Disassembling the Post’s Latest Hit Piece
Who leaked police-cam videos meant to embarrass Bert Ellis to The Washington Post? If we knew the answer to that, we could get a clearer view of the behind-the-scenes power play to shape the future of the University of Virginia.
Governor Glenn Youngkin has asked Ellis to resign from his position on the UVA Board of Visitors, and Ellis has so far resisted. The objection to Ellis cited in the Post — which is consistent with what I have heard — is that his outspoken manner conflicts with the gentlemanly demeanor that Youngkin would like to see on the UVA board. The two men are scheduled to hash out their issues in a meeting this afternoon.
But there is more going on than a difference of style. Ellis is a hate object for the left. Just read the comments on The Washington Post article that broke the news of the requested resignation, for a taste of the venom. Ellis was the victim of a character assassination campaign when Democrats almost blocked his nomination to the board in 2022, and his enemies could be dusting off the same playbook.
Sources are leaking. Their identities and motives remain obscure.
The Post cites at least “two people familiar with the matter” for its article this morning laying bare the controversy. The reporters, Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff and Laura Vozzella, do not identify their sources, but they provide clues. One is probably a senior Youngkin administration official. The identity of the second is uncertain, but some evidence points to someone senior in the UVA administration.
Whatever the identity of its sources, the Post reporters have made themselves willing tools of someone with an agenda. Their narrative doesn’t conform to any known standards of “news” reporting. It reads more like a recitation of Ellis enemy talking points.
I’ll start with the police-cam videos and then work through the rest of the WaPo article.
Let’s review the tape.
The Washington Post published the first of the two videos displayed below. (Three videos were released in all: two of the encounter shown here, and one of a civil exchange between Ellis and a University police officer about a traffic incident.)
The exchange took place around 11 PM, Saturday night, April 1, on the Corner, a strip of stores, restaurants and nightclubs across the street from the University Grounds. The video shows Ellis approaching an officer. He was irked by the lack of police presence on the Corner. Police were sitting in a car across the street, not patrolling the corner on foot. The officer was polite but dismissive in his response.
“You’re over there in your God-blessed cars,” the Post quoted a heated Ellis as saying. “That doesn’t do anybody any good. You’re invisible. If you want to keep this place safe, you guys got to be out here and make sure the bad guys see you and don’t come here…. I’m raising total hell with you.”
After a brief conversation, the officer broke away. “If you would be so kind as to let me leave your presence now, I’m going to go do my job,” the Post quotes him as saying.
Ellis later sent an email to UVA’s chief of police and other university leaders questioning the school’s safety measures, according to emails the Post also obtained through FOIA.
In an interview with the newspaper, Ellis defended his behavior. The Post quoted him in its closing paragraphs: “I stand by everything I said there. I was animated; yes, that’s me. There wasn’t a dirty word or personal affront or an expletive. The cops were doing nothing.”
The reporting was accurate. Yet deceptive.
Ellis is co-owner and manager of The White Spot restaurant on the Corner… which the Post neglected to mention. He was just one of many merchants and members of the Charlottesville/UVA community concerned with a spike in local crime. Only a few days earlier, 800 people had joined a virtual town hall to discuss a recent spate of shootings…. which the Post also neglected to mention.
Since the previous September, according to The Daily Progress, 14 people had been killed in Charlottesville — one of the murders had occurred on a side street of the Corner — and 22 had been injured in gun violence. “To put that into context for you,” said University police chief Tim Longo in the town hall, “in the almost 16 years I served as the chief of police in the city of Charlottesville – from 2001 to 2016 – I never had any more than that number in an entire year. There were some years I had none.”
…which the Post again neglected to mention.
Longo told town hall participants that he was expanding the perimeter of activity by UVA “security ambassadors” (police auxiliaries who keep an eye on things), among an array of measures to keep University students safe.
The police were on high alert. That, as the saying goes, is the rest of the story.
Who leaked the story?
Rosenzweig-Ziff filed the FOIA request for the videos. He covers higher education and youth culture. He has written about a half-dozen articles about UVA over the past half year. Unlike a beat reporter, he hasn’t had time to develop a deep knowledge or extensive contacts at UVA. Vozzella covers Virginia state politics for The Post. Other than this article, she has written almost nothing about UVA. Her sources are primarily in the state government and politics, mostly Richmond.
It is a safe bet that they knew nothing about Ellis’ harangue against two University Police Department officers two years ago — an incident that got zero publicity at the time, even in local media — until someone tipped them off. The tipster, whoever it was, knew exactly what they should ask for in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Here is the language of the request:
Any email or surveillance or body worn video of interactions between UVA campus police and Bert Ellis since July 1, 2022. Expense and reimbursement reports from Bert Ellis since July 1, 2022.
It is inconceivable that the information came from within the police department; any request for information would have been forwarded to the communications office. It is reasonable to conjecture that the tipster worked high enough in the UVA administration to feel comfortable leaking the information.
