Trump Sunlight Campaign

Dear Supporters,

It has been a difficult year for many of us.

A few days after the election last year the Sunlight team was struggling to identify how we could best use your donated funds to increase the level of transparency into what we knew would be a difficult presidential administration. Our team held dozens of meetings and phone calls with journalists, think tanks, academics, activists and others in search of this most appropriate path forward.

At one point during our search, I was put in touch with the longtime investigative journalist, Wayne Barrett, a longtime journalist and author of an investigative book on Donald Trump.

I told him that a group of friends and I had raised money through a viral online campaign, and we wanted to use it to support investigative journalists over the years to come. Within just a few minutes of the start of our first conversation, Wayne quickly convinced me through the few questions that he asked that one, I had no idea what I was doing, and two that I should start doing the things he was telling me to do before I did anything else.

Sitting in a coffee shop in Detroit while visiting family for Thanksgiving, Wayne gave me a few assignments from his home in New York - specific people to talk to, specific questions to answer before I started thinking about anything else. Wayne told me to get to work and to check back with him when I had the questions answered. He said he had a couple different ideas on a path forward. I jotted down a list of a half dozen to dos and hung up.

I called the friend who connected me to Wayne and said we had connected and that he seemed like exactly the kind of person who could help. He instantly understood what I we were trying to do, had quickly come up with more than one idea that felt like it could honor our donors wishes and more importantly, was giving me actionable steps I could take that helped me feel like I was making progress toward something. At that point, my friend mentioned an article that the New Yorker had just written about Wayne just a couple weeks prior.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/wayne-barrett-who-wrote-the-book-on-trump-is-still-reporting

After reading the article, I quickly realized how fortunate I was to have been put in touch with Wayne, and how he had probably made an entire career being the right person to talk to.

A bit later I got back to Wayne with answers to his questions and we had another quick phone conversation. I could tell that he was not overly impressed with what I had given him and he gave me a few more assignments. It felt like I was not exactly living up to his standards. He gave me another few assignments another deadline and sent me on my way. Wayne reiterated that he had thought about how we should proceed over the long run and had a few plans we should discuss during our next call.

Less than a month later Wayne passed away and our communications stopped.

In the months that followed I tried to continue pulling on the threads that which Wayne had handed me. I worked with Private Investigators, spoke to dozens of journalists, met with journalism professors and directors of national non-profits. The first mission was always still The Apprentice tapes, trying to get someone to step forward, to blow the whistle or to find another way to get them into the light of day.

Months passed, dozens of e-mails and calls from individuals claiming they had the tapes came and went though our inboxes. Follow up calls with reporters who had written the articles that gave us the visibility we needed to raise our funds asked: "what have you found?" "what are you doing and who are you working with?" "do you think the tapes are real?"

I reconnected with the person who had put me in touch with Wayne initially, a very old friend of his. I had no plan, but needed someone else to talk to - someone who knew what they were doing who could possibly give some guidance. I told him the story of my conversations with Wayne. "That sounds exactly like him" was the reply I got. I was told that one of Wayne's signature moves was having multiple interns at any given time running around town chasing down assignments that Wayne had doled out. Frequently demanding more from them. I felt incredibly honored that I was in even the smallest way associated with that group.

I mentioned that it would be wonderful to use the funds as a prize to be awarded to any journalist that published an article in 2017 demonstrating the greatest work toward driving more transparency into the executive branch. "A Journalism X-Prize" I had called it. And I wanted to name it after Wayne.

I was told that The Nation Institute, through its Investigative Fund was in the process of developing a Wayne Barrett Investigative Fund with the expressed goal of:

… support(ing) ambitious reporting projects focused on Wayne’s major areas of interest: politics and corruption in both New York City and on the national stage. Journalists working on projects that build on Wayne’s previous reporting are particularly encouraged.

Following a number of conversations with folks from the Nation Institute and others who worked alongside Wayne and were involved in this effort, the Sunlight team decided that making a donation to this fund, inspired by Wayne's lifelong career as an investigative journalist and drive to increase transparency throughout public leadership, was our best chance to fulfill the goals of our campaign.

http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/about/special-funds/wayne-barrett-investigative-fund/

The Wayne Barrett Investigative Fund will enable talented journalists working in print, digital or broadcast platforms to produce deeply reported investigative projects with strong editorial guidance and support. Awards for each investigative project will be $5,000 to $15,000, covering travel, document fees, and compensation for reporting time, as needed.

The SunlightCampaign will make a $25K donation to the Nation Institute in the ensuing days, some additional funds will also be used to reimburse expenses associated with our previous investigative work and others will go toward fees associated with the gofundme platform. Through our participation with the Investigative fund going forward, your voices will continue to be heard as these donations support journalists working every day to drive more transparency into our public discourse.

The Sunlight Campaign will go on, our primary goal has been and always will be trying to ensure that anyone who comes forward and releases any tapes from The Apprentice will have an ally. We will continue to accept donations and will continue to search for a potential whistle blower and broadcast that our organization can serve as a safe harbor for them should they be the target of any type of legal retribution.

Thank you again for all of your support and for continuing to fight every day for what you believe in. Please pass along information about the Wayne Barrett Fund and encourage any journalist you know to pursue an application if they believe these funds could help support their work.

Thank you again,

Aaron