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Why the Hur report triggers bad 2016 flashbacks

Last week, Robert Hur, the special counsel charged with investigating whether President Biden mishandled classified documents, dropped a 388-page report concluding that Biden did, but not enough to warrant prosecution. If this feels an awful lot like James Comey’s July 2016 statement about then-candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, that’s because it is.

Now, thanks to Hur and the credulous mainstream media, we’re living through a variation of “but her emails,” and it could have similarly disastrous consequences.

Hur’s report has given the media what they crave — a chance to engage in both-sidesism about Biden and Trump, allowing for breathless horse race political coverage rather than a solemn reckoning with the magnitude of the threat of another Trump presidency.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. called out media false equivalencies last month in the Washington Post: “It's time for everyone, the media especially, to face up to the actual choice: Between constitutional democracy and authoritarianism. Between a normal human being and a self-involved, spiteful madman https://www.publicnotice.co/p/hur-report-biden-classified-docs-comey-flashback