Did the White House Farm the Rolling Stone Fake-Rape Jackie Story to Rollling Stone?

From once and future Congressional candidate Mike Flynn, my own answer here is by a qualified yes, and that qualification is "of course it was, dummy."

The Obama administration disclosed Tuesday it first learned about Rolling Stone’s ill-fated story on campus rape in Sept. 2014, about two months before it was published, when reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely called seeking information on the government’s investigation of the University of Virginia’s handling of sexual assaults.

The revelation from the Department of Education came the same day that a media watchdog group asked congressional oversight committees to start an investigation into what the administration may have known about the story before and after it was published and what it did to address the concerns raised in the article.

"The larger question we raise regards the role of public officials: Was this contrived, indeed fabricated story, part of an orchestrated power grab over U.S. universities by administration officials intent on using a major publication as a political weapon?" the Institute on Government and Media Integrity wrote in a letter to Rep. John Kline, Minnesota Republican and House Education and the Workforce Committee chairman, and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate education committee.

The request could open the door for Congress to obtain access to documents that have also been sought by news reporters but so far have not been released.

White House officials who talked to The Washington Times on Tuesday said the administration had virtually no involvement in the story except to arrange a short interview between an Education Department official and Rolling Stone, which was supposed to be limited to a broad discussion about Title IX investigations and the Office of Civil Rights ongoing inquiry into UVa.

Oh is that all?

"In response to the [Rolling Stone] reporter’s inquiry, the press office arranged an interview with Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon for Sept. 24, 2014. The interview focused on what it means to be under Title IX compliance review by the OCR. That was our only participation in the reporting of the Rolling Stone story, other than some fact checking about Title IX investigations once the story was written and ready for print. We did not suggest any other people for the reporter to talk to, and she did not tell us who she had interviewed for her story," the department said in a statement to The Times.

Read on to see the White House distancing itself from Rhenda, claiming she's just a gal from around the neighborhood.

posted by Ace at 04:04 PM

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