She wants the law enforced against immigrants, teachers, librarians, prosecutors, political opponents, and anyone else who irritated her before breakfast.

But when the law requires Lauren Boebert to explain her own family’s money, “law and order” begins to look less like a principle and more like a bumper sticker.

Nearly $1 million in consulting income appeared on one financial disclosure.

Then the exact amounts disappeared.

The name of the company changed.

Another LLC, personally formed by Lauren Boebert, appeared in the corporate chain.

Official county records continued placing her husband directly inside active drilling operations.

The congressional guardrails responded with the institutional equivalent of staring at their shoes.

This is not a minor bookkeeping dispute.

This is a story about money, political power, oil and gas, federal disclosure requirements, and a member of Congress who appears to believe transparency is something other people should practice.

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Then comes this Facebook Marketplace listing from Jayson Boebert: an entire black reclining living-room set, including a couch, loveseat, recliner and end tables—offered for $200, reduced from $750. Can you imagine what that furniture smells like and has seen! Maybe JD would like the couch?

But taken together, they produce a distinctly Boebert-era tableau: unpaid taxes in the public record, deeply discounted furniture on Facebook and a once-loud political brand quietly ending up on the virtual curb.

The listing is now marked “Out of Stock.”

Apparently, somebody finally found a bargain in the Boebert economy.

If you like our "hard hitting” work, please drop a dime or two in the piggy bank! We could use your support now and will put it to good use in our quest to rid DC of Boebert. Donate $50 or more and I’ll autograph and send you my book, “Color the Crooks: File 001-Lauren Boebert”.

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PUBLIC RECORDS • FIRST AMENDMENT • FLORIDA BULLSHIT

STORY UPDATED ON JULY 14, 2026, WITH STATEMENTS FROM THE O’GARAS & the OFFICE OF CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER BLAISE INGOGLIA.

Mr. James O’Gara mailed a postcard to Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia. It contained three words: “You lack values.”

That was not a threat. It was not even ambiguous. It was criticism, the kind of blunt, unpleasant, constitutionally protected criticism public officials receive every day.

Florida responded by sending two armed investigators from the Department of Financial Services’ Criminal Investigations Division to the home James shares with his wife, Cathy. The agents questioned him and then interviewed two neighbors. The encounter was entered into the department’s ACISS case system as Case No. 25-3226.

The public-records file and the recorded interview do not prove that Ingoglia personally ordered the visit. But, he has a reputation as a control freak and desperatly wants to keep his office. But they do show senior officials inside the department transforming a harmless postcard into a formal “threat assessment,” routing it down a law-enforcement chain of command and dispatching investigators who themselves repeatedly acknowledged that O’Gara had done nothing wrong. (Review the full public documents below.)

And they show something else: the sheer, absurd scale of the government effort to make this a big fucking deal. The state that brags about hunting waste burned a full work week of public payroll on three words from a retired Army veteran.

The numbers

I requested the records. Getting them took a fight of its own. I requested and paid for these records in October 2025, while the story was still fresh. The Department of Financial Services did not produce them until July 2026, roughly nine months later. I had to pester them. Florida's public-records law contemplates production within a reasonable time; nine months for a batch of emails is not that. It is long enough for a news cycle to die, an election cycle to turn, and the officials involved to hope everyone forgot. Add whatever it cost to slow-walk one records request to the tab below.

Here is what production 4638-2025 shows, by the numbers:

• 2,323 pages produced in response to a single public-records request, totaling roughly 295,000 words

• At least 38 distinct emails about the postcard, appearing more than 50 times across the production once you count the copies bouncing between inboxes

• 22 or more separate people on those emails: state law-enforcement brass, executive staff, communications aides, city police commanders and reporters

• Roughly 7,800 words of postcard-related correspondence spread across 50 pages of the production

• Two armed investigators at the O’Garas’ door, with two more agents in unmarked black Broncos staged down the street, according to Cathy O’Gara’s written account, plus two neighbors interviewed

• One recorded interview, just under eight minutes, logged as ACISS Case No. 25-3226

• Zero threats found. Their words, not mine.

