October 28, 2017

The White House Has Declared War on the FBI

Ron Sachs/CNP via ZUMA

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Special Counsel Robert Mueller has charged “at least one person” in connection with the Russia investigation, which is surprisingly quick work for a special counsel. So who is it? The speed of the action suggests to me either (a) it’s a fairly minor character or (b) it’s a major character whose actions were so obviously illegal that it didn’t take much time to build a case. The former would be folks like Carter Page. The latter would be folks like Paul Manafort or Michael Flynn.

At the moment, the only hint we have comes from the reaction of Team Trump. They must have had some inkling about what was coming, because for the past week they’ve gone nuclear. Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy are already mounting smokescreen investigations of Uranium One and the Steele dossier. The dossier investigation is an attempt to show that Democrats are the real Russia patsies, while the Uranium One investigation is part of an effort to discredit Mueller. Here’s White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on the dossier:

And here’s Fox News providing the conservative spin on Uranium One:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is facing a fresh round of calls from conservative critics for his resignation from the Russia collusion probe….[Congressional investigators] are looking into a Russian firm’s uranium deal that was approved by the Obama administration in 2010 despite reports that the FBI — then led by Mueller — had evidence of bribery involving a subsidiary of that firm.

….“The federal code could not be clearer — Mueller is compromised by his apparent conflict of interest in being close with James Comey,” Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., who first called for Mueller to step down over the summer, said in a statement to Fox News on Friday. “The appearance of a conflict is enough to put Mueller in violation of the code.…All of the revelations in recent weeks make the case stronger.”

Trump himself, of course, has been all over this:

Nancy LeTourneau has a roundup of the whole thing here if you have the stomach for more. But the bottom line is simple: The White House, congressional Republicans, and the right-wing media are basically all hands on deck right now. The panic is almost palpable. This suggests that Mueller may have charged someone like Flynn, who’s pretty closely connected with the Trump administration. That’s my wildass guess at the moment, anyway.

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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.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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