Tell the Media: Stop Covering Up JD Vance's Vulnerabilities

In 2016, hackers illegally accessed more than 150,000 emails and other sensitive files from the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The hackers, who were reportedly affiliated with the Russian military intelligence service, fed the documents to reporters at mainstream outlets like the New York Times and Politico, which dedicated extensive coverage to the contents of the leaked materials.

Fast forward eight years. On August 10, 2024, Politico published a story indicating that it had obtained thousands of Trump campaign emails and documents from an anonymous source. The documents reportedly include a 270 page dossier outlining the Trump's campaigns assessments of JD Vance's weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

But instead of breathlessly reporting on the substance of the Trump campaign documents, as they did when the tables were turned just eight years earlier, Politico and other outlets that later received the documents have so far only published brief descriptions of them.

As journalist Brian Beutler notes in his Off Message newsletter, "this stands in untenable contrast to the way these same outlets responded to the hacking-and-leaking of Democratic emails in 2016."

If Democrats' hacked materials were fair game for reporters and media outlets in 2016, Trump's hacked materials should be fair game for those very same reporters and media outlets in 2024.

Sign the petition urging the media to stop letting the Trump campaign off the hook and stop covering up JD Vance's vulnerabilities.