The Systemic Defamation of Erin Stewart (2), Republican Frontrunner

One would think that with the elimination of so many journalist positions that only the best and most professional practitioners would be left standing. I have a hard time believing that after reading the Hartford Courant's Edmund Mahony's "Top Story" in the Mother's Day edition of the news edition.

The Courant made a public records request exclusively targeting Erin Stewart's expense card with the city of New Britain presumably because of their new found concern over government spending in this blindingly BLUE State of Connecticut. Heaven forbid that an insanely popular and effective Republican mayor of one of CT's most iconic cities should have an accounting blemish with which to crucify her with on Mother's Day.

Well they got the information they requested and proceeded to confuse factual spending records with actual, pragmatic context for the purchases, why they might be delivered to her home, or any other details that might explain individual anomalies. Instead, Mahony's narrative of the Courant's editorial analysis not only assumed that Stewart was not only committing high crimes but advanced the entanglement of delusional accusations that preceded his own.

Before unpacking Mahony's garbage bag of journalistic dysfunction, let's establish a baseline of what is NOT mentioned as context in the article or in any of the rabid attempts at defamation circulating in newly created New Britain themed Facebook groups that censor any attempt to correct the record and reputation of Erin Stewart.

City P-Cards are issued to city employees for proper usage and are subject to audit by the City Finance Department. Apparently Stewart's were never audited nor were many, many others. There's nothing nefarious in this and it happens randomly all over the country. 

Had such an audit been conducted, mistakes could have been found, misunderstandings about eligible purchases clarified, and appropriate refunds made. Stewart is no longer in office and it sure seems like if any audit is required that the City Finance Department might do it.

The usual back auditing period of time for P-Cards is three years. If felonies are suspected, then five years or longer.

Given the wholesale absence of any regular audits that would have or could have precluded erroneous, inadvertent misuse of an expense card. there's a legitimate question of whether the solicitation of this material violates legal and ethical standards of inquiry. The Courant, without conclusive evidence of intentional wrong-doing is essentially engaging in interfering with political and legal due process for Erin Stewart and the City Finance Department to examine and reconcile discrepancies.

And nowhere in any of the mainstream media narratives is Stewart given the benefit of being presumed innocent until proven guilty of something. Labeling this thinly veiled defamation campaign as some kind of do-gooding posse only interested in Truth, Justice, and the American Way is a drug inspired fever dream.

Instead of a respectful internal audit, the current New Britain mayor, Sanchez, has personally co-opted due process and denied the presumption of innocence by ramrodding a State Police investigation that includes the hiring of a State Police crony legal firm to prosecute Stewart's administration. High minded Mahony steps into this pool of unholy shit without so much as an acknowledgement that *something about these accusations stink!*

The same tired social media techniques used to defame Trump and the new Republican majority are being applied to Stewart and the goal is to short circuit her political campaign which in itself a crime that the sharp-eyed Hartford Courant detectives can't seem to find time to investigate.

Every misdemeanor that can be pinned on Stewart's administration, every political blemish, and every imagined imperfection is magnified to be felonious conduct. She is not given an iota of credit for anything and if she defends herself it will be spun as proof of an otherwise unprovable guilt.

I mean you have to be a special kind of imbecile when the anti-Stewart narrative includes the [you can't make this up] accusation that "she used AI to answer interview questions!". During the course of an interview, a phone that had an active Alexa listening setting attempted to interject something based on something it mistook as a prompt. That's it. The result: what else could it be but cheating?

The only conclusion I can come to after watching these idiots slander and attempt to incriminate this woman is that she might be [shades of Oprah] THE ONE!