The Patriot Post® · In Brief: Guilty Until Proven Innocent
The #MeToo movement had its upsides, holding men to account for sexually assaulting women. But it also had its downsides, including women ruining men’s lives for money or notoriety. The latter seems to have been the case with Trevor Bauer, as The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood recounts.
After having his name dragged through the mud by legacy media over frivolous sexual assault allegations for more than two years, former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer’s legal battle with his accuser has been settled, his legal representatives announced Monday. …
According to Fox News, the entire saga began in the spring of 2021 when a woman named Lindsey Hill accused Bauer of “assaulting her on two different occasions at his home in Pasadena, California, during what she said began as consensual sexual encounters.” Despite his denial of the allegations and assertion that the encounters were consensual, the MLB suspended Bauer for 324 games, which was eventually reduced to 194 in December 2022. The Dodgers — which recently honored an anti-Christian drag group at their summer “pride” game — dropped Bauer from their roster over the allegations in January.
In April 2022, Bauer sued Hill for defamation, and she countersued for “sexual battery” several months later. Hill’s request for a restraining order against Bauer was ultimately denied by a judge, with prosecutors also declining to charge Bauer for the alleged crimes.
While this week’s settlement was completed outside of court “with no money exchanged between the two parties,” Hill is set to receive $300,000 from her insurance company. This payment is “independent of her settlement with Bauer,” according to Fox.
In maintaining his innocence, Bauer on Monday released a series of text messages and video purportedly obtained in the discovery process that appear to exonerate him from wrongdoing. Documented in Bauer’s reaction video, the alleged text messages indicate Hill had planned to accuse Bauer of sexual misconduct prior to meeting him.
Fleetwood then posts a summary of texts of Hill telling a friend how she intended to essentially rob Bauer, as well as reporting on a video she took of the “morning after” clearly disproving her allegations. He then details “Legacy Media Misconduct” that is utterly appalling.
Equally egregious as Hill’s flimsy accusations is the willingness of America’s regime-approved press to immediately proclaim Bauer as guilty when the allegations dropped. Throughout the ordeal, outlets such as USA Today and Insider eagerly glommed onto Hill’s allegations, treating them as gospel and refusing to give Bauer’s denial of the accusations the same level of attention.
Meanwhile, The Athletic — an online sports outlet owned by The New York Times — took their propaganda-level coverage to the next level. While “citing medical records filed” by Hill, the website reported that “doctors had noted ‘signs of basilar skull fracture.’” According to The Los Angeles Times, the outlet “later clarified that [Hill] had been ‘initially diagnosed’ with a skull fracture, but that a fracture had been ruled out by a subsequent CT scan.”
As noted in a defamation suit Bauer filed against The Athletic, however, “There was no basis for that assertion because [Hill’s] own medical records — which The Athletic possessed — showed that she had no such fracture.”
Those outlets generally avoided exonerating evidence even in reporting the settlement. That’s not surprising given Fleetwood’s conclusion:
Since the rise of the #MeToo movement, corporate media propagandists have taken it upon themselves to become the ultimate arbiters of truth when it comes to allegations of sexual misconduct. No longer are the accused “innocent until proven guilty” or given their day in court. Instead, hack-tivist “journalists” decide whether someone deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Look no further than the confirmation of now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh. When faced with an onslaught of baseless allegations of sexual assault from more than 30 years ago, Kavanaugh was slandered and proclaimed guilty by legacy media before being able to defend himself and before the facts of each case were presented to the public.
It didn’t matter that his accusers’ allegations didn’t hold up under scrutiny. The media deemed him guilty, so what more was there left to say?