In a rare public statement, the late Benedict Arnold said that he would never have been remembered as the worst traitor in American history if he had had the benefit of a special master.
The disgraced military officer called his switching sides in the Revolutionary War “the kind of evidence that any special master worth his salt would have ruled out.”
“I think a special master would have taken a look at that and said, ‘Hold on, here—switching sides is a personal decision, so that’s privileged,’ ” he said. “That would have been a game changer for me.”
“I would have gone from ‘Benedict Arnold, notorious traitor,’ to ‘Benedict Arnold, victim of government witch hunt,’ ” he said.
Arnold added that, over the past few centuries in Hell, he has had ample time to ruminate about another event that occurred before he switched sides: his 1779 court-martial. “That would have played out differently if I had gotten to appoint the judge,” he said.