• Zero apologies. Anywhere in 2,323 pages. To anyone.

The order was explicit

On September 15, 2025, then-Criminal Investigations Division Director Simon Blank wrote: “The attached was mailed to the CFO. Can you have someone look into the name and do a threat assessment?”

Two weeks later, the request was moving through the chain of command. A senior official asked staff to verify the sender’s identity and “evaluate any potential threat level.” A chief assigned personnel, ordered an attempt to make contact by the next morning and directed that the encounter be documented as a case in ACISS.

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The bureaucratic language is revealing. The agency described the proposed interview as a meeting to discuss “potential avenues for assistance.” But the task was assigned as a threat assessment, handled by criminal investigators and entered into a criminal case system.

The agents said the quiet part out loud

The interview audio is more embarrassing than any editorial flourish could be. One investigator told O’Gara: “Yeah, look, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Later, an investigator repeated: “I looked at your postcard and was like, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

O’Gara answered with the obvious question: Why were armed investigators at his house if he had done nothing wrong? He told them, “I have a right to voice my opinion,” and said the visit would make him exercise that right even more. Asked whether the postcard carried some hidden meaning, he answered: “His values suck. That’s all I said.”

O’Gara, a two-tour Army veteran who re-enlisted after September 11, told the agents he has mailed roughly 200 similar postcards to elected officials at the state and federal level, up to and including President Trump. Only one office responded by sending armed men to his home. On tape, he made his position plain: he was pissed that they were sent, the visit was totally inappropriate, and it was not the agents’ fault.

The investigators were courteous. This is not primarily a story about two field agents doing an assignment they were handed. It is a story about the officials who handed them the assignment, and the institutional judgment that turned criticism into a police matter.

Listen to the audio from the actual interview here:

The department’s own report found no threat

The follow-up report says O’Gara had sent similar postcards to roughly 200 political figures, including President Donald Trump. It records that he had “no intention on escalating to actual threats” and would continue writing to the CFO as an exercise of his First Amendment rights.

That should have ended the matter before investigators ever reached his front door. Instead, the state created a law-enforcement record after the fact documenting that the citizen was not a threat.

Meanwhile, an 11-year-old hid inside

While the agents stood at the door, Cathy O’Gara’s 11-year-old granddaughter was inside the house, frightened. The men wore vests marked POLICE, presented no identification and gave no names. When Mrs. O’Gara left to drive her granddaughter to school, she passed two unmarked black Broncos with two more agents down the street.

She did what any sensible person would do: she emailed the Largo police chief to ask whether the visit was even legitimate.

“This morning 2 men dressed in brown clothes, no insignias knocked on our door... My granddaughter, 11, was inside and very afraid... Are we, as a city, going to allow intimidation tactics by law enforcement of any kind? Please protect us. Our children are actually afraid.”

That email triggered its own mini-investigation. A Largo Police Department major and a lieutenant traced the mystery agents, looped in the Department of Financial Services and confirmed to the family that yes, the men who would not identify themselves were state officers. Add a city police department’s time to the tab.

Then came the public-relations dodge

When reporters began asking questions, Ingoglia’s communications director repeatedly issued the same statement: the CFO did not see the postcard, did not direct the assessment and the decision was made “solely by law enforcement personnel.” The statement then praised the CFO as a conservative believer in free speech.

The records support the narrow statement that they do not show Ingoglia personally ordering the investigation. But the broader response is evasive. The “law enforcement personnel” were senior officials within the Department of Financial Services, the department led by the CFO. The internal email did not describe a specific threatening word, act or circumstance. It said the item had been mailed to the CFO and asked for a name check and threat assessment.

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The production also contains a two-line email that complicates the tidy “arm’s length” story. On October 1, hours after the doorstep visit, Deputy CFO Julie Jones, who oversees the department’s law-enforcement division, wrote under the subject “Talked to Simon”:

“Postcard came from Sydney. Can I see it?”

