pretext

The audit found that gang units citywide routinely flouted the department’s rules on pretext stops, including by often failing to obtain proper consent to search vehicles.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 1, 2026

The parties “worked in tandem and were never actually adverse,” she wrote, calling the lawsuit a pretext for a settlement “that had no viable basis in law or fact.”

From Slate ● Aug. 10, 2026

In February, when Russia opened a case against him, Durov described it as a pretext to restrict Russians’ privacy and free speech.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026

Eventually, they flew her to Ahmedabad under the pretext of visiting a sick relative.

From BBC ● Jun. 1, 2026

Ferula had turned down two suitors on the pretext of her mother’s illness.

From "The House of the Spirits: A Novel" by Isabel Allende

No surprise, the panel agreed with him and concocted pretexts to kill the treatment—for instance, the staff opined that maybe biopsies had zapped the tumors.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026

In his video statement Sunday, Powell dismissed the renovation and testimony as "pretexts".

From Barron's ● Jan. 13, 2026

Actions over the Fed building were "pretexts", he said.

From BBC ● Jan. 12, 2026

The pretexts are flimsy; due process is absent, and mistakes have already been made.

From Slate ● Apr. 3, 2025

He declined Pablo's persuasions to go shooting or walking, and the thousand pretexts made by his father-in-law and his friends, who came to see him at Tejada, to induce him to get out, proved fruitless.

From The Fourth Estate, vol. 2 by Armando Palacio Vald?s