Deflecting a charge by alleging the accuser is guilty of the same thing.
The deflection is usually true and always irrelevant. Its legitimate use is narrow: it bears on the accuser's credibility as a witness, never on whether the charge is accurate.
In practice
- A minister challenged on missed targets replies that the previous government missed its own, and the targets are still missed.
- A witness whose own expenses were irregular is cross-examined on that record, which bears on whether to believe him and not on whether the defendant claimed.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- The catalogue of predictable errors