I used to read The Hill everyday and for the most part I considered it a reliable source of news. I always detected a bit of a Republican lean to the paper, but it was barely perceptible and was actually useful for understanding the thinking of congressional leaders. I almost never go to their website anymore, partly because it is filled with pop-up ads and takes forever to load. But another reason is that they’ve lurched far to the right in the Trump Era. They continue to publish John Solomon’s misinformation about the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, which is basically criminal from a journalistic standpoint. Recently, they’ve added Alan Dershowitz, which I consider felonious.

In Dershowitz’s latest piece, he takes an astonishing approach to the voicemail Trump’s attorney John Dowd left for Michael Flynn’s lawyer Robert Kelner. Here’s a transcript of that voicemail:

“Hey, Rob, uhm, this is John again. Uh, maybe, I-I-I-’m-I’m sympathetic; I understand your situation, but let me see if I can’t … state it in … starker terms. If you have … and it wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve gone on to make a deal with, and, uh, work with the government, uh … I understand that you can’t join the joint defense; so that’s one thing. If, on the other hand, we have, there’s information that … implicates the president, then we’ve got a national security issue, or maybe a national security issue, I don’t know … some issue, we got to — we got to deal with, not only for the president, but for the country. So … uh … you know, then, then, you know, we need some kind of heads up. Um, just for the sake of … protecting all our interests, if we can, without you having to give up any … confidential information. So, uhm, and if it’s the former, then, you know, remember what we’ve always said about the President and his feelings toward Flynn and, that still remains, but — Well, in any event, uhm, let me know, and, uh, I appreciate your listening and taking the time. Thanks, pal.”

This is a straightforward message. The president’s lawyer suspects that Michael Flynn has decided to cooperate with the government which means that his lawyer can no longer be part of a joint defense agreement where he shares information with Trump’s legal team. Dowd wants to confirm this. He also wants to get information despite the fact that it would be unethical and illegal for Flynn’s lawyers to provide it. Specifically, he wants to know what kind of information Flynn is providing to the Special Counsel that might “implicate the president.” He wants to know this, supposedly, because it would create (maybe) a national security issue. The country could be endangered so the president needs a heads up if he’s going to have a legal problem.  And, as the cherry on top, there’s the veiled suggestion that the president can return the favor because he has positive feelings for Flynn. In other words, there’s a potential pardon in the mix.

The Mueller report provides excerpts to this conversation, but it excludes the part about Down being “sympathetic” to Kelner’s situation. It excludes the part about there being a national security reason for wanting the information. For Dershowitz, this distorts Dowd’s intent in a negative way and is unethical on the Special Counsel’s part.

Dowd, a highly respected veteran D.C. lawyer, is rightly upset. When read in full, the transcript shows that he is not trying to obstruct the probe. To the contrary, he is respectful of resigned national security adviser Flynn’s decision to withdraw from the joint defense agreement and does not expect Flynn’s attorney, Kelner, to disclose confidential information. Furthermore, he is not only worried about what Flynn’s cooperation means for his client, the president, but also for the country.

Dowd’s request was not only entirely proper for a president’s counsel to make but obligatory for any defense attorney properly seeking information necessary to his defense. By editing the transcript to fit its narrative, the Mueller team distorted the facts. If an ordinary lawyer or prosecutor were to provide a quotation in a court submission that omitted words that undercut his argument, he would be subject to discipline.

The problem is that the supposedly exculpatory information that was omitted is actually some of the most damning stuff in the voicemail. It shows that Dowd is fully cognizant that the request he’s making is wrong, and it amounts to a completely disingenuous effort to provide some pretense (national security) for going behind the Office of Special Counsel’s back and giving surreptitious leaks to the president. To the extent that there is anything exculpatory at all in the omitted text, it’s Dowd saying that he doesn’t expect “confidential information,” but there is no such thing as nonconfidential information in this context. He wants some kind of “heads up” that he is absolutely not entitled to have.

In Dershowitz’s ethical playbook, such a move is “entirely proper for a president’s counsel to make but obligatory for any defense attorney properly seeking information necessary to his defense.” I understand the desire to know what may be coming, but defense lawyers are not supposed to get secret notification of what the government has got on their client. They shouldn’t make requests of other defense attorneys that are unethical and, if fulfilled, would violate an agreement made with the government. Dowd understood that what he was asking put Kelner in a “situation.” He had sympathy for the fact that Kelner had ethical obligations to Michael Flynn and that he’d be putting his client in legal danger if he provided information about what Flynn was telling Mueller’s office. That’s why he didn’t just ask, but instead came up with the “national security” pretense. And if that were not enough, he sent a message that if Flynn had turned government message to remember that the president still had warm feelings for him. What could that possibly mean other than that the president hoped that he would not be too fulsome in his cooperation and that there would be a reward if he refrained from implicating the president?

Far from distorting Dowd’s actions in a negative way, the omissions in the report actually prevented us from seeing with complete clarity just how much consciousness of wrongdoing Dowd had while leaving that message.

For some reason, The Hill has decided to turn itself into WorldNetDaily or InfoWars. I don’t know why, but I suspect a careful examination of their funding would help explain it. This paper is delivered to every member of Congress on a daily basis, so its Breitbartization is actually more consequential that it would be for almost any other publication.