Are the two connected? I doubt it. But the conjunction is interesting.
Corn was considered a good target for the dossier's story laundering. And Mother Jones has been friendlier to Hillary than the Nation which tends to be Bernie and Jill Stein territory these days.
Mother Jones editor David Corn was in the news because he was the first media contact for Fusion GPS' push to move the Trump dossier. But he got caught up in the #MeToo campaign against sexual assault and harassment by prominent figures.
Mother Jones magazine’s editor and chief executive acknowledged on Thursday that they investigated Washington bureau chief David Corn for inappropriate workplace behavior three years ago, warning him about touching female staffers and insensitive descriptions of sexual violence, and would now probe the allegations further in light of two emails written by former staffers in 2014 and 2015 and obtained by POLITICO.
One of the emails, written in 2015 by a former staffer outlining concerns she had heard from other women in the Washington office, said Corn, now 58, made “rape jokes,” “regularly gave [several women] unwelcome shoulder rubs and engaged in uninvited touching of their legs, arms, backs, and waists,” and “made inappropriate comments about women’s sexuality and anatomy.” The other email, from 2014, was by a former female staffer who claimed that Corn “came up behind me and put his hands and arms around my body in a way that felt sexual and domineering.”
Corn, in a statement to POLITICO, said that neither his comments nor his touching of colleagues was in any way sexual.
“I am an exuberant person and have been known to pat male and female colleagues on the shoulder or slap them on the back, but always in a collegial or celebratory way,” he said. “I have never touched any work colleague in a sexual manner. Once concerns were raised about this type of contact, I have been mindful to avoid it to prevent any misperception. If anyone ever perceived any of this as ‘sexual’ or ‘domineering,’ I am sorry—that was never my intent.”
“Sexual violence is not funny, and I have never joked about it, or about women’s sexuality and anatomy,” Corn wrote.
Corn is a fairly prominent figure in lefty media. And this scandal further shakes up Mother Jones. It's certainly not the only lefty media outlet now facing serious issues at the top. There's NPR. But between Corn and Halperin, the usual establishment media powerhouses in politics just suffered a severe blow.