Thread by @Z_Everson

Yesterday @Forbes published one of the wildest stories I've ever worked on:

"Trump Donor Allegedly Used Embezzled Money To Support The Former President’s Campaign And Lead A Lavish Lifestyle"

Here's how it came about—

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forbes.com/sites/zachever…

@Forbes All of the facts and allegations in this article were available (that is, it was an open-source investigation). #osint

It was just a matter of finding them.

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@Forbes It started in late-summer 2020 with one of my regular looks at Instagram posts geo-tagged to the Trump Hotel DC to see who was paying the then-president.

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forbes.com/sites/zachever…

@Forbes This post raised two questions—

✅ What had the four unknown people in this photo done to land an invite to taste bourbons in the Trump's hotel with @RandPaul?

✅ Why the hell were they pairing Willett with Old Rip Van Winkle and George T. Stagg?

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forbes.com/sites/zachever…

Now, don't at me for hating on Willett. Its ryes are spectacular, especially the four year.

But the Willett pot still? Undrinkable.

Bu I don't write about bourbon anymore, so I focused on the people.

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forbes.com/sites/zachever…

The Instagram user who posed the photo was Stacy Kofoed. It didn't take much work to figure out the two people on the far right were her husband, Richard, and one of their daughters.

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FEC records showed Kofoeds just made their 1st campaign contributions in 10 yrs: $11,200 to Trump's reelection.

It's money that matters, but it didn't seem generous enough to sip $100/ounce bourbon in downtown DC's only 5-star hotel with a senator.

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forbes.com/sites/zachever…

So I published what I knew on @110pennn (RIP), then set up some trackers:

✅ bookmarked Stacy’s social-media accounts and their campaign donations

✅ created Google Alerts for their names and their companies

✅ left myself a reminder to follow up.

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1100pennsylvania.com/p/a-ppe-ceo-an…

In October, FEC records turned up bigger donations from the Kofoeds.

This time the amount—at least $82,000, all to the GOP—seemed more like a sum that could lead to a bourbon tasting with a sitting US senator.

@1100Penn published that info.

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1100pennsylvania.com/p/ppe-supplier…

@1100Penn The story took its first wild turn around December:

✅ Kofoed's bankruptcy popped up when searching to see if he'd been involved in any federal court cases

✅ the lawsuit alleging Kofoed routed embezzled funds to the GOP (which cited @1100penn) came from a Google Alert.

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@1100Penn Looking at the complexity of the story, I decided not to run it in @1100Penn but rather to pitch it elsewhere, so it could be edited, fact-checked and reviewed by a lawyer.

Alas.

But every few weeks, I'd browse online to keep up with the Kofoeds.

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forbes.com/sites/zachever…

@1100Penn I joined Forbes in May & picked up an editor who was interested (thanks @DanAlexander21!).

But the Kofoed piece was not pressing so I didn't prioritize it—until Google Alerts showed other outlets had mentioned the couple.

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propublica.org/article/texts-…

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…

As I re-engaged, new developments came up:

✅ a Forbes researcher looking for property records also found that Kofoed was the defendant in two more lawsuits (thanks Sue!)

✅ a last-minute search revealed that Kofoed had moved into Trump's house

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That last bit turned up while getting ready to publish at 11 pm on Tuesday, forcing us to push the article back a day so that we could reach out to Kofoed and the Trump Org about it).

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Stacy's Instagram account, BTW, is now private.

But checking it regularly with @hunchly quietly doing its job in the background, meant I had the photos.

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@hunchly For more on how vital Hunchly has proven, see this thread on reporting the scene at the Trump Hotel DC around Jan. 6:

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https://twitter.com/Z_Everson/status/1456611899978645504

Having looked at thousands of photos from Trump's DC hotel (not a flex!), I feel confident saying you'd be hard-pressed to find a picture that better epitomizes Trump's swamp than the shot of the bourbon tasting.

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Anyway, thanks for reading!

And please support this reporting by subscribe to Forbes.

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Also, if you know how I can get rid of an almost-full fifth of Willett bourbon, please let me know.

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