WaPo Fails to Mention William Jefferson Is a Democrat

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William Jefferson, who was found with $90,000 of cash in his freezer, is now on trial for 16 counts including racketeering, obstruction of justice, and money laundering.

The Washington Post's Allison Klein did a story on his trial today, but for some reason Klein failed to mention Jefferson's party identification.

Could it be, perhaps, because Jefferson was a Democrat while he was in office, before being defeated in the previous election cycle?  (UPDATED AGAIN)

Klein reported:

Federal prosecutors laid out their bribery case against former U.S. representative William J. Jefferson this morning in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, explaining in an opening statement the intricacies of his alleged schemes and zeroing in on his mountains of debt.

She didn't mention his party identification anywhere in the rest of the article either.

The Post also failed to name Jefferson's party when he was originally indicted in 2007:

Louisiana congressman William Jefferson received more than $500,000 in bribes and sought millions more in nearly a dozen separate schemes to enrich himself by using his office to broker business deals in Africa, according to a federal indictment Monday.

Jefferson's party identification has been ignored in the past by MSNBC, the AP , CBS's Bob Schieffer, and NBC's Ann Curry.

However, when Alaska Republican Ted Stevens was indicted for making false statements, the Post named his party in the first sentence:

Alaska's Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, was indicted yesterday on seven charges of making false statements about more than $250,000 that corporate executives doled out to overhaul his Anchorage area house.

When Mark Foley was accused of sending inappropriate correspondence to Congressional pages, the Post often named his party:

Six-term Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigned yesterday amid reports that he had sent sexually explicit Internet messages to at least one underage male former page.

 

Two federal officials have told the Associated Press that no charges are expected against former congressman Mark Foley (R-Fla.) after a lengthy investigation into his lurid computer messages to underage pages.

In 1995, male House pages were warned to steer clear of a freshman Republican from Florida, who was already learning the names of the teenagers, dashing off notes, letters and e-mails to them, and asking them to join him for ice cream, according to a former page.

 

The Republican congressman who resigned Friday following the discovery of sexually explicit Internet messages he sent to teenage boys was a gregarious and charismatic lawmaker who built his political career in large measure on legislative proposals meant to halt the sexual predation of children and others.

UPDATE: In another story that has broken today, Republican Senator John Ensign admitted to having an extramarital affair. How has the media covered this?

The Post identified him as a rising Republican star:

Sources in Washington and Nevada say Republican Sen. John Ensign, a rising star in the Republican Party considering a 2012 presidential bid will hold a press conference later today in which he will acknowledge an extramarital affair.

The AP used "Republican" as the first word:

Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada admitted Tuesday he had an extramarital affair with a former member of his campaign staff. Ensign told The Associated Press in a statement, "I deeply regret and am very sorry for my actions."

UPDATE II:  The Post's Dana Milbank wrote an article on the trial today.

Here's what she had to say:

His client is William Jefferson, the then-congressman caught on film by the FBI picking up a briefcase full of $100,000 in bribe money in a Pentagon City parking lot. That's the same congressman who was caught days later with 90,000 of those marked dollars wrapped in foil and put in food boxes in the freezer of his home. 

Hmmm...  What party is his client?