February 15, 2017

Trump Blasts Report of “Repeated” Campaign Contact with Russia

The president has an especially bad Twitter meltdown.

Olivier Douliery/DPA/ZUMA

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Update, 2/15/17, 12:25 p.m.: President Trump continued to defend Flynn during Wednesday’s joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying Flynn is a “wonderful man” who has “been treated very, very unfairly by the media, as I call it, the ‘fake media’ in many cases.”

Trump also blasted the leaks from the US intelligence community that forced Flynn’s ouster as National Security Adviser: “From intelligence, papers are being leaked, things are being leaked. It’s criminal action, criminal act, and it’s been going on for a long time, before me, but now it’s really going on. People are trying to cover up for a terrible loss that the Democrats had under Hillary Clinton.”

President Donald Trump angrily repudiated a New York Times report that alleged his aides engaged in “repeated” contact with Russian officials throughout the campaign, taking to his Twitter account on Wednesday to blast the intelligence community for continuing to leak information to the media.

Trump’s denial comes amid the fallout from former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s abrupt resignation on Monday, after it was revealed he misled the administration about his communications to the Russian ambassador. The Washington Post reported last week Flynn discussed easing American sanctions against Russia, contradicting the administration’s previous characterization of the calls as innocent.

In typical Trump fashion, the president on Wednesday thanked Bloomberg View columnist Eli Lake and Fox News for siding with his position on the ongoing leaks.

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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.

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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.

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