explain away

She has spent more than 30 years in child protection and adult safeguarding, and believes that people’s readiness to forgive or explain away what happened is one of the main reasons that abuse “gets swept under the carpet”.

Reflecting on McDonald's statement, she said: "What the party did yesterday was try to excuse and explain away its behaviour."

The lack of hard data after all these decades of extravagant claims about massive fraud points toward an inescapable conclusion: “Illegal” voting is not a real issue but rather an attempt by Republicans to explain away their losses and delegitimatize any Democratic victories, past or future.

Yet just seven games in, familiar noises are starting to come out of Old Trafford to explain away below-par results.

Attempting to explain away what had happened, Watson regaled the courtroom with "Leave It to Beaver"-style stories of his upbringing.