Fraud Is the Headline They Buried

Why I started writing during the Iraq War, and why legacy outlets like WSJ and Reuters still can’t be trusted to tell the truth.

It was during the Iraq War when I started writing, because I couldn’t stomach the gap between what legacy outlets were reporting and what was actually happening. The biggest fraud of that period, in my opinion, wasn’t just the cooked intelligence or the phantom WMDs, it was “embedded reporters.” Journalists weren’t reporting on the war, they were chaperoned through it, buckled into armored convoys, shown only what the Pentagon wanted them to see, and then filing stories as if they were eyewitness accounts of the whole conflict. It was war as stagecraft, broadcast straight into American living rooms under the guise of journalism.

The “shock and awe” campaign was sold as a quick liberation, not an invasion that would leave a trail of blood, lies, and broken trust. Mainstream anchors in polished studios repeated the talking points, while ordinary people, young soldiers and marines like my son, Iraqi civilians, and their families lived with the reality that never made it to the front page. That was my breaking point. If the press wouldn’t tell the truth, then it was up to those of us outside the Beltway echo chamber to fill the void.

And now, two decades later, here we are again. The same playbook, different warzone: not Baghdad, but Manhattan. The latest battle isn’t over WMDs, it’s over Trump’s half-billion-dollar fraud penalty. And once again, the so-called journalists are embedded, this time not with Humvees, but with Trump’s spin machine.

The case: Donald Trump’s civil fraud penalty. The headlines: “N.Y. Appeals Court Throws Out $500 Million Civil Fraud Penalty Against Trump” (Wall Street Journal) and “In Huge Win for Trump, Court Throws Out Half-Billion-Dollar Fraud Penalty” (Reuters). The spin is so thick you can practically see Eric Trump jumping up and down in the newsroom, dictating the copy himself.

The problem is that these headlines, and the triumphant framing beneath them, are not true. They’re not even a distorted shade of truth. They are carefully chosen narratives designed to flatter Trump and leave casual readers with the impression that the fraud case has collapsed. It hasn’t.

What really happened is far less triumphant than the headlines suggest. The appeals court itself was fractured, splitting into three separate opinions with no clear majority. Yet through the muddle, one thing was unmistakable: all but one justice agreed that Donald Trump had committed persistent fraud, and that finding still stands. The court also made clear that Attorney General Letitia James acted lawfully in bringing the case under New York’s civil fraud statute.

The injunctions against Trump’s business remain intact. His company is still under the watchful eye of a court-appointed monitor, and he and his sons remain restricted from running New York businesses. What changed was not the question of guilt, but the question of money. The half-billion-dollar disgorgement was set aside, not because the fraud vanished, but because the justices couldn’t agree on how to calculate the amount. Two concluded there should be no monetary claw-back at all, while two others said the penalty should be recalculated through a new trial. The lone dissenter argued the entire case should be tossed. With no consensus on the remedy, the matter now marches to New York’s highest court, where the real fight over Trump’s financial liability will continue.

And yet, if you only skimmed WSJ or Reuters, you’d think Trump walked away a conquering hero, champagne in hand, half a billion dollars erased with the stroke of a pen. Reuters even called it a “triumph.” A triumph? When the court explicitly described his “decade-long pattern of financial fraud and illegality”? That’s not triumph, that’s disgrace.

This is why people no longer trust legacy media. They bend the truth not to inform but to frame. They let Trump’s “TOTAL VICTORY” Truth Social post dictate the story instead of the court record. And in doing so, they launder his lies for him.

When I first picked up my pen during the Iraq War, I thought maybe the media had just stumbled. Maybe they’d been suckered by bad intelligence, caught flat-footed by a government determined to sell a war. But two decades later, the pattern is impossible to ignore. When the stakes are high and the truth is uncomfortable, too many mainstream outlets don’t just flatter power, they chase the headline that will draw the most clicks.

That’s the engine behind the spin. A story framed as “Trump branded a fraud again, faces years of appeals, restrictions, and financial uncertainty” doesn’t juice traffic the way “Trump Scores Huge Victory” does. Conflict sells, but so does triumphalism. It’s cheap dopamine for the news cycle, and if bending reality a little delivers more eyeballs, more ad revenue, and more subscriptions, then reality becomes negotiable. The casualty, once again, is trust.

So let’s set the record straight: Trump did not win, he did not escape fraud liability, he did not wriggle free of Letitia James. He got a temporary reprieve on the bill, nothing more. The fight continues, and the fraud stands.

As for the Wall Street Journal and Reuters? They should be ashamed. They’re not watchdogs. They’re lapdogs with press passes, wagging their tails for access and tossing scraps of spin to readers as if it were news. If they’ll frame this case so dishonestly, then every word they publish should come with a warning label: proceed with caution, reality may differ.

That’s why I keep writing. Because the truth matters. Because people deserve better than headlines that lie by omission. And because shame is sometimes the only tool left to wield against so-called journalists who’ve forgotten what their job really is.