politicnewsbusterinsiderpostreview: Did you see this from David Corn?

Friday, 9 July 2021

Did you see this from David Corn?

MoJo Reader,

You can always count on David Corn to tell it like it is, so I wanted to make sure you saw his email from Wednesday, below, because it hits on some important points that I didn't necessarily think we'd be talking about right now.

And because it resonated: We saw a nice uptick in donations, but with just eight days left in our fundraising drive, we still have a fairly intimidating $143,000 left to hit our target. It's going to come down to the wire, and I hope you'll consider supporting our journalism during this critical final stretch if you can right now.

In writing about how documents he obtained show Ivanka Trump "did not testify accurately" in a recent deposition, David unpacks why we can't call revelations like he uncovered lies, and how the crime of perjury is so hard to prove in court: "Their defense of not being truthful doesn't have to be...truthful."

A lot of readers on social media wondered why he couldn't call her "apparently false testimony" a flat-out lie, and I really appreciate how he explains it—and how even if bringing damning revelations to light doesn't always lead to swift accountability in the courts, it must be done.

That's important to understand right now, because reporting that has an impact is what fuels Mother Jones and our readers, and I hope you'll read more of the backstory from David below. And if you can, that you'll help us close that big $143,000 gap we need by next Saturday with a donation today.

–Monika

MoJo Reader,

Last week, I published what turned out to be an explosive story.

I had obtained documents showing Ivanka Trump did not testify accurately during a deposition last December in a lawsuit that alleges the Trump inauguration committee had misused charitable funds—you guessed it—to enrich the Trump family.

Mother Jones has some charitable funds to raise ourselves right now, and requesting contributions doesn't come naturally to me, but talking about journalism does. So now that it's my turn to ask you to send us a few of your hard-earned bucks to support our team's reporting, let me tell you about this scoop and what a story like this one means.

I hope I can make a compelling case. With a week and a half left in our fundraising drive, we still have a considerable $175,000 left to reach our goal. A gift of any amount matters a great deal right now, and you have my promise that it will be used to finance the kind of kick-ass, independent reporting our country desperately needs at this time.

Let's start with my big story from last week itself. The lawsuit at hand (there are several) was brought by Washington, DC, Attorney General Karl Racine, who maintains that Trump's inauguration committee, a nonprofit financed by tax-deductible contributions, grossly overpaid for event space at the—you guessed it again—Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, and also spent several hundred thousand dollars to throw a private party there for the Trump family. (Nonprofits cannot funnel funds to friends and cronies in sweetheart deals or use them for private purposes.) The attorney general accused the Trump gang of major grifting, and he is seeking to recover the money paid to the Trump Hotel so those funds can be redirected to real charitable activities.

In her deposition—in which she swore to tell the truth—Ivanka was asked if she had any "involvement in the process of planning the inauguration." She replied, "I really didn't have an involvement." But this wasn't accurate, according to the documents I obtained, which indicate she was part of the decision-making for various aspects of the inauguration celebration, down to menus for the events. One email chain shows that she was directly involved in the planning of at least one proposed event. And as I've reported, Don Jr., like his sister, also gave apparently false testimony while under oath in this case.

The story went viral: My initial tweet got over 4.5 million impressions. "Ivanka Trump" and "she LIED" trended on Twitter.

Which brings me to part of the story behind the story. If you know me, you know I'm not one to pussyfoot around. When I see bulls*t, I call bullsh*t in no uncertain terms (I'm only writing BS that way because this email could be flagged as junk if I don't). I also firmly believe the Trump saga—the rise of authoritarianism, the war on reality, the shattering of so many norms—shows how urgent it is for journalists to speak more forcefully than many reporters are used to. For instance, it's crucial at this point, when Republicans and others are using various means to rig the political system in their favor, to call their endeavor what it is: an attempt to implement political apartheid.

A lot of times when I ask you and your fellow Mother Jones readers to support our fearless reporting, I talk about how answering to readers instead of a corporate owner gives us the independence to call a lie a lie and break controversial stories before anyone else—like when I first revealed (during the 2016 election) that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. (And, yes, this was no hoax).

But regarding my Ivanka and Trump Jr. scoops—in which I reported they had testified "inaccurately" or "apparently falsely"—a number of people on social media wondered why I didn't say she had lied and committed perjury. So I thought it was worth unpacking that for you, too.

Were the Trump siblings lying? That seems a good bet. But can we know what they were thinking at the time they spoke those words? More important, was it perjury? That crime is notoriously hard to prove in court. You can get things wrong, slip up, fail to remember or misremember when under oath. A unanimous Supreme Court decision in 1973 overturned a perjury conviction, ruling that even an intentionally misleading statement was not necessarily grounds for conviction.

I'm not going to play defense counsel for the Trumps, but it's not tough to imagine that if either Ivanka or Don Jr. faced a perjury charge from their apparently false testimony, they would plead a memory lapse or argue that their statements were not exactly a lie. Remember, their defense of not being truthful doesn't have to be... truthful. It's even less hard to imagine Trump's defenders—lawmakers, pundits, Fox News, social media bots, and his base of supporters—springing into action to distort and deflect. We've seen that circus before.

This is what we're up against when we publish our accurate and hard-hitting journalism.

The whole premise underlying Mother Jones—and why I chose to work here—is that our reporting exists to make a difference. We are not afraid to take the sides of democracy and justice when they are under assault. I can't tell you whether the evidence I unsurfaced about Ivanka's inaccurate testimony will lead to real accountability, but this much is clear: Ivanka and Jr. each swore an oath to tell the truth and then made statements that were untrue. And whatever they try next—both have hinted they might run for public office—now the public knows this about them.

I am so grateful that for 45 years readers have seen the value of our mission-driven reporting and that enough of you have pitched in to make it all possible.

That's what our team here is all about: uncovering wrongdoing, corruption, injustice, creeping authoritarianism and the like—which is often missed or downplayed by much of the media—so that the public and its representatives at all levels of government know the full score and can take the necessary action. Mother Jones exists not only to bring new facts and evidence to light, but to shine a light on the big-picture systemic challenges we face.

I need to wrap this up, but my colleague Monika Bauerlein writes more about how we at Mother Jones see our mission after (but also not after) the chaos of the Trump years. I hope you'll give it a read if you're on the fence about supporting our nonprofit journalism during our fundraising drive. And this is no lie: Raising the $175,000 we need in the next week and a half is a tall order. If you can join our team, pitch in, and help us start closing that gap today, I'd be grateful.

Thanks for considering my request. And if you can't contribute, I'm glad you find our work valuable enough to be reading my email.

David Corn

Washington, DC Bureau Chief

Mother Jones

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