Hacked files show how Trump team botched vetting of J.D. Vance

J.D. Vance has proven to be one of the most unpopular vice presidential nominees in recent memory, and hacked documents show Donald Trump's team failed to turn up some of the past controversial statements that have dogged his candidacy.

A source identifying himself only as "Robert" shopped around internal documents starting in mid-July allegedly hacked in Iran from the Trump campaign, but so far none of the stolen information has been published – not by the New York Times, Politico or the Washington Post, all of which turned down the offer despite reporting on emails stolen from Hillary Clinton's campaign, reported Vanity Fair.

"In recently exploring the decision-making at Politico, the Times, and the Post, I’ve found that editors’ reluctance to play ball with Robert reflected neither regret over widespread coverage of the 2016 hack nor ethical concerns about publishing illicitly obtained information from a hostile foreign power," wrote veteran journalist Paul Farhi, who left the Post last year after decades with the paper. "The reason for the non-response is more mundane: The hacked documents are a dud. There’s little news value in them, according to several people who’ve seen them."

Some of the materials include background research on potential Trump running mates drawn from publicly available records, such as tweets, interviews and speech transcripts, but journalists who've examined the documents came away unimpressed by the campaign's diligence.

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"The work itself is incomplete; the 271-page rundown on Vance is inexplicably missing Vance’s now infamous 'childless cat ladies' comment from a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox, said one reporter," Farhi wrote. "The file does include Vance’s comments from 2016 in which he called Trump 'an idiot' and privately compared him to Hitler."

David Sanger, a veteran national security reporter for the Times, said last month that he didn't see anything in the opposition research that couldn't have been turned up by "a bright college intern” using Google, while another said there was barely anything there worth reporting on.

"[It's] basically an [opposition] dump, and not a very good oppo dump at that,” said one journalist who has seen the material. “There’s not a single allegation that you couldn’t find with one click [on the internet]. It’s not good work. Honestly, it’s just not very interesting.”