Wes Moore, Governor of Maryland, is one of the Democrats’ big, rising stars. And yesterday the Times delivered an ominous headline about a Bronze Star “he claimed but never received.” The subhed of the article reads: “For years, the Maryland governor has faced questions about whether he had wrongfully said he had a Bronze Star. He insisted no. But an old document proves otherwise.”

Sounds bad, as they say. The feature photo shows Moore looking toward the sky with a mix of contrition and shame. So the article tells us that Moore has long “faced questions” and now the Times has finally found the document that proves Moore’s wrongdoing. That document turns out to be his application for a White House fellowship in 2006 where he said he had received the Bronze Star and combat action badge. But there’s no record of him ever receiving the Bronze Star. Moore spoke to the Times and said it was an honest mistake which he regretted. According to Moore his superior officer told him to include it because he was already submitting the paperwork for the award. “He thought that I earned it and he was already going through the paperwork to process it.”

You have to get all the way down to paragraph fourteen, as TPM reader AG helpfully pointed out to me, until you get this.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh talk about North Carolina’s rating change, Trump’s campaign brawling with an Arlington Cemetery employee and the upcoming Harris-Walz interview.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

Very good points from TPM Reader RS …

I respect the cemetery employee’s unfortunately-at-this-point-entirely-reasonable decision not to “press charges” in light of the potential for retaliation.  But let’s not sugarcoat it: assaulting a federal employee in the performance of her duties is a felony (18 USC 111), full stop.  

This story of the “incident” at Arlington National Cemetery has blown up pretty dramatically. In case you haven’t heard about it yet or aren’t up to date on the details, let me try to explain what we know.

Three days ago, the Trump campaign held a campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery. The idea was to lay a wreath honoring the 13 members of the U.S. military who were killed during the evacuation of Kabul in 2021 and film a political ad. They would distribute the video and attack Vice President Harris and President Biden for not “showing up” for their campaign event, which they sought to portray was an established memorial. As soon as the video circulated, military policy experts I know said right off the bat they were shocked that the campaign had been allowed to hold a campaign event on the grounds of the cemetery and circulate video of it. It isn’t just unseemly. It’s against the law. How were they allowed to do that?

That turned out to be a good and prescient question.