Judicial Watch: Never Give Up, Never Surrender

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Look what popped up in my inbox this morning from Judicial Watch:

Rumors have been floating up from Little Rock for months now of a new investigation into the Clinton Foundation….

Do tell. Please go on:

John Solomon advanced the story recently….The Wall Street Journal is tracking the story….Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer¹ cryptically told SiriusXM radio that federal authorities should “convene a grand jury” in Little Rock.

….Smelling a rat in Arkansas when it comes to the Clintons of course is nothing new, and the former First Couple are masters of the gray areas around pay-to-play….The tenacious financial expert Charles Ortel, who has been digging deep into Clinton finances for years, told us back in 2015 that there are “epic problems” with the entire Clinton Foundation edifice, which traces its origins back to Arkansas….Law enforcement may be finally catching up with Ortel’s insights.

Has there ever been an outfit as bullheaded and longlasting as Judicial Watch? Last week it was Sid Blumenthal. The week before it was JW’s endless lawsuit to expose “draft indictments” of Hillary Clinton in the Whitewater case. This week it’s the Clinton Foundation. Arkansas politics is a sewer, and Judicial Watch has mucked around down there for decades, determined to dredge every bit of Little Rock tittle-tattle into the national limelight. The national press has followed them since the start, for reasons only Bob Somerby can fathom. And they’re still at it! Both Clintons are now out of politics. One was impeached and the other was defeated in the most humiliating way possible. But that’s not enough. Has any group ever been as fanatical in its hatred as Judicial Watch is of the Clintons?

¹Former YAF up-and-comer, Steve Bannon crony, Breitbart contributor, and, in case you’ve forgotten, author of Clinton Cash, which the New York Times credulously excerpted and followed up on during the 2016 campaign.

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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.

payment methods

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