Hutzell: Who do you trust to find the truth about Wes Moore’s story?

Truth is a tough concept, especially for journalists who spend their lives looking for it.

Armstrong Williams, co-owner of The Baltimore Sun and a longtime conservative columnist, sees the truth as undeniable. Manifest, he said, from God.

“Truth has a biological advantage,” he said Monday. “It doesn’t need the artifice of man. You cannot hold it, you cannot control it. You can manipulate it, but eventually the truth reigns.”

As I compare his newspaper’s monthslong investigation of Gov. Wes Moore’s military record to that of my colleague Lee O. Sanderlin, which was published Thursday, I’d suggest the truth is more complicated.

Williams’ newspaper has been pursuing inconsistencies in what the governor has said and written about his military service. It’s a perfectly legit avenue for good journalism.

To Moore, though, The Sun’s results smell of mania, driven by something other than a pursuit of truth. He sees it as a disingenuous attempt to demean his service because he’s part of a national conversation about the future of the Democratic Party.

Moore and his wife, first lady Dawn Moore, released his service records and talked at length with Sanderlin about his tour in Afghanistan. His time in uniform is a key part of his identity — as a man, as governor of Maryland and as a possible presidential aspirant in 2028.

“It’s been my foundation,” Moore said. “It’s all I’ve ever prepared to do. In some way, shape or form, it’s the only thing that’s ever felt right to me.”

I didn’t know the details of the interviews Monday when I walked into StarTUp at the Armory. It’s a business incubator and event space run by Towson University.

I was invited to hear what Williams had to say about “Defending Truth in an Age of Misinformation.” Don Graham, former owner of The Washington Post, and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Amanda Bennett joined him for a panel discussion organized by former U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin’s new Center for Civic Engagement and Civil Discourse at the university.

Despite my hopes that the moderator, New York Times White House correspondent Erica Green, would press Williams on the relentless focus on Moore’s time in uniform, he didn’t address it directly.

He talked about buying the paper in 2024 with David Smith, who separately owns a network of television stations. His Baltimore station, Fox45, is collaborating on covering Moore.

Williams said his philosophy on truth is grounded in the Constitution and faith that it comes from God.

“I’m not into the left or the right,” Williams said. “We care about the facts and where the facts lead.”

The facts, despite his stated philosophy, have eluded The Sun.

The Moores counterattacked this spring with a preemptive defense. They followed that by sitting down with Sanderlin instead of The Sun for conversations about the governor’s service record and problems with the way he’s described it.

Moore volunteered to serve in a combat zone. He disrupted his life and put himself at risk. The enemy killed a friend, and Moore wondered if he was at fault.

He told his story in ways that don’t line up with Williams’ template of truth, a binary this-or-that understanding. It is Moore’s story to tell, even if the way he tells it isn’t satisfying for the rest of us.

Williams’ search for the truth about Moore has another name: swiftboating.

Headlines without substance below them recall the insinuations and half-truths made about Democrat John Kerry’s record as commander of a river patrol boat in Vietnam. They helped sink the Massachusetts senator’s presidential ambitions in 2004, and could do the same to Moore.

Moore sees that as Williams’ goal. Maybe it is. Williams, in a roundabout way, said it isn’t.

“You know a lie that you hear it, you know the truth when you hear it,” he said. “Our job is not to get it first, but to get it right. You investigate, you have humility, and then you also must have the courage to say, ‘I could be wrong.’”

I wonder, now that Moore has shared the details of his service, if Williams and The Sun can do that.

I wasn’t the only journalist in the room Monday. One asked a good question:

Does any of this matter to the public?

Maybe in 2022.

If journalists covering Moore’s first campaign for governor had rooted out the facts of his Bronze Star, we might be talking about the reelection of his primary opponent that year, Democrat Tom Perez.

Instead, two years later The New York Times unearthed the details of Moore’s decision to list the medal on his 2006 application for a White House Fellowship when he had only been nominated. It was belatedly awarded in 2024.

Today? I think not.

What matters today is how the governor can help Marylanders deal with rising costs. It matters how he can diversify an economy that is addicted to federal government jobs.

How well Moore is leading toward a future where clean electricity costs less is what matters today. How he funds schools that turn out better-educated kids matters. Rebuilding the Francis Scott Key Bridge matters. Making homes more affordable matters.

Last year, I gave Moore’s first term a B, maybe with a plus, for his inspiring leadership in the days after the collapse of the Key Bridge. He, at times, struggles with the nuance of making state government work and focusing on where it must do better.

Moore is a sounder governor today than he was when he started four years ago, and can do better after he cruises to easy reelection in the fall.

What happens in 2028 is anyone’s guess.

I wish the governor were less focused on that national conversation and more on Maryland. But the two are not exclusive, and the benefits from the first can help him achieve the goals of the second.

I don’t think anyone who votes in 2026 really gives a damn about whether Moore’s books or TV appearances accurately reflect every detail of what happened 20 years ago in Afghanistan.

Moore served. Honorably. That is what matters.

The rest is politics, not truth.