Sydney Booker is the communications director. Per the department’s own top law-enforcement executive, the postcard routed through the CFO’s communications shop, and she herself had not seen it after her agents had already been to the man’s door.

The Orlando Sentinel’s Jeff Schweers put the hard questions to the office directly: Is telling Ingoglia he “lacks values” a valid threat? Why was the Fire, Arson and Explosives unit, whose stated mission is investigating arson and explosives crimes, running threat assessments on postcards? And if Blaise did not know about the postcard, who decided to send his law-enforcement officers out? The production contains no substantive answer to any of them.

The Sentinel’s editorial board later summed it up in a headline the CFO’s own staff dutifully forwarded around the office: Ingoglia says he hates waste, then sends gun-toting officers to investigate a postcard.

The bill

Let’s total this up. These are my estimates, built from the documents, and I have kept them deliberately conservative.

Call it a full work week and then some, spread across two agencies and a criminal case system, spent on three words mailed by a veteran. That total does not include the CFO’s DOGE teams, whose government-waste road show was the reason for the postcard in the first place. The man auditing counties for excessive spending ran up this tab over a piece of mail.

No apology

Here is the part that should bother you most. In 2,323 pages, there is not one apology. Not to Mr. O’Gara, whose protected speech earned him armed visitors. Not to Mrs. O’Gara, who had to email a police chief to find out who had been at her door. Not to an 11-year-old who watched men in POLICE vests come to her grandparents’ home and was, in her grandmother’s words, “very afraid.” No apology has been made since, either.

Instead, the office’s official position blames the weather: the visit was “a direct result of an increasingly hostile political environment.” The hostile environment, in this telling, was created by the retiree with the postcard, not by the office that sent armed agents to his house.

CFO Says The O’Garas Deserved A Visit From Law Enforcement Due to Assassination of Charlie Kirk

“This postcard was received within days of the brutal and tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk, during a period of heightened vigilance for law enforcement agencies responsible for assessing potential threats to public officials. The Department of Financial Services and the CFO have always respected Floridians’ First Amendment rights, and the Department has continued to receive postcards from the O’Garas and other constituents on a regular basis. The Department has also updated its threat assessment processes within the Criminal Investigations Division.”

Sydney Booker, Communications Director, Office of Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia

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What is embarrassing, and what may be legally serious

The embarrassing part is established by the records. A statewide elected official’s department deployed criminal investigators over three words of political criticism. Investigators who saw no threat were required to check anyway. Neighbors were questioned. The contact was memorialized in the department’s ACISS case system. Then the office defended the process by claiming to protect the very First Amendment rights the process predictably chilled.

Calling the conduct criminal, however, would go beyond the evidence currently available. The documents do not establish corrupt intent, and they do not show Ingoglia personally initiating the assessment. The strongest legal concerns are constitutional and administrative, not a proven criminal offense.

1. A possible First Amendment retaliation or chilling-effect claim. Criticism of an elected official sits at the core of protected political speech. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that government officials generally may not subject a person to retaliatory action because of protected speech. A viable lawsuit would still require proof of adverse action, retaliatory motive and causation. The public records raise those questions; they do not resolve every element.

2. No apparent statutory threat. Florida’s written-threat statute concerns threats to kill, cause bodily injury, conduct a mass shooting or commit terrorism. “You lack values” contains none of those things. The records released so far do not identify another statement by O’Gara that would fit that definition.

3. A serious mission and jurisdiction problem. The Criminal Investigations Division publicly describes its work as fraud, arson, explosives, public-assistance fraud and theft or misuse of state funds. Ordinary criticism of the CFO is not listed. The department may have protective responsibilities not fully described on that page, but it should be required to identify the legal authority, written policy and objective criteria used here.

4. A possible misuse-of-office issue, but the current proof is incomplete. Florida ethics law prohibits a public officer or employee from corruptly using a public position or public resources to secure a special privilege or benefit. Retaliating against a critic with state resources could raise that issue. Yet “corruptly” is an important element, and the existing production does not prove it. An ethics accusation should be based on additional evidence about motive, authorization and comparable cases, not assumption.

