Earlier today, Rick Santorum appeared on Mark Davis' radio show on KSKY in Dallas, and expressed grave skepticism about the evidence detailed in Louis Freeh's investigation of Penn State officials' malfeasance in hiding Jerry Sandusky's abuse of children.
I actually read the Freeh Report. I don’t know if you did or not, but I did. And, my concern with the Freeh report, a lot of the conclusions in the Freeh report aren’t matched by the evidence that they presented and so I’ve been talking to a lot of folks at Penn State and they say, ‘you’re just gonna have to wait for the criminal trial of these two guys at Penn State.’ I think there is going to be a whole new line set on what really went on there. So I’m sort of sitting back and waiting for the facts to come out as opposed to at least I’m being told is a version of the facts. … Let’s get the truth. So I think we’re going to see some things come up a little different in the next six months. I just want to make sure we get it right.
Think Progress managed to snag a clip of Santorum speaking on this
here. You can also listen to the full segment
here.
Apparently, Santorum--a 1980 Penn State graduate--didn't read the same report everyone else has read. If he had, he'd have seen an appendix containing several pages of emails and documents showing that Joe Paterno, Graham Spanier, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz were indeed complicit in hiding Sandusky's 14-year (at least) rampage from the Penn State community and the general public. For those who missed it, an email exchange between Spanier, Curley and Schultz shows that neither they nor Paterno took any action to limit Sandusky's access to the football building after the 1998 shower incident. They also show that Paterno lied to the grand jury about his knowledge of it (he'd told the grand jury that the first he heard about any allegations of child abuse was 2001). He'd have also seen an email exchange from 2001 in which Curley mulled reporting another shower incident to police, but decided against it after consulting with Paterno.
I'd like to think that this is merely a case of Santorum being one of the few Penn Staters who hasn't taken off his blue-and-white blinders (most of the Penn Staters I've talked to are convinced that the Gang of Four are manifestly guilty). But it turns out that back in November, when it was clear Paterno hadn't gone to the police himself about the 2001 incident, Santorum said that he had "no idea what his (Paterno's) side of the story is."
I know you have the right to be wrong, Rick. But do you have to be wrong now?