I've detailed how WorldNetDaily has been the biggest media promoter of anti-Obama lawyer Orly Taitz, promoting every filing in every eligibility lawsuit she's filed, penning fawning profiles and -- most importantly -- studiously ignoring Taitz's growing record of shoddy lawyering.
So when Larry Sinclair -- whose claim that he did drugs and had sex with Barack Obama WND had previously treated as credible without bothering to investigate it -- claimed to have filed an affidavit claiming that Taitz told him to testify at a court hearing "that three (3) member (sic) of Obama's church were murder (sic)," adding that Taitz told him that "You testifying that three (3) members of Obama's church were murdered will help me establish that expedited delivery is necessary because people wind up dead over Obama," WND faced a dilemma.
An unbylined Sept. 17 WND article tackles the allegation -- but only in the most perfunctory way WND could apparently think of, and only after first allowing Taitz to claim without challenge that "doubters should be questioning Obama, not her" and dismissing all criticism of Taitz as merely "various accusations" and "vicious rumors" that "have been cluttering the blogosphere in recent weeks."
It's only in the 13th paragraph -- after the non-news of rehashing yet again Taitz's eligibility case against Obama -- that WND actually gets around to the actual news of detailing Sinclair's allegation. WND makes sure to note that Sinclair's "allegations that Obama shared cocaine with him were undermined by a reported failed lie detector test" -- a display of incredulousness WND largely failed to show in originally reporting Sinclair's claim. WND then quotes Taitz dismissing the claim because "a person cannot just come from the street and file a declaration or an affidavit. ... It has to be filed by a party to the action. Either I, as an attorney for the plaintiffs, or attorney for the defendants, assistant U.S. attorney, would file something." Apparently Taitz has never heard of amicus curiae.
At no point does WND quote Taitz denying the allegation itself.
Interestingly, WND also reports a similar claim "purportedly" from Lucas Smith, "the individual who has reported obtaining a Kenyan birth certificate for Obama," that Taitz asked him to "lie under oath about information that I had no knowledge of at the time I was in Africa." WND offers no direct refutation of that claim by Taitz, either.
WND touted Smith's repeated attempts to sell the so-called certificate on eBay, but was slow to report on Smith's "lengthy criminal record." WND declared Smith's document to be a forgery, but has been slowly shoving that down the memory hole ever since Taitz filed an affidavit by Smith -- "under threat of perjury," WND is quick to point out -- that the certificate is genuine.
WND then quotes Taitz saying, "There was a rumor that there was some complaint filed with the [California] bar and I was disbarred. None of it is true." While it may not be true that Taitz has been disbarred, it is indisputably true that a complaint against her has been filed in the California bar. WND has yet to report on that complaint, and fails to correct Taitz here (as we've detailed). A new complaint against Taitz has since been filed with the California bar.
The entire article reads like something WND was shamed into writing, built around a Taitz blog post and padded with standard WND anti-Obama boilerplace. As the uncritical repeating of Taitz's statement about bar complaints demonstrates, WND made no apparent attempt to verify Taitz's claims.
As much as WND editor Joseph Farah insists that he's "not afraid of the truth" and how "we consistently break stories they don't dare break," he and WND have shown themselves to be quite afraid of the truth about Taitz. Perhaps that's because WND has quite the little birther factory going -- from which it can be presumed WND is profiting handsomely -- and it doesn't dare report the inconvenient truth of Taitz's incompetence as a lawyer lest it interfere with lining Farah's pockets.
Previously: