Because I know that Jim Treacher is a humorist, I thought that this early, one paragraph report of him being hit by a State Department vehicle might have been intended as some sort of satire. I'm sorry to see (via Glenn Reynolds' later link) that I was mistaken, and that this was actually a very serious accident, compounded by very scary behavior on the part of government officials:

The State Department has refused to answer basic questions about an accident that took place in Washington on Wednesday night, in which a U.S. Diplomatic Security Service vehicle struck Daily Caller employee Sean Medlock as he was crossing the street.

An agent in the vehicle, Mike McGuinn, did not identify himself to Medlock at the scene, or apologize for running him down. Indeed, Washington, D.C., police drove to a local emergency room to serve Medlock with a jaywalking citation as he lay prostrate in a hospital bed, while a man who identified himself as "special agent" stood by watching and taking notes.

Reached on his cell phone the following day by the Daily Caller, McGuinn refused to answer questions about the incident.

"I'm a federal agent and I'm not allowed to talk to the media," McGuinn said, citing "liability." McGuinn initially declined even to reveal which agency he works for. "You can refer to the [DC] police department report," he said before hanging up abruptly. (According the police department, no report will be publicly available for at least three days.)

According to Medlock, who writes under the name Jim Treacher, he was struck at about 7:15 p.m. on Wednesday, while crossing M Street in downtown Washington. Medlock says he was walking within the bounds of the crosswalk, toward a blinking white signal, when a government SUV suddenly turned left and plowed into him, knocking him to the ground.

Bystanders tended to Medlock, collected his crushed glasses and called an ambulance. McGuinn, meanwhile, called The Daily Caller's offices from the scene to tell Medlock's colleagues about the incident. But he did not identify himself to them or to Medlock.

Medlock was taken to Georgetown University Hospital with a broken left knee, lacerations and bruises. He will undergo surgery later this week.

At the hospital, DC police officer John Muniz arrived to issue Medlock a $20 jaywalking ticket. Medlock was lying sedated on a gurney, so Muniz delivered the ticket to a Daily Caller colleague, who was at the hospital with Medlock. He looked embarrassed as he did so. Behind him stood a man dressed in a dark suit who identified himself as a "special agent." He said nothing but wrote in a notebook.

First the cops tried to make it look as if Treacher was jaywalking. But then later, the guy in the SUV gave a different story:

Curiously, the ticket says that Medlock was struck at an intersection four blocks from where the accident actually took place. And it claims that Medlock was walking diagonally across the intersection at the time. In one of his strikingly short conversations with the Daily Caller, agent Mike McGuinn acknowledged that Medlock was not jaywalking at all, but walking "outside the crosswalk when the incident occurred."

The question is: Did the federal agent driving the SUV, faced with potential liabilities from the accident, encourage local police to issue some sort - any sort - of citation to Medlock, to establish his culpability?

If not, what exactly did happen? Calls to the State Department were met with evasion and indifference. Spokeswoman Grace Moe first asked a Daily Caller reporter where the publication's offices were located before taking a message.

A second DSS spokeswoman, Sarah Rosetti, requested that questions be submitted in writing. When she responded in an e-mail, Rosetti claimed that "a jogger collided with one of the U.S. Department of State, Diplomatic Security Service's official vehicles" - as if Medlock, who does not jog, had somehow attacked the SUV.

One of the things that has long galled me is the way wrongdoers will frequently refuse to acknowledge that they did wrong (and instead go on the offensive), when a simple apology at the right time would have sufficed. This can lead to protracted litigation; I remember a case I worked on in which a client's car (an older VW bug) had been broadsided by a driver who ran a red light. All he had wanted was a simple acknowledgment that the other driver was in the wrong, and he wanted to get his car fixed. But the insurance company wouldn't admit liability and refused to pay for the damages, maintaining that the car was basically worthless because of its age. So the guy was pissed, and went the full, all-out litigation route. He ended up getting $15,000 or something, and I'm sure the insurance company spent a lot more than that on their attorneys, expert witnesses. But that's nothing compared to some of the insurance bad faith cases I remember. (There was one in which millions of dollars in punitive damages were awarded because an insurance company tried to avoid paying out a modest settlement in a simple fender bender.)

Here it's the government, and not an insurance company, but I don't think the government should be allowed to behave in a manner that an insurance company would not be allowed to behave. (But so far, it appears that's just what the government is doing.)

For more, see Matt Welch's "How Does the D.C. Establishment Compensate You for Smashing Your Leg with a Diplomatic SUV? By Giving You a Jaywalking Ticket for a Faraway Intersection, Then Accusing You of "Jogging" Into the Vehicle." Asks Welch about the above report,

how many dumb government lies are packed into those six paragraphs?

All I know is that if a California insurance company acted this way, Jim Treacher could very well end up owning the company.

It's just too bad that Treacher can't end up owning the federal government.

(But then maybe I shouldn't wish such a fate on poor Treacher....)

MORE: Frank J. offers his analysis:

despite him crossing at the crosswalk while the light was telling him to cross, they gave him a ticket for jaywalking. So it's like, "Sorry we ran you over and broke your knee, but pay us this fine." Except without the "sorry" part.

Anyway, I hope Treacher gets better soon and then attacks more State Department SUVs.

MORE: It is being pointed out by commenters that this is a joke. If so, then I was right before I was wrong. But the ever-reliable Media Matters is taking this oh-so-seriously, and Eric Boehlert is fit to be tied. He claims initial reports of a hit-and-run were wrong, and demands retractions. So why isn't he saying the whole thing is a joke when he clearly has the opportunity?

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds links the most recent post from Jim Treacher, which ought to clear up any lingering questions about whether this was a joke.

It was not.

So now I'm in the hospital, and in a few hours they're going to try to fix my knee. It is my considered opinion that my knee never should have been damaged in the first place.

To recap: I was hit by an SUV while crossing a DC street legally, the driver who hit me is a federal agent who failed to identify himself in any way, I'm about to undergo reconstructive surgery to repair the knee injury he admits he caused, and somehow I was issued a jaywalking citation whose particulars in no way match what was seen by multiple eyewitnesses.

Wednesday night I just wanted to get a few things at CVS, watch Lost on Hulu, and go to bed after a long day of work. Now it's turned into a whole big thing.

Fine by me.

(And I hope he is able to sue for bad faith so he ends up owning the United States government!)