After the revelation that “Jackie” was a liar and the horrific tale of rape at a fraternity party at the University of Virginia published in Rolling Stone was false, a great many anti-rape advocates argued that it didn’t matter. Truth and fiction wasn’t relevant, as the issue mattered, and even a lie that promoted public awareness of the issue had value. Times have changed.

Two young men were arrested for the rape of a 14-year-old girl, and Tucker Carlson grabbed it and ran.

Tucker Carlson doesn’t run a courtroom. He runs an opinion program on Fox News, a place where the fundamentals of American justice sometimes fall prey to ideological froth. And he doesn’t appreciate getting asked about it.

“He did not seem to presume that my client was innocent,” said defense attorney David Moyse in an interview with the Erik Wemple Blog.

Not to be unduly picky, but Erik Wemple doesn’t run a courtroom either. Media reports and commentary are replete with writing that makes people stupider about law because it furthers an agenda or the writers just don’t have a clue what they’re writing about. Or both.

One might argue that it’s not entirely  their fault; after all, they’re not lawyers and therefore shouldn’t be held to the standard of accuracy one might expect of someone knowledgeable about law. On the other hand, if they purport to stand atop a soapbox and inform the groundlings of important things they should know, would it not behoove them to have a clue what they’re talking about first?

The defense attorney for the two young men raises a point, made regularly by defense lawyers. The accused are presumed innocent by law. That’s how our law works. But it’s a legal presumption; it doesn’t preclude others from deciding, despite the absence of proof or verdict, that someone did what they’re accused of doing.

It’s also routinely misunderstood. The body on the ground with a few bullets in the head isn’t allegedly dead. The person is definitely dead. Who killed the person may be at issue. Whether it was murder may be a question. But the body is totally, unquestionably dead.

Issue spotting is another legal thing that often flies over non-lawyers’ heads, but then, they have their own issues to spot. Tucker Carlson did. So too does Erik Wemple.

That client was one of two immigrant teens who’d been slapped with rape and sex-offense charges in March. However: Evidence against Henry Sanchez Milian, 18, and Jose Montano, 17, just didn’t support the allegations that they had raped a 14-year-old classmate in a bathroom stall at Rockville High School. “The original charges cannot be sustained and prosecution of those charges is untenable,” said Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy on Friday, according to an account in The Post.

There are a few things noteworthy in this paragraph. There is the accusation of rape. There are the ages of the alleged perps and victim. And there are the names of the accuseds. Carlson went for the latter.

Viewers of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” may well be shocked. They, after all, heard a different story. On March 21, Carlson welcomed Zeke Cohen, a Baltimore City Council member, to discuss immigration policy. Cohen had championed a resolution asking that federal authorities prioritize “all enforcement efforts on arresting criminals who are causing harm to our city (violence, property crimes etc),” as opposed to undocumented immigrants not involved in criminal activity. Carlson ripped away: “Why, given what just happened, is that a wise idea? If these guys had been picked up in suburban Washington, in Rockville, this never would have happened. So, why would you encourage that policy in your city?”

The problem, in this case, was that the two defendants were innocent of the alleged rape, sex in a bathroom stall in a high school with a 14-year-old girl having been consensual. Put aside questions of statutory rape or just the generalized impropriety of an 18-year-old having sex with a young girl in a bathroom stall in a high school.

The details are messy, but Carlson’s purpose was to use this scenario to demonstrate that undocumented immigrants were criminals and if they’re deported before they rape, then they can’t rape. One can’t argue with the syllogism, but then, that same theory justifies locking up everyone before they do anything worth locking them up for. It’s an appealing notion to people who don’t think very hard and it’s likely to work, but for the problem that everyone will be locked up.

Whether sloppy or purposeful, Carlson’s comments had the effect of incriminating the two immigrants far beyond what the record had indicated. Which is his job. Demagoguing a rape case involving immigrants: That act is why Tucker Carlson has gotten where he is; that act is what endears him to the Fox News brain trust, the disarrayed bunch that it is right now; that act is why, even as Fox News self-immolates in sexual-harassment and discrimination lawsuits of all kinds, people will watch.

Wemple is right about what Carlson did. What is surprising about it is that it was limited to Carlson. Not that other right-wing demagogues were better than that, but what of the anti-rape advocates who constantly do the same, “incriminate” the two accused rapists “far beyond what the record had indicated”? Where is the chorus of “believe the accuser”? Where are the cries of truth doesn’t matter because rape is a problem that must be addressed?

On his Friday night program, Carlson did address the dropped charges, acknowledging that he’d done “a number of shows on it.” In all, the exoneration of the accused immigrants secured about 100 words. As opposed to thousands upon thousands of words on the charges against them. “Let’s try to get our levels right,” importuned CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter in an essay on this matter. His appeal, however, presumes that people want to get it right — never a given with Carlson.

It’s never sufficient to say afterward that the certainty of the castigation of the accuseds turned out to be, well, completely false. As has been noted over and over, there is no way to get a reputation back after it’s been wrongfully destroyed. And for these two young men, whose names appear in Wemple’s post, it’s far to late to conceal their identities as the victims of a smear for a horrific crime they didn’t commit.

And yet, had these two young men not been “demagogued” by Tucker Carlson for their immigration status, but instead been “demagogued” by “rape survivor” advocates for the same allegations, would anyone other than criminal defense lawyers come to their defense?