The individual, who identified themself only as “Robert,” sent a trove of private documents from inside Donald Trump’s campaign operation to journalists at Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Beginning on July 22, Politico reported, it began receiving emails from an AOL email address that contained internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official and a research dossier the campaign had put together on Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The dossier included what the Trump campaign identified as Vance’s potential vulnerabilities. Politico was also sent portions of a research document about Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who had been among the contenders to join Trump on the GOP ticket.
The Times and The Post later reported that they, too, had
been sent a similar cache, including a 271-page document on Vance dated Feb. 23
and labeled “privileged & confidential,” that the outlets said was based on
publicly available information.
But despite receiving the sensitive campaign files, the three outlets opted to not publish reporting on the trove they’d been handed, even as the the person suggested they still had a variety of additional documents “from [Trump’s] legal and court documents to internal campaign discussions.”
"Themself?" Anyway, on Saturday, the Trump campaign implied that Iran was
responsible for the hack and
On Monday, CNN reported that the FBI and other investigators were probing the apparent security breach, which sources said involved compromising the personal email account of longtime Republican and Trump operative Roger Stone.
Iran has denied the allegations, and the US government has declined to officially blame Tehran for the hack, a source told CNN, adding that the hackers’ techniques closely resembled those used by Iranian operatives.
But while the hacking incident, which occurred in June, set off a scramble in the Trump campaign, the FBI and Microsoft, the three news organizations that had received the files held off on publishing information from the trove. The decision marked a reversal from the 2016 election, when news outlets breathlessly reported embarrassing and damaging stories about Hillary Clinton’s campaign after Russian hackers stole a cache of emails from the Democratic National Committee, publishing them on the website Wikileaks.
The decision underscored the challenge news organizations face when presented with information potentially obtained by nefarious means and the shifting publishing standards of newsrooms in the wake of the 2016 election, during which Russian disinformation efforts we seen as playing a key role in Trump’s victory.
The justice correspondent for The Nation sees it differently:
WHY THE FUCK would Harris give an interview with any of these publications that are so clearly running a protection game for her opponent? Nah. Harris should give an interview to @theGrio and no one the fuck else, until @nytimes @washingtonpost and @politico PUBLISH HIS EMAILS.
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) August 14, 2024
"News outlets," CNN observes, "breathlessly reported embarrassing and damaging stories about Hillary Clinton's campaign after Russian hackers stole a cache of emails from the Democratic National Committee." Choosing not to do so now may be inconsistent, and the decision in both cases accrued to the benefit of Donald J. Trump.
But that is certainly not the reason for the reticence now. In 2016, news organizations figured Hillary Clinton would win the presidential race anyway and did not want to be accused after the election of running interference for her. (And they generally disliked her.) Now, a victory for the Democratic candidate in what currently appears to be a tossup is less certain than it was in 2016. News outlets do not want to be accused of putting their thumb on the scale again, as they did for Mr. Trump in 2016.
Moreover, unless one is a Harris campaign operative, it should be clear that the vice-president should be doing interviews. The news media is a conduit to the final destination, the American public, of information gleaned from an interview of a candidate for public office. Information is good. Transparency is good. Even a clash of ideas is good.
One would assume that Elie Mystal would understand that, even though as an employee of The Nation with ideological preferences befitting that role, he's not expected to be objective. Moreover,, as a graduate of Harvard Law School, he need not assume the responsibility of a journalist. He presumably could fall back on his training as a lawyer and perhaps be of some use in that profession.
Nonetheless, if Mystal wants to see how a real journalist approaches a subject, he should view the following excerpt of an interview conducted by Bob Acosta.
You know things are bad when CNN and Jim Acosta are calling out Kamala. pic.twitter.com/Lw9KaUogtr
— ForAmerica (@ForAmerica) August 14, 2024
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