Post, and threatened legal action against them, too.

Justin Fairfax says the allegations levied against him by Stanford professor Vanessa Tyson are false, and responded to a Washington Post report, in which Jeff Bezos’ blog claimed that it, too, had heard of such allegations, by threatening to take the publication to court. The paper contradicted some of the facts in Fairfax’s original denial of the allegations, so he threatened legal action.

He said:

The Washington Post, acknowledging that it had no corroboration, just smeared an elected official. We reiterate that this allegation is false. At no time has the lieutenant governor assaulted anyone at any time or at any place.

This type of smear is what we meant when we said that politics and the coverage of it needs to rise to a higher level that befits our country and the 400-year history of our Commonwealth. This is what we meant when we said that people who continue to spread these false allegations will be sued.

We ask further: What other major elected official in the Commonwealth of Virginia would be smeared with sexual allegations that were presented without corroboration?

Nobody should be unfairly smeared.

But here’s the thing: The Washington Post traffics in uncorroborated reports of sexual misconduct regularly. It’s one of their tactics for making sure democracy doesn’t die in darkness. For proof, see Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. For further proof, see former U.S. Senate Candidate Judge Roy Moore.

By the way, let’s not forget that the paper failed to report these allegations in the first place, despite the fact that they are at least as detailed, if not more detailed, than those of the Kavanaugh and Moore cases. Big League Politics had to report the allegations first, thursting them into broad daylight (where democracy lives).

Fairfax wants sympathy? He feels as though he’s been unfairly smeared by the news media? Welcome to the life of every Republican, ever! Unless Washington Post is planning to re-work its editorial standards and publicly retract every story it wrote about Kavanaugh, Fairfax has no room to gripe.

And what about the ordinary American conservatives? You know, the ones who just wanted to be left alone, but instead were slandered for decades as backwards, racist, homophobic, Islamaphobic, xenophobic, sexist, misogynistic, and hateful by the likes of WaPo and the rest of the mainstream press?

It’s going to take more than one report about allegations of sexual assault – allegations that Fairfax himself confirmed existed – for this reporter to lose a wink of sleep over it.

The political left made these rules. Now they have to abide by them. Cry me a river.

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