I am kinda surprised that he bailed out on the grounds that it would help the Russians.
If you look on what basis journalist make decision whatever something is newsworthy (or at least claim to do, as there are quite curious exceptions) there is one thing that never enters the picture - intentions of the source.
Author of this piece have quite strong feeling that continuing this work would be wrong, though at no point he gives any supporting argument why it is so.
Maybe I am missing something, but to this sentence:
>In the end, I never saw the actual materials they’d been given, and to this day, I don’t know whether there were genuine emails, or whether Smith and his associates were deluding themselves.
it should probably be appended "thus I have no idea if there was any connection, direct or indirect, to Russia or Russians citizens, but I thought to make a nice title citing this perfectly unsubstantiated obsession I have with them."