The questions Florida still owes the public

What exactly was attached to the September 15 email that triggered the assessment, and why was it omitted from the production?

Who first decided the postcard should be routed to the Criminal Investigations Division?

What written policy defined this as a potential threat?

Why were two neighbors interviewed after agents concluded the postcard was not threatening?

Was ACISS Case No. 25-3226 closed, retained, disseminated or expunged?

How many similar political messages have produced home visits, and were the senders’ political viewpoints recorded?

How much staff time and public money did this episode consume? My conservative estimate above is 49 hours and counting. The department should produce its own accounting.

What, precisely, did the department change when it later said it had updated its threat-assessment processes?

Will anyone apologize to James and Cathy O’Gara?

Send the CFO a lawful postcard

The proper answer to an attempt, intentional or not, to chill political criticism is more political criticism. Send one peaceful postcard to the public office of Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia. Do not threaten anyone. Do not contact a private residence. Do not target staff members. Use the public office address and say exactly what you mean:

“You have no values. Leave James and Cathy O’Gara alone, you political hack.”

MAIL TO:

Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia

Florida Department of Financial Services

200 East Gaines Street

Tallahassee, Florida 32399

One postcard per person is enough. Sign your name if you choose, the way Jim did. Keep it nonviolent, lawful and unmistakably political. Public officials are not entitled to insulation from criticism, and state law-enforcement resources are not a customer-service department for bruised political egos.

James O’Gara’s first postcard said, “You lack values.” The records do not rebut him. They make his point. And if the CFO’s office wants to run threat assessments on a few thousand more postcards, we already know what one costs.

Hear it from the O’Garas themselves

Jim and Cathy O’Gara joined me and my co-host, Colonel Moe Davis, on the MUCK YOU! podcast to tell the whole story in their own words: the knock at the door, the unmarked Broncos, the badge Jim could not read because the agent kept it turned away, and what it did to their grandchildren. They are funny, unbowed, and exactly the kind of citizens this country is supposed to produce. Listen to the full episode here: Florida Veteran’s Message to Official Unleashes Unprecedented Police Response.

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Source notes

The Florida Department of Financial Services was offered the opportunity to respond to our story but we never heard anything prior to publication. The FL DFS was also offered the opportunity to appear on MUCK YOU! podcast to refute our reporting.

The FL DFS/CFO public-records production 4638-2025 (2,323 pages, approximately 295,000 words), especially pp. 13, 105, 107, 135, 136, 458 and 595. Email, word and participant counts computed from the full production; staff-hour figures are the author’s conservative estimates from the documents.

Audio: James O’Gara interview, October 1, 2025, ACISS Case No. 25-3226. Exact short quotations in this draft were cross-checked against the transcript published by Reason on July 6, 2026.

Florida Statutes § 836.10 (written or electronic threats).

Nieves v. Bartlett, 587 U.S. 391 (2019) (First Amendment retaliation principles).

Florida Statutes § 112.313(6) (misuse of public position).

Florida Department of Financial Services, Criminal Investigations Division, “About the Division.”

Full public documents produced by FL CFO office.

37.6MB ∙ PDF file

Download

We requested these documents in October 2025. They arrived in July, 2026.

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About the Author

David B. Wheeler is a journalist, political strategist, and the founder of American Muckrakers and Parallax Advisory LLC. He hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast and publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today. He has produced events in more than 75 countries and on all seven continents, including the first marathon in Antarctica. He lives in Western North Carolina and is a proud father of three and Iowa Hawkeye.

