Countdown to Indictment

A MoJo Wire Timeline

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Well, we got what we wanted…sort of. Thanks in part to our Countdown to Indictment series, the House Ethics Committee has hired an outside counsel to investigate possible ethics violations by Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Throughout 1995, Mother Jones and the MoJo Wire worked in tandem to expose Newt’s questionable activities, wherever we might have found them: within his Political Action Committee, GOPAC; his televised college course, “Renewing American Civilization; his Progress & Freedom Foundation, and many other business dealings. When the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) was preparing to release thousands of GOPAC related-documents in December, the MoJo Wire was one of their research sources.

What we’ve done on this page is compile the articles and letters that were part of our Countdown to Indictment series. Some of the pages feature full-sized, scanned and readable correspondence between Gingrich and his cohorts, so you can make judgments for yourself. Oh, and just because we’re taking a moment to look back and reminisce on the past year, that doesn’t mean we’re resting on our laurels. In the future, we’ll be placing more documents online, including those submitted by the FEC.

As always, your comments are needed and appreciated. If you have something to say, please tell us.

  • Countdown to Indictment One
    In our May/June 1995 issue, editor-in-chief Jeffrey Klein exposed not only Gingrich’s questionable activities, but also a foot-dragging Democratic opposition research staff, a cabal of Republican lieutenants preparing for a Newt indictment, and Rush Limbaugh’s evasive, bullying maneuvering in the midst of ethical questions.

  • Countdown to Indictment Two: Will Newt Fall?
    By our July/August 1995 issue, we were able to state that Gingrich “has systematically built his empire through dubious transactions.” Glenn Simpson presented a detailed investigation of GOPAC, Gingrich’s college course at Kennesaw State College, his Progress & Freedom Foundation, as well as his haste in accomodating bills sponsored by Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.), who is also chairperson of the House Ethics Committee.

  • Coundown to Indictment Three: The Berman Letter
    $25,000 can go a long way, but can it help re-write policy? Glenn Simpson tracks down a letter and check sent to Gingrich by restaurant industry lobbyist Richard Berman, and discovers that soon after, Berman’s ideas were cropping up in Gingrich’s college course. You can see the full, scanned letter for yourself.

  • Countdown to Indictment Four: Newt Signs On
    Wherein Newt signs a copy of our magazine, and the press pleads ignorance of the whole GOPAC affair; take a peek at the number of GOPAC writeups in the press as they relate to the small-potatoes-in-comparison Whitewater affair.

  • Countdown to Indictment Five
    It’s the constant question in investigative journalism: who knew how much and when? In our November/December 1995 issue, we dug up correspondence between Gingrich, then-Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander and Alexander fundraiser Ted Welch. Gingrich brims with enthusiasm about GOPAC, but Alexander has a few reservations. The scanned documents included here tell the story.

  • Countdown to Indictment Six
    A MoJo Wire Exclusive: scanned copies of correspondence between Gingrich and Miller Nichols, a Kansas City-based real estate developer. Nichols gave GOPAC nearly $60,000 in funding; what did he want in return?

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate