333 Lanny Davis Files

Lanny Davis and the New York Times: Manufacturing a Scandal

To understand just how central the New York Times was to creating and amplifying the false narrative of Clinton’s “criminal investigation,” we turn to one of the earliest and sharpest critics of the paper’s conduct: Lanny Davis, a longtime Clinton defender and legal analyst. In his book The Unmaking of the President 2016, Davis offered a scathing indictment of the Times and its editors, especially Executive Editor Dean Baquet.

Baquet had reportedly insisted on using the phrase “criminal investigation” in the infamous July 24, 2015 headline about the Clinton emails—even after the reporters who wrote the story told him the term was inaccurate. The original story also wrongly claimed that Clinton herself was the target of the DOJ referral, which was quickly debunked. But the damage had already been done. The Times quietly issued corrections, but the sensational narrative had gone viral.

Davis doesn’t mince words:

“That single headline was the beginning of the end of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, even if the actual end didn’t come until November 8, 2016. It created a misleading and damaging perception that could not be undone.”

The irony, of course, is that Davis’s warning—that the press was building a scandal out of mistaken assumptions—was confirmed repeatedly over the next year. Yet the Times continued to lean into the narrative.

For Davis, the paper’s editorial choices were not just bad journalism—they were political malpractice. He argued that Baquet, under pressure to prove that the Times wasn’t biased in Clinton’s favor, overcorrected. And in doing so, handed a gift to her opponents:

“The Times’ editors seemed to go out of their way to avoid the appearance of favoritism—by embracing the exact opposite: a relentless and unjustified suspicion that would have made Fox News blush.”

Davis also highlighted how other media outlets, relying on the Times‘ framing, began repeating the same language, embedding it into the DNA of public discourse. A false frame had become a consensus narrative. And no amount of correction could fully undo it.

In this light, Comey’s decision to hold his infamous July 5 press conference—where he castigated Clinton while ultimately recommending no charges—was not an aberration but a symptom. The stage had already been set by a media environment primed to assume criminality, even in the absence of legal foundation. The New York Times wasn’t just reporting the story. It was writing the script.