March 5, 2018

Former Trump Aide: Mueller Can Just Put Me in Jail if He Wants To

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So: Sam Nunberg. Remember him? He was a young Trump aide for a while, but he got fired after someone wrote a bad magazine profile and Nunberg got the blame. He was quickly rehired, but shortly after Trump announced his presidential campaign Business Insider reported that Nunberg had a history of making racist social media attacks—like calling President Obama a “Socialist Marxist Islamo Fascist Nazi Appeaser.” So he was fired again.

Fast forward to the present, and special prosecutor Robert Mueller has subpoenaed Nunberg to (a) testify in the Trump-Russia probe and (b) turn over all documents related to a wide range of Trumpworld players. Today Nunberg went crazy, appearing on every TV show he could find to announce that he was going to ignore the subpoena and Mueller should just arrest him if he wanted to. This would be peculiar behavior for anyone, but it’s especially peculiar for Nunberg, since he’s a lawyer and knows perfectly well he has no legal leg to stand on. So what’s going on?

Presumably Nunberg doesn’t want to go to jail. Presumably he also knows that Mueller is a serious guy who will, in fact, throw him in jail for contempt if he has to. He must think that, somehow, this public display of defiance will turn out for the best. What could be going through his head?

  • This is a huge wet kiss of loyalty to Donald Trump. Maybe Nunberg thinks Trump will reward him with a pardon or something.
  • Maybe he thinks that if one person stands up to Mueller, it will start a revolt among all the other people Mueller is sending subpoenas to. After all, is Mueller going to throw them all in jail?
  • Maybe he thinks this will prompt Trump to fire Mueller.
  • Maybe he thinks Mueller is going nuts, demanding endless document production even from minor players. Nunberg may hope to spark a partisan discussion about prosecutorial overreach that will … do something. I’m not really clear on how he thinks this might end.
  • Or maybe Nunberg has just lost his marbles.

It’s all very strange. So far this a Twitter and cable news phenomenon, getting only modest coverage elsewhere. But what happens next?

UPDATE: Nunberg has suddenly changed his mind and says he’s probably “going to end up cooperating” with Mueller. The currently favored theory on Twitter is that Nunberg was drunk this morning and is only now sobering up.

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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.

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