Leaking Is More Science Than Art These Days

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Is the intelligence community going overboard with the leaks?

I don’t have a firm opinion about this yet, but I will say this: Whoever is leaking the dirt about Jared Kushner is doing a very considered job of it. Instead of just dropping a big bomb, they seem to be very carefully dropping one tiny new item every few days. First we hear that a person “close to Trump” is part of the FBI investigation. Then we hear it’s Kushner. Then we hear it’s about Russia. Then we hear it’s about setting up backchannel comms. This guarantees a steady drip of new headlines and keeps the story in the news for weeks and weeks. It’s the most damaging possible way of handling leaks like this.

I’ll cop to some partisan feelings about this. Is it wrong to deliberately string this stuff out in order to cause maximum damage? Sure, of course. But it’s also what Julian Assange did to Hillary Clinton. It’s what Judicial Watch did to Clinton. It’s what the FBI did to Clinton. It’s what Republican congressional committees did to Clinton. This is just the way the game is played these days, and there are no innocents on either side of the aisle.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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