Clownish lawyer Jonathan Turley, whose only legal consistency is that he’s consistently wrong, continues with his string of bad takes: Wednesday afternoon, he published a column in the New York Post implying that the story of an impregnated raped 10-year-old girl having to flee Ohio to Indiana to get an abortion was totally off the mark and a lie.
In his lawyerly way, Turley avoids explicitly calling it a lie in the column, but he certainly tries to lead the reader to that conclusion, writing:
“Not a whisper.” That was Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, saying that his search for a notorious child rape case in his state had turned up nothing.
That is odd given the vast coverage by the media, and even condemnation of the president of the United States, of the supposed case of a 10-year-old girl raped and impregnated in Ohio and forced to seek an abortion in Indiana.
What is even stranger than the utter lack of confirmation of the story is the utter lack of interest in confirming it — or in the welfare of the child herself. We have little proof that the story is true despite some significant legal and factual questions.
More than an hour before this posted at 1:46 p.m. ET Wednesday, on the Post’s website, Ohio authorities arrested 27-year-old Gershon Fuentes for first-degree felony rape, with the Columbus Dispatch noting that Columbus Police had been notified of the attack on June 22nd, about three weeks ago.
I can sympathize a writer having a story post concurrently to breaking news regarding the story undermining the theme of the piece, but with Turley and the New York Post, this oversight seems intentional. The Dispatch’s story about the arrest was posted 90 minutes before Turley’s column; why Turley or the Post didn’t call the Columbus Police to verify the status of the case is unexplained.
More pertinently, why the Post still hadn’t retracted the column–or at the very least, note that the alleged perpetrator had been arrested as an update–five hours after the suspect was arrested is an unconscionable breach of journalistic practice. But then, we don’t expect competent journalism from a Rupert Murdoch outlet.
The funnier thing is how Turley is spinning his clearly wrong op/ed in his Twitter feed. He’s actually defending the column:
…The Post also did not say that the underlying story was untrue but simply raised the lack of confirmation on a story that had gone global in reach.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) July 13, 2022
Turley’s implication that he and the NY Post are blameless for posting a story that–did I mention this?–appeared more than 90 minutes after an arrest had been made is ludicrous. (“The Post” referred to in Turley’s second tweet above is the New York Post, not the Washington Post, which did a thorough job reporting the story and continues to update it.
Turley’s other piece of journalistic malpractice was unquestionably accepting the account of Republican Ohio Attorney General Mike Yost, who declared in a Fox propaganda network interview that Lordy, he knew nuthin’ about no child rape ’cause his office MUST get reports and he didn’t see the report. Oh and, Yost claimed, the child coulda still gotten an abortion in Ohio because the law, which bars abortions after six weeks of gestation, only demands that if a fetal heartbeat is detected, an abortion cannot occur; in this case, Yost pontificated, with the rape reportedly occurred six weeks and three days before the girl sought an abortion, so there’s no way to know if there was a heartbeat or not.
These excuses miss the point entirely. First, we’re talking about a 10-year-old girl here. There should be no question that as a rape victim, she should have access to a safe abortion. Second, the reason the child had to go to Indiana for an abortion is simple: with the radical Republicans ready to prosecute anyone involved in abortion, no provider would chance proceding with an abortion after six weeks because of the risk that crazed anti-choice politicians would pounce on the provider to prove no heartbeat was detected–something that conservative zealots would tie up the provider in criminal and civil courts for months about simply to be a pain in the ass.
No amount of spinning can justify the carelessness of Turley and the New York Post. As propagandists, they are not beholding to the truth. As a lawyer, Turley’s understanding of the law is tenuous, but his desire to advocate for crappy, easily-disproven is as strong as ever.