Hoping against hope

The AP reports that a former Clinton aide has been acquitted of false statement charges. Paragraphs one through four constitute the lede, and are standard, good journalism:

The former national finance director for Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate campaign was acquitted Friday of lying to the government about a lavish 2000 Hollywood fundraising gala.
David Rosen was charged with two counts of making false statements to the Federal Election Commission about the cost of the star-studded gala, which attracted such celebrities as Cher, Melissa Etheridge, Toni Braxton, Diana Ross, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston.
The jury deliberated about six hours before reaching its verdict.
"It was hard for me to hold back tears. My whole family is crying, and my attorney is crying. It was the happiest moment, next to my marriage, in my life," Rosen said.

Here's paragraph five:

Clinton was not charged, but Republicans closely monitored the trial, hoping fallout from it might damage the New York Democrat's 2006 re-election bid and scuttle any hopes for a possible presidential campaign in 2008.

You know what? I know that's true. But there's no way on God's green earth I could report it to be so. "Republicans," eh? All of them? Drudge reports a big poll saying Hillary's got the White House wrapped up, so her appeal to conservatives must be bearing some fruit. Is there a quote anywhere to support this fifth paragraph? An attribution? Does this reporter or AP routinely insert paragraphs into stories about, say, Tom Delay, that state, "Democrats closely monitored the investigation hoping to bring down Delay, recapture the house of representatives and the White House in 2008"?

Maybe they could have gotten away with a quote from a Republican, saying the standard boilerplate: "We're disapppointed in the verdict but we feel the trial demonstrates the corruption of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party." That's state of the art political reporting, to just repeat whatever predictable garbage a political opponent puts out, but they didn't even go that far. It's just the omniscient voice of . . . of Paul Chavez.

The bottom line is, this is a story about a trial. We don't need Paul Chavez's brain to figure out the political ramifications for us. We'd be quite happy if Paul could just cover the trial, not leverage it into the New York Senate race, the White House race and Revenge of the Sith.

LaGuy adds: By the way, I have it on good authority that there was never any doubt about the actus reus. The acquittal was entirely based on mens rea.