Disclaimer

This essay is opinion journalism based on public records obtained under Chapter 119, Florida Statutes, and on a law-enforcement audio recording released by the State of Florida. Document images are excerpted from Florida Department of Financial Services public-records production 4638-2025. Nothing in this essay alleges that any person committed a crime, and all individuals are presumed innocent of any wrongdoing. Staff-hour figures are the author’s estimates and are labeled as such. This publication and its call to action constitute political speech protected by the First Amendment. Readers who choose to write to public officials should do so lawfully, peacefully, and only at official public office addresses. Corrections: corrections@americanmuckrakers.com

PUBLIC RECORDS • FIRST AMENDMENT • FLORIDA BULLSHIT

Mr. James O’Gara mailed a postcard to Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia. It contained three words: “You lack values.”

That was not a threat. It was not even ambiguous. It was criticism, the kind of blunt, unpleasant, constitutionally protected criticism public officials receive every day.

Florida responded by sending two armed investigators from the Department of Financial Services’ Criminal Investigations Division to the home James shares with his wife, Cathy. The agents questioned him and then interviewed two neighbors. The encounter was entered into the department’s ACISS case system as Case No. 25-3226.

The public-records file and the recorded interview do not prove that Ingoglia personally ordered the visit. But, he has a reputation as a control freak and desperately wants to keep his office. But they do show senior officials inside the department transforming a harmless postcard into a formal “threat assessment,” routing it down a law-enforcement chain of command and dispatching investigators who themselves repeatedly acknowledged that O’Gara had done nothing wrong. (Review the full public documents below.)

And they show something else: the sheer, absurd scale of the government effort to make this a big fucking deal. The state that brags about hunting waste burned a full work week of public payroll on three words from a retired Army veteran.

Read more

After months of rewriting, correcting, rebuilding, and occasionally wondering whether Lauren Boebert’s glasses could get any larger, Color the Crooks™: Case File #001 — Lauren Boebert is officially available on Amazon.

This is not your average coloring book.

It is a 90-page adult political satire built in the tradition of old editorial cartoons, MAD Magazine, and the kind of sharp-edged political humor that powerful people rarely appreciate—but frequently deserve.

Every page turns a documented controversy, public statement, or political absurdity into something you can color while contemplating the unsettling fact that some of these people actually hold public office.

Lauren Boebert is merely Case File #001.

The larger goal behind Color the Crooks is to use humor, research, and satire to hold public officials accountable. Political corruption thrives when people become exhausted, overwhelmed, or afraid to laugh at those in power. Satire strips away the stage lighting and reminds everyone that politicians are public servants—not royalty.

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Buy the Book

You can order Color the Crooks: Case File #001 — Lauren Boebert directly from Amazon:

Order Color the Crooks on Amazon

Buy one for yourself. Buy one for a politically frustrated friend. Leave it on a coffee table where your most conservative relative is guaranteed to find it.

Support the Work and Receive a Copy

American Muckrakers continues to investigate public officials, publish accountability reporting, develop new projects, and create work that challenges the people who believe power places them beyond scrutiny.

None of that happens without financial support.

Please consider making a donation. Anyone who contributes more than $50 will receive a complimentary copy of the book.

You can also help without spending a dime by sharing the Amazon listing, posting about the book, leaving a review after reading it, or forwarding this essay to someone who still believes political satire serves a useful public purpose.

This book is funny, intentionally outrageous, and sometimes uncomfortable.

So are the people it documents.

Color the Crooks is now on Amazon. Case File #001 is open.

Donate >$50 & Get the Book!

The TRUMP token was launched on Solana on January 17, 2025, three days before Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term. Within 36 hours it printed a peak price of about $73. Within 12 months it was trading at $1.79, a fall of more than 97 percent from peak. In between, roughly 4.6 million trades moved through 990,000+ wallets. American Muckrakers pulled the on-chain record and reconciled realized profit and loss, wallet by wallet.

The headline finding is simple. About 1,700 wallets, roughly 0.17 percent of everyone who touched the token, captured $3.25 billion in realized gains. 751 of those wallets cleared more than a million dollars each. The single biggest winner, a wallet tagged naseem.sol, cleared $53.4 million on just 25 trades. On top of the on-chain winnings, Donald Trump’s 2025 personal financial disclosure listed a $636 million windfall attributable to the coin and related entities. That number is his, not ours; it comes from the disclosure his own filers signed.

