Paul Pelosi, husband of outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was indeed seen peacefully opening the door to his home for police on the night he was severely beaten by an intruder last month.
The Biden Department of Justice denied early reports that Pelosi didn’t “declare an emergency” to police, and NBC reporter Miguel Almaguer was suspended on Tuesday for including that detail in his original report, since retracted.
And yet NBC Bay Area reporter Bigad Shaban claimed Wednesday that police body cam footage supports Almaguer’s initial story, “according to a source familiar with the Pelosi investigation who personally viewed the body camera footage.”
If true, Pelosi at least appeared to be in no imminent danger when police arrived, and national NBC News may have had no reason to scrub Almaguer’s story.
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To its credit, local affiliate NBC Bay Area stood by Bigad Shaban’s report, according to Fox News:
NBC News national correspondent Miguel Almaguer reported on Nov. 4 for “Today” that police didn’t know they were responding to the Pelosi residence, Pelosi opened the door for police but didn’t attempt to escape or declare an emergency, and even walked away from law enforcement and toward his eventual attacker.
Almaguer’s report was erased from all NBC News platforms later in the day. It was scrubbed from social media, and NBC News issued an editor’s note on its website, reading, “This piece has been removed from publication because it did not meet NBC News reporting standards.”
However, a local NBC reporter’s similar story was not retracted and remained online as of Wednesday morning.
The story is still up (link above) as filed last week and updated with the body cam angle on Wednesday.
So why would NBC News scrub an awkward story about the husband of a House Speaker representing an embattled majority in the weeks before a midterm election to determine control of the House?
To ask the question is to answer it.
There are two more questions, however.
The first is whether NBC News will rescind and apologize for Almaguer’s unjustified suspension. The second is whether NBC News will un-scrub Almaguer’s original report, which now seems to have been factually correct — if politically inconvenient.
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