Where Are All the Fake Docs Coming From?!?

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Longtime creep Roger Stone has been occupying himself lately by tweeting golden oldies about the “Clinton Body Count” and how Hillary had Vince Foster killed because he knew too much. Charming as always. But a couple of weeks ago he was busy tweeting this:

OMG indeed. You will be unsurprised to learn that the document in question wasn’t real. Sadly, it contained a telltale clue common to autocrats around the world. Can you spot it?

In the same way that megalomaniacs love to claim that they won re-election with 99 percent of the votes, this fake poll claims that Trump leads Clinton 77-19 percent. The pranksters might have fooled a few people if they’d stuck to something a little less obvious, but I suppose 77 percent must have seemed pretty modest to them. Perhaps this gives a clue about where it came from? Here is Reuters:

The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are examining faked documents aimed at discrediting the Hillary Clinton campaign as part of a broader investigation into what U.S. officials believe has been an attempt by Russia to disrupt the presidential election, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Russian officials deny any such effort.

In addition to the Carper letter, the FBI has also reviewed a seven-page electronic document that carries the logos of Democratic pollster Joel Benenson’s firm….The document, identified as a fake by the Clinton campaign, claims poll ratings had plunged for Clinton and called for “severe strategy changes for November” that could include “staged civil unrest” and “radiological attack” with dirty bombs to disrupt the vote.

Nice try, Russia, but you really need to up your game.

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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