October 31, 2016

Basically Everybody Thinks James Comey Has Fucked Up

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So how is America reacting to Comeygate? Let’s check in:

Comey has lost Joe Walsh? Walsh is a guy who says stuff like this: “Illegals surging across the border. Again. 2 weeks before Election Day. Paying attention America?” And this: “White House won’t say if Obama will leave the country if Trump wins. He’ll probably leave. He’ll go back home.” But even Joe Effin Walsh thinks Comey has crossed a line.

In the meantime, standup comic Harry Reid, who moonlights as Senate Minority Leader, wrote a letter to Comey:

In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.

By contrast, as soon as you came into possession of the slightest innuendo related to Secretary Clinton, you rushed to publicize it in the most negative light possible.

I wouldn’t count on any explosive news emerging about Trump’s bromance with Vladimir Putin, but this is A+ trolling from Reid. The only surprise is that Reid wrote a letter to Comey instead of a tweetstorm. But Reid is old school.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, it’s hard to find anyone, Democrat or Republican, who approves of how Comey has handled this situation. Inside the FBI itself, Devlin Barrett of the Wall Street Journal tells us that the Bureau is pretty much at war with itself. Long story short, there’s a whole swarm of agents in the field who are hellbent on digging up dirt on Hillary Clinton. Senior DOJ officials—civil servants, not political appointees—rolled their eyes when they got briefed on the state of their investigation, but the agents keep beavering away regardless, continually coming up empty. The Washington Post adds this nugget: “One person familiar with the matter said their presentation drew at least in part from media accounts over various foundation-related controversies.” Uh huh.

So either the field is full of rogue agents pursuing a vendetta against Hillary Clinton, or else the senior ranks of the Justice Department is full of political hacks who will stop at nothing to protect Hillary Clinton. Take your pick, I guess.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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