The Doppelgänger Dossier
A description of the Russian propaganda plans, largely designed to help Trump, included in a takedown affidavit.
Author Archive for: emptywheel
About emptywheel
Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Vice, Motherboard, the Nation, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial.
Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse in Grand Rapids, MI.
Entries by emptywheel
Don Jr’s Online Buddies Allegedly Demand $5 Million from Russian Shell Companies to Say Nice Things about His Daddy
/63 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe/by emptywheelDon Jr wailed when he learned DOJ was announcing more legal actions against Russian foreign influence operations. Did he know that the indictment against two RT personnel for using Tenet Media as a front would reveal Don Jr’s far right buddies demand $5 million to say nothing things about his Daddy?
Stop Obsessing about Kamala Harris’ (Polling) Bumps
/70 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election, emptywheel/by emptywheelKamala Harris has not gotten the polling bumps where pundits are trained to look for them. But even as they watch for those signs closely, they’re not contemplating how other nearly unprecedented movement might shape the race.
All Trump’s Recidivists
/59 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election/by emptywheelSteve Bannon was actually the first known Trump pardon recipient to return to crime after the pardon. But he kicked off a growing trend.
The Soft Bigotry of No Expectations on Trump
/136 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election/by emptywheelIn an editorial, WaPo made yet another demand that Kamala Harris provide more details of the policies she is promising. Yet in the process, WaPo confesses that they have made no such demands in the 21 months that Trump has been running.
There Are No Backsies on Dobbs
/114 Comments/in 2024 Election, 2024 Presidential Election/by emptywheelHorserace journalists have been loathe to hold Trump accountable for the things he did as President. But Kamala Harris has finally made Trump own something, his role in stripping women of their bodily autonomy. In response, Trump has started to panic.
Trump Wants to Hide His Attempt to Assassinate Mike Pence from Voters
/49 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election, emptywheel, January 6 Insurrection/by emptywheelIn 2016, Donald Trump bragged he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and he wouldn’t lose any voters. In 2024, he’s inventing legal delays in hopes of preventing voters from learning the true horrors of his claim to have authority to get Mike Pence killed on January 6.
Fridays with Nicole Sandler
/10 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election/by emptywheelWe talked a lot about the superseding indictment against Donald Trump.
Michael Shear and Reid Epstein Feign Stupidity about Trump’s Decade-Long Pitch for Authoritarianism
/42 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election, Economics/by emptywheelIn 2020, Joe Biden, a member of the Silent Generation, offered a defense of democracy as democracy, which was enough for people who remember fascism and actual communism. In an era when many have forgotten that history and lost faith in democracy, GenX Kamala Harris has to do something more: She has to sell democracy, which Trump has been discrediting for a decade, itself.
ABC Treats Kamala’s 21-Year Old Misstatement about Prosecutions as News but Not Trump’s Daily Lies about His Own Crimes
/99 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, 2020 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election, Hunter Biden, January 6 Insurrection, Mueller Probe/by emptywheelIf you let Trump lie about his own crimes without fact check every day, as ABC does, then you’re engaged in a more egregious act of misrepresenting the truth than Kamala Harris did by misstating whether she prosecuted or was involved in criminal cases over two decades ago.