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On the other side of the same trade, 988,905 wallets are underwater. Combined losses: $3.81 billion. Average loss per underwater wallet: $3,853. These are not paper marks; they are realized losses booked against actual buys, plus mark-to-market on wallets that are still holding a token that has lost 97 percent of its value and shows no sign of recovering it.

The mechanic is not complicated. At launch, roughly 80 percent of the token supply was held by Trump-affiliated entities under a vesting schedule. The remaining float was made available to the market at the peak. Retail buyers, most of them in the United States, absorbed the sell-side as insider allocations unlocked and were distributed. The chart of price against holder count shows the pattern with the clarity of a physics experiment: price falling from $73 toward $2, holder count climbing from a few thousand into the high hundreds of thousands, most of them buying above $10.

The people on the losing side are not, generally, sophisticated traders. Our intake so far, running for six weeks at muckrakers.today/trumpcoinripoff, is dominated by first-time crypto buyers who bought because the President of the United States was promoting the coin on his own social platform. A meaningful fraction are retirees. A meaningful fraction bought on borrowed money. The average loss is nearly $4,000. For the household budgets we are hearing about, that is not recoverable.

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There are two accountability questions worth asking now. The first is a securities question. The Trump organization’s posture has been that the token is a collectible, not a security, and therefore not subject to registration or disclosure. The SEC under the current administration is not going to test that theory. A private plaintiff, or a state attorney general, might. The second is a political question. The President of the United States personally promoted an asset that transferred at least $3.81 billion from ordinary Americans into a small circle of wallets, several of which are connected to his own family and business partners. Congress has the authority to investigate that. It has, so far, chosen not to.

If you bought the TRUMP token and lost money, we want your story. The intake form is at muckrakers.today/trumpcoinripoff. It takes about two minutes. Your account, with your permission, will be used to inform the ongoing reporting and, if you consent, to support any legal accountability that follows. We do not sell your data, we do not share your wallet address without your written permission, and every field except your name and email is optional.

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Share your story

If you bought the TRUMP token and lost money, we want to hear from you. The intake form is at muckrakers.today/trumpcoinripoff. Takes about two minutes. Your name and email are the only required fields.

Sources

1. On-chain aggregation of every TRUMP token trade on Solana, January 17, 2025 through July 4, 2026. Realized and unrealized PnL computed wallet-by-wallet across 4.6 million trades. Data pipeline: github.com/Parallax-Advisory/trump-coin-tracker.

2. Donald J. Trump, Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Report (OGE Form 278e), filed 2025. Section listing income and asset value attributable to the TRUMP token and related entities.

3. American Muckrakers reader intake, muckrakers.today/trumpcoinripoff, ongoing.

Originally appeared on Muckrakers.today, July 5, 2026.

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Nobody trusts the polls anymore, and they have earned that distrust.

A modern poll is built from the shrinking slice of people who still answer unknown numbers, agree to talk to a stranger, and say what they are willing to say out loud. Even when a poll is close, it is still just a snapshot, frozen on one day and stale by the time most people read it.

So we built something different.

It is called the Mood Forecast, and it is live now, free, at mood.voteroi.com.

The idea is simple: people tell you more by what they do than by what they say.

The Mood Forecast does not ask anyone how they plan to vote. It reads how the country is actually behaving, combines that with the hard facts of each race, and turns the result into a probability for every 2026 Senate and Governor contest.

Right now, the model gives Republicans about a 90% chance of keeping the Senate. That does not mean the country is in a big red wave. In fact, the national Mood Index is close to even, slightly blue. But the 2026 Senate map itself favors Republicans, and the model accounts for that.

That is the point. This is not vibes. It is not spin. It is structure plus behavior.

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The forecast blends three things:

Structure: who holds the seat, how the state has voted, whether there is an incumbent, and whether the candidates have the money to run real campaigns.

Mood: how people are behaving right now, including travel, spending, unemployment claims, background checks, gas