Congo, one of the poorest nations on Earth, offered former President Bill Clinton a speaking fee of $650,000–a sum equal to annual per-capita income of 2,813 Congolese. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund ranks the Democratic Republic of the Congo dead last in its global income rankings. What did it expect in return for its investment?

In the proposed 2012 contract, the organizers expected a speech and at least one photograph each with the leaders of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Congo, which appeared to be splitting the princely honorarium. (Since there are two nations known as Congo, in this article, unless otherwise specified, I am referring to the Democratic Republic of the Congo whenever I write “Congo” alone.) That doesn’t seem like much of a return, two snaps and a chat. So the question is: What else did Congo want for its money?

Congo’s extraordinary offer to Clinton first surfaced in a batch of Hillary Clinton’s emails released this past August, where it won little attention at the time. Newly leaked documents, known as the “Panama papers,” shed new light on the mystery as well as the misdoings of Congo’s corrupt rulers.

1,299 to 1,105.

That’s the “insurmountable” delegate lead Hillary Clinton has over Bernie Sanders.

And there are still 1,674 pledged delegates yet to be awarded in twenty primaries and caucuses to be held over the next two months; scores of up-for-grabs delegates yet to be decided via state and county Democratic conventions; and hundreds and hundreds of super-delegates to be wooed by both candidates in Philadelphia this summer — with not a single one of them having officially committed themselves to anybody.

That’s the cold, hard truth — the indisputable numeric data of the current election cycle — but it’s not the story Americans are being told.

Why?

Well, put it this way: say what you will about Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com — for instance, that its projections for Bernie Sanders in primaries and caucuses have routinely been low, a fact which sits uncomfortably beside its penchant for publishing articles marginalizing Sanders and his supporters as quixotic — but they’ve consistently had the most accurate delegate counts for the Democratic Primary race.

And even they can’t keep up with Sanders.

In just the past week, Sanders has cut Clinton’s delegate lead by 20 — by 12 in Colorado (Sanders +6, Clinton -6) and by four each in Nevada and Missouri (Sanders +2, Clinton -2) — without a single statewide primary or caucus being held, and even Nate Silver and his crew haven’t been able to amend their usually accurate delegate tallies fast enough. That’s understandable; it’s easy to fall behind in reporting on a candidate who’s beaten Hillary Clinton eight Election Days in a row — President Obama having never lost more than two in a row in 2008 — when you also have to publish esoterically misleading stories like “Clinton Is Winning the States That Look Like the Democratic Party” and “Bernie Sanders Is Even Less Competitive Than He Appears”.

But in the aftermath of the Wisconsin win, the media frame was not about Sanders’ momentum, Clinton’s connection to the Panamanian tax haven or, as US Uncut (4/8/16) reported, three major policy wins for Bernie Sanders, but how Sanders had gone negative and was untruthful. It occupied the news cycle for days, knocking out a barrage of bad press that was hobbling her in the run-up to the New York primary. With a lot of help from media friends, the Clinton people rewrote the news.