July 13, 2018

How to Betray Your Country in Ten Short Steps

Miami, Florida, July 27, 2016: "Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing."C-SPAN

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

A timeline of the entire Russia election hacking affair would be several yards long, so how about if we just do a short, focused one? Here you go:

  1. Summer 2014: The Dutch intelligence service, AIVD, breaks into the network of the Russian hacker group Cozy Bear. AIVD can see everything the Russians do.
  2. Summer 2015: AIVD watches as the Russians begin their efforts to hack into DNC servers and the email accounts of Democratic Party leaders.
  3. April 2016: Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Putin confidant and one of the most active Russian advocates for repealing sanctions imposed by the Magnitsky Act, meets with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R–Calif.) in Moscow. Veselnitskaya gives Rohrabacher a memo alleging that major Clinton campaign donors have evaded taxes on some of their Russian investments. Rep. French Hill (R–Arkansas) gets a copy of the same memo.
  4. June 3: Donald Trump Jr. receives an email from Rob Goldstone, a promoter who helped Donald Trump bring the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant to Moscow. Goldstone writes that a mutual friend has been given access to “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”
  5. 17 minutes later: Trump Jr. replies that “if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”
  6. June 9: Natalia Veselnitskaya meets at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and other members of the Trump team. Later they all tell various lies about what was discussed until evidence leaks that contradicts them.
  7. June 22: Wikileaks sends an email to the Russian hackers, who are publicly posing as Guccifer 2.0, asking them to “[s]end any new material [stolen from the DNC] here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing.” A few days later Wikileaks makes another request: “if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tvveo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after…we think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary . . . so conflict between bemie and hillary is interesting.” A month later, shortly before the Democratic convention starts, Wikileaks releases the Russian trove of DNC emails.
  8. July 27: While the Democratic convention is in progress, Donald Trump suggests he’s open to recognizing Russian control of Crimea and then says, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find” Hillary Clinton’s missing 30,000 emails.
  9. Later the same day: Russian hackers begin their first attempt to break into Clinton’s email server.
  10. October-November 2016: The Russians never find Clinton’s emails, but they do find John Podesta’s. These are turned over to Wikileaks, which releases them in 33 installments during the closing weeks of the campaign.

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

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

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