November 2, 2017

A Little Bit of Pushback on the Jeff Sessions Story

Cheriss May/NurPhoto via ZUMA

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Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have both said they were unaware of any connections between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. However, the New York Times is running with a story today saying that recently unsealed court documents “cast doubt” on this. They’re talking about the charging document against George Papadopoulos, and this is the relevant paragraph:

I considered writing about this yesterday, but backed off. Both Trump and Sessions were at this “national security meeting,” but all this document says is that Papadopoulos claimed he had contacts in Russia and could set up a meeting. Other sources say that Trump asked a few questions and Sessions urgently advised against any talks with Russians. Given this, I figured that both men could truthfully say they were unaware of any contacts. They were aware that a staffer said he knew people and could set something up, but he was shut down and nothing ever happened.

At least, that’s all we know based on this document—though it’s certainly possible that something more happened later on. This is obviously something that’s worth following up, but for now it should be treated with a bit of caution.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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