December 8, 2019

Today It Was Ted Cruz’s Turn to Sling Crap at Ukraine

US intelligence has warned GOP senators they’re pushing Russia’s line—and they won’t stop.

Stefani Reynolds/CNP via Zuma

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Despite repeatedly being told otherwise, and being specifically told by Trump intelligence officials that the Russian government has worked to propagate the theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 elections, Republican officials continue to insist that Ukraine should be under scrutiny—not Russia. The latest example came Sunday when Sen. Ted Cruz, (R-Texas), told NBC’s Chuck Todd said that “the media” was trying to downplay Ukraine’s meddling by solely focusing on Russian meddling.

Todd asked Cruz whether he believed Ukraine meddled in 2016, and Cruz said, “I do, and I think there’s considerable evidence.” Cruz acknowledged that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election, but also insisted that “Ukraine blatantly interfered in our election.” As proof, Cruz cited an August 2016 op-ed written by Valeriy Chaly, then Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, which slammed then-Republican nominee Donald Trump after he said that people in Crimea, “from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were.”

In that op-ed, Chaly wrote that Trump’s comments had “raised serious concerns in Kyiv and beyond Ukraine,” and that Trump’s proposal represented an “appeasement of an aggressor and support the violation of a sovereign country’s territorial integrity and another’s breach of international law.”

Underlying the Republican insistence that we should all be looking at Ukraine rather than Russia, is an effort to defend the president’s animus toward Ukraine, which is rooted in the president’s baseless conspiracy theory that the country’s officials “tried to take [him] down” by manufacturing a hack of the Democratic National Committee and blaming it Russia. His disdain for Ukraine was also clear when he tried to extort the Ukrainian government to announce an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son in exchange for nearly $400 million in military aid, an episode at the heart of his looming impeachment.

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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.

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