Unless Rosenzweig-Ziff has developed his own sources beyond the media-relations office — which I find doubtful, as his UVA reportage has been based almost exclusively upon public statements and documents — then it stands to reason he did not obtain the videos through deep reporting. Someone steered him to the files. Not only that, but the FOIA office did not block the release as exempt security footage.
Was someone inside the Ryan administration seeking to undermine Ellis? (Conceivably, a source from within the Governor’s Office fed the anecdote to the Post, but that scenario would raise another question: Where did that source get the info, if not from UVA, and why would UVA spread such a story?)
The videos were the only new material in the article. Rosenzweig-Ziff and Vozzella fleshed out their narrative with oldies-but-goodies from past coverage.
Student guides. Ellis objected to the way University student guides portrayed Jefferson as a slaveholder and rapist during historical tours and neglected any discussion of his historical accomplishments. Suddenly sensitive to the need for context, the Post reporters noted that Jefferson owned more than 600 people over his life and was believed to have fathered children with a slave, Sally Hemings. What they didn’t mention: even UVA officials have found the content of the student-run tours to be so problematic that the Admissions Office has hired its own guides for prospective students, and the University has temporarily shut down the historical tours.
The numnuts quote. Ellis “trashed” other members of the Board of Visitors and described students and other university leaders as “numnuts,” writes the Post. The authors neglected to mention that the remark was made in a private communication and disseminated only after an independent researcher obtained the quotes through the Freedom of Information Act and forwarded it to the Post, which proceeded to inject it into the public domain by publishing it.
F--- UVA sign. Objecting to the signage a student had posted on her Lawn door, Ellis was prepared to use a razor blade to remove it, but “was stopped by student ‘ambassadors,’ who threatened to restrain him,” the Post wrote, quoting Ellis’ own account of the infamous “F— UVA” incident published in Bacon’s Rebellion. Rosenzweig and Vozzella are reading more into the encounter than is supported by Ellis’ account. The ambassadors did indeed say that they were “prepared to restrain” Ellis from removing the sign, but the exchange was civil. “I politely debated this incredibly stupid position with them,” wrote Ellis. “[I] left without modifying the sign as I intended.”
Thankfully, the Post spared readers from a recitation of the accusations of racism and homophobia leveled at Ellis by The Cavalier Daily. Based on his involvement as a student leader in inviting or disinviting speakers to UVA in 1975, the student newspaper’s charges, also context-free, were recycled in 2023 by Democrats in the legislature seeking to block Ellis’ nomination to the Board of Visitors.
Who was the second source?
Here’s what the WaPo article says about its other source(s):
A senior Youngkin official suggested earlier this month that Ellis step down and publicly attribute the decision to his busy business career or health problems, according to one of the two people familiar with the matter. Ellis declined, saying that would amount to lying — an offense under the university’s honor code, that person said.
It is unclear from thePost’sphrasing if there were two sources in the Governor’s Office familiar with “the matter,” referring specifically to the suggestion that Ellis fabricate a reason for stepping down, or if the “matter” was referring to the broader issue of Ellis’ resignation. The latter interpretation would allow the possibility that thePosthad one source in the Governor’s Office and one inside the UVA administration.
Be that as it may, details of the discussions between Ellis and Youngkin and/or his senior advisers are a confidential personnel issue and potentially explosive politically. Deliberations would have been restricted to a narrow circle. If a “senior Youngkin official” suggested earlier this month that Ellis step down, the source could have been only another senior official, if not the unidentified senior official himself.
The Youngkin press office issued a weak denial. “The Governor’s office would never suggest to anyone, let alone an appointee, to lie,” Youngkin spokesman Rob Damschen told the Post in an email. Note Damschen’s use of the conditional tense — “would never suggest.” As director of communications, he would not be privy to the conversations between Ellis and Youngkin’s advisers. His comment is best interpreted as hopeful expression that “such a thing would never happen here.”
What the heck is going on?
Governor Youngkin has put himself on the record — on national television — as supporting the Board of Visitors’ vote to dismantle Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at UVA. “DEI is done,” he said. Such a vigorous endorsement of the board action puts him at odds with President Ryan, who has spent more than six years building the DEI bureaucratic apparatus at UVA and overseeing the application of social-justice principles throughout the University.
Given the conflicting agendas, why would the Governor’s Office and the Ryan administration both be working to cashier Ellis? Is it really a matter of Ellis’ personal style — a personality clash? Or is something bigger at stake?
My operating theory is that Ellis has become inconvenient to both parties. There is an emerging divide among Youngkin appointees between institutionalists seeking incremental change and insurgents who seek to reverse changes made by administrators with a far-left agenda. In this reconstruction of events, some among the institutionalists would like to see Ellis go because they see his fiery rhetoric as an obstacle to their incrementalist approach.
As I said, the story gets complicated. There’s more to come.
James A. Bacon is the founder of Bacon’s Rebellion and a contributing editor with The Jefferson Council.
