Beto’s Secret Weapon

Reuters scored a fine scoop over the weekend with news that new 2020 candidate Beto O’Rourke was once part of a hacker group, where he wrote at least one disturbing bit of fiction. Problem is, the reporter had the story long before last year’s election, when O’Rourke nearly beat Sen. Ted Cruz — yet sat on it.

The reporter, Joseph Menn, justifies the delay because his main goal was to finish a book on the hacker alliance, “Cult of the Dead Cow.” Yet by his own account, he unilaterally offered in late 2017 to sit on the story until after Election Day, as long as O’Rourke did a full interview about it all.

This, though others in the group had already given Menn enough info about the ex- member who’d moved on to Congress for the reporter to figure out it was O’Rourke.

And despite the fact that the candidate had spent part of his teens writing as “Psychedelic Warlord” surely would’ve interested Texas voters, particularly the story that aims to convey the thoughts of a psycho serial killer.

Not even trying to publish this info, when you have months before the election, is a dereliction of a working reporter’s duty to his employer and the public

The fact that O’Rourke came within a hair of beating Cruz is one of his big selling points in the Democratic presidential contest. But will he have the same advantage of a press willing to suppress potentially damning information?