Austin American-Statesman’s shameful omission on Senator Schwertner

Pratt on TexasSean Collins Walsh of the Austin American-Statesman published a shameful story headlined “Under investigation and on the ballot, Sen. Charles Schwertner avoids spotlight.”

The entire focus of the story is on whether, on the campaign trail, the conservative leader in the Texas Senate should be talking about allegations made about him or not as well as the political advantages and disadvantages of doing so.

Left out of the story is the questionable, spurious nature of the odd and Kavanaugh-like allegations levied at the senator by some unnamed UT graduate student and discussion of the duplicity of UT officials, three of whom leaked the allegations to the Statesman, who now claim they cannot comment to protect the non-existent “integrity” of the so-called investigation of claims that the senator texted a lewd message and photo to the accuser.

One cannot be “vigorously” denying anything without addressing such but, that’s what the story attempts to report.

The story claims that Senator Schwertner is not addressing the issue but includes the contradictory information that Dr. Schwernter has “vigorously denied the allegations.” One cannot be “vigorously” denying anything without addressing such but, that’s what the story attempts to report.

Walsh includes that the senator’s lawyers say he passed a polygraph examination on the issue, which in my mind has little value, but fails to mention the only outside hard evidence, reported the day before in the Texas Tribune, that “Reid Wittliff, president of R3 Digital Forensics of Austin, confirmed Monday evening the firm has examined the senator’s phone.”

The forensics firm “determined that the photo and texts in question could not have come from the senator’s phone.”

So why would the Austin-American Statesman, which covers the senator’s district where the senator is on the ballot for re-election, leave out such? Well, you be the judge but of course the Statesman will assure us it isn’t due to the bias of it and its staff.

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