ATLANTA – This much is true: On July 31, 2002, police officers arrested the Rev. Raphael Warnock as they investigated a child-abuse case at a church camp.
This is also true: Prosecutors quickly dropped obstruction charges against Warnock. They called the arrest a misunderstanding; Warnock, they said, was never suspected of abusing a child and actually had proved helpful to the officers. With that, the episode became a minor biographical detail for the man who would later occupy one of the most exalted pulpits in America: Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Now, though, as Warnock seeks a U.S. Senate seat from Georgia, his long-ago arrest has become fodder for his political adversaries – and a prime example of the misleading tactics being deployed to sway voters in the state’s Jan. 5 runoff elections. Through highly selective use of facts, amplified and often distorted by partisan media networks, campaigns in Georgia and across the nation are increasingly crossing the line that separates rhetoric from misinformation.
Conservative media outlets, Republican elected officials, GOP donors, at least one of Warnock’s former Democratic rivals and incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler all have raised questions about the pastor’s arrest, implicitly suggesting a darker scenario than what really happened – a form of guilt by insinuation that can leave voters unsure what to believe.
“Raphael Warnock’s Checkered Past Under Scrutiny,” one headline read. “Raphael Warnock Refuses to Answer Questions About Child Abuse Investigation,” Loeffler’s campaign announced in a press release. The statement’s page title on Loeffler’s website: “Warnock-child-abuse-arrest.”