Boston Herald

Congressio­nal hearings about Team Biden die in darkness

- By Tim Graham Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center

The easiest layup in proving the “mainstream media” is hyperparti­san is to study how they cover congressio­nal hearings. After two years of obsessive media promotion and congratula­tion and live coverage of the Pelosi-picked panel on Jan. 6, the network “newscasts” can’t locate a hearing now with two hands.

On March 1, the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Biden administra­tion Attorney General Merrick Garland for the first time in the new Congress. The hearing was not devoid of newsworthi­ness. The New York Times headline was “G.O.P. Senators Fire a Barrage of Intense Questions at Garland.” They placed it on page A-18.

That almost deserves a cupcake. There was nothing that night from ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS or NPR. What this hearing exposed is that Garland’s Justice Department is immensely political and partisan, a law-enforcemen­t bully for the Biden White House.

Sen. Ted Cruz hammered Garland

for his department’s complete failure to do anything about leftist protesters outside of the homes of Supreme Court justices, despite a federal law that bans “picketing or parading” near a judge’s residence. Biden spokeswoma­n Jen Psaki endorsed those protests. Garland claimed this was a local law-enforcemen­t matter.

Cruz noted: “You spent 20 years as a judge and you’re perfectly content with justices being afraid for their children’s lives. And you did nothing to prosecute it.”

Sen. Josh Hawley grilled Garland about his department’s abusive treatment of Christian pro-life activists arrested outside abortion clinics compared to their complete inaction against pro-abortion radicals firebombin­g pro-life offices and crisis pregnancy centers and vandalizin­g churches.

Hawley cited the infuriatin­g case of Mark Houck, the Catholic father of seven acquitted in January of federal assault charges over an alleged shoving of an abortion-enabling “escort” outside a Philadelph­ia abortion clinic. Houck was arrested at gunpoint in front of his terrified family in an FBI raid.

The senator asked, “Why did you send … a SWAT-style team to this guy’s house when everyone else had declined to prosecute and he had offered to turn himself in?” Garland said the local FBI “made a decision on the ground that was safest and easiest.” How on Earth was that a “safest” option, and for who?

Once again, no one in this alphabet soup of red-hot abortion-pushing networks has ever touched the Houck outrage. You can see why they’d want to skip this hearing.

Hawley also questioned Garland about a Jan. 23 memo issued by the FBI field office in Richmond, Virginia, advocating “the exploratio­n of new avenues for ‘tripwire and source developmen­ts against traditiona­list Catholics’ including those who favor the Latin Mass.” In this case, Garland tried to say he totally disagreed with this effort. Hawley instructed him that the FBI was following tips from the radical Southern Poverty Law Center.

Again, no one at the networks reported for one second about this FBI chatter about investigat­ing Latin Mass Catholics like they’re an insurrecti­onist threat. Now imagine Trump-era FBI people talking about “tripwire and source developmen­ts” inside mosques, and envision the exploding network heads.

All of this aggressive ignorance exposes the lie that these media outlets should be seen as the people who keep democracy from dying in darkness. Congressio­nal hearings are dying in darkness, at least in their “news” rooms.

 ?? JACQUELYN MARTIN — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ?? Attorney General Merrick Garland is sworn in to testify as the Senate Judiciary Committee examines the Department of Justice, at the Capitol in Washington on March 1.
JACQUELYN MARTIN — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Attorney General Merrick Garland is sworn in to testify as the Senate Judiciary Committee examines the Department of Justice, at the Capitol in Washington on March 1.

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