Mother Jones – July-August 2019

JULY / AUGUST 2019 | MOTHER JONES 15

University of Minnesota Press

Available at better bookstores or to order call 800-621-2736 • http://www.upress.umn.edu

Dispatches of radical political

enaement from people

takin a stand aainst the

Dakota Access Pipeline

A round-breakin study

of psychiatric violence in U.S.

prisons.
 —Lisa Guenther

author of Solitary Confinement

An exploration of the

shiftin meanin of

race and class in the

ae of Trump

A chillin account of what

is at stake for the further

mili tarization of data.


—Benjamin H. Bratton Univer-

sity of California San Dieo

AT

THEMARGINS

ing appeal, he touted his group’s filing of
a Freedom of Information Act request for
Trump’s correspondence with the irs—a
red herring, because personal irs cor-
respondence cannot be released under
foia. In 2017, Dworkin announced that
the Democratic Coalition had reported
then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to
the fbi for “obstructing the #TrumpRus-
sia investigations” and “fraud”—an empty
stunt since enabling Trump is not a crime.
(“I believe we should always create some
sort of paper trail regarding any corrupt
act,” Dworkin says.)
The report of the “Trump companies” in
Russia was characteristic of how Dworkin’s
organization gets ahead of its skis. It was
kind of true. You could replicate his work by
typing the Russian spelling of “Trump” into
a database. But Dworkin did not verify that
any of those companies belonged to Trump
before he hit publish. Dworkin told me that
writing “Breaking: 249 Trump companies
located IN Russia” was not meant to imply
any of them were affiliated with Trump.
But, he conceded, “I think I could have done

better on how I presented it, that’s for sure.”

The misleading tweets are still up,

though, and he continued to tout the figure

for months. After the election, the “exclu-

sive” was exhibit 1 in the 38-page “Dworkin

Report,” a compendium of his group’s re-

search. A HuffPost contributor’s blog shared

by Dworkin around that time boasted that

President Barack Obama and Vice President

Joe Biden were “reviewing” his sleuthing.

On closer inspection, the piece was writ-

ten by a Dworkin collaborator, and Dwor-

kin acknowledged to me that he couldn’t

be sure that anyone in the Obama White

House had ever read his report.

This kind of rigor wouldn’t pass muster

in a newsroom. But when you’re compet-

ing for the eyeballs and dollars of hard-

core resistance types, putting information

out before it’s fully vetted or indulging in

thread-length speculation is a good way

to get noticed. And Dworkin and his team

do find lots of legitimate tidbits. They have

scoured videos, social media profiles, and

other publicly available channels to churn

out iterative nuggets about Trump, some

of which do make their way into larger

stories at mainstream outlets. To his de-

fenders, that’s enough. “They’re right about

most things,” said Christine Pelosi, a Dem-

ocratic strategist (and daughter of the

House speaker) who credits the Coalition

for amplifying her unsuccessful efforts in

2016 to get the cia to brief members of the

Electoral College on Trump’s Russia ties. “I

don’t see that being a grift. I see that being

a relatively good batting average.”

Besides, Dworkin argued, “I’m not driv-

ing a Lamborghini.” He and his associates

are simply collecting what they’ve earned

for the work they’ve done. According to

his group’s Federal Election Commission

filings for 2017 and 2018, it spent a pit-

tance on a handful of billboards and

about $20,000 on digital ads on Facebook

and Google. As for the rest of the money:

$195,000 went to pay lawyers who helped

Dworkin and the Coalition settle a lawsuit

with a Trump donor they had accused of

being a “supporter [of] terrorist regimes.”

Another $400,000 was split among a half-

dozen people and firms. Dworkin said he