Everything I’ve read has focused on Aaron’s activities from 2010-2012, with no attention whatsoever to what was happening at MIT.

• MIT’s first woman president, Susan Hockfield, resigned without warning, without explanation, after just 7 years in office.
• MIT signed a $300 million agreement with Russia to develop the curriculum and research program for a state of the art research center, the Skolkovo Institute. John Deutch joined the board of Trustees in late 2012. A decade later the U.S. State Department sanctioned “Skoltech” for partnering with Russian weapon manufacturers.
• In December 2012, newly appointed Corporation chair rewrote the MIT bylaws, transferring control of MIT from the president to the Chair of the Corporation, to himself.

In other words, his persecution had nothing to do with anything that he had done. It was the criminals who were taking control of MIT who believed that he was downloading evidence of their crimes.

Timeline 1 — Aaron Swartz, 2010 through January 2013

• September 2010 — Downloading of JSTOR data begins. MIT was unaware the person doing it was Aaron Swartz until the January 2011 arrest; MIT’s concern was to stop an unknown person from downloading massive numbers of JSTOR articles in violation of MIT’s license .
• January 6, 2011 — Swartz is arrested by the MIT Police and an agent of the U.S. Secret Service, accused of breaking and entering for events on the MIT campus .
• July 2011 — Swartz is charged by federal indictment with multiple felonies — violations of the Wire Fraud Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act .
• January 11, 2013 — Swartz’s partner finds him dead in their New York apartment; the Abelson report describes it as suicide .

Gap note: My snippet pulls did not surface dated Swartz-specific activities for 2012. The Abelson report’s table of contents shows a narrative section for “Events around the Time of the Indictment (April 2011–September 2011)” , but the 16-page excerpt available doesn’t provide dated Swartz actions in 2012. I would not read that as a verified absence — it’s simply not covered in the pages I retrieved.

Timeline 2 — MIT, 2010 through January 2013

2010

• April 12, 2010 — John S. Reed is nominated to serve as the next chair of the MIT Corporation, succeeding Dana Mead, pending election at the Corporation’s June 4 meeting .
• June 24, 2010 — MIT and the Skolkovo Foundation sign a framework agreement to evaluate options for collaboration “in education and research in Russia,” signed in Washington, D.C. during Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit . (The exact date appears in the article’s “News Office” byline, retrieved via get_page; the snippet  confirms the event text.)

2011

• April 25, 2011 — MIT announces Joichi (“Joi”) Ito has been selected as the next director of the MIT Media Lab .
• June 18, 2011 — MIT and the Skolkovo Foundation announce the signing of a preliminary agreement to create the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (SIST), signed in St. Petersburg during the St. Petersburg Economic Forum . MIT’s own language calls this a “preliminary agreement”  — the documents I found do not describe it as a “final” signing.
• October 14, 2011 — The MIT Corporation elects Israel Ruiz as the Institute’s new executive vice president and treasurer, effective immediately .

2012

• February 16, 2012 — MIT News publishes “Susan Hockfield to step down” (article byline, retrieved via get_page). A snippet from the same article recounts her 2011 establishment of the Skolkovo Institute of Technology with the Russian Federation .
• Rafael Reif as president — The documents I pulled confirm Reif was provost at the June 2011 Skolkovo signing  and identify him as “President L. Rafael Reif (2012–present)” . However, the specific dated MIT News announcement of his election as president did not appear in my search results, so I can’t supply an exact appointment date from this corpus.
• July 9, 2012 — The first Board of Trustees meeting for the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology takes place in Moscow, and the board elects 10 new members . The full membership list on that same page (retrieved via get_page) includes John Mark Deutch — Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology among the new members.
• December 11, 2012 — MIT’s bylaws are revised so the Executive Committee is chaired by Corporation Chairman John S. Reed ’61 “and not by the MIT President, L. Rafael [Reif]” . Note: this source is The Tech (by John A. Hawkinson), not an MIT News article — it’s the only source that surfaced for the bylaws change.

January 2013 (MIT)

• January 13, 2013 — MIT announces the review that later becomes the Abelson report; the report notes that “other than the announcement of the review on January 13, MIT has issued no statements” before the report itself .