Attributing blame to a scrutinizer’s motives displaces responsibility for misconduct.

Evidence

Cranston claimed that the chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, whom he called a “political hack,” targeted him because the mortgage crisis happened on the chairman’s watch. This construal made the chairman’s self-protectiveness rather than Cranston’s self-interest the problem. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1417

Categorization

• XREF: Shows displacement/diffusion via recasting the accuser as the real wrongdoer - relevant to vault argument about how authority figures rationalize supporting harmful policy by attacking critics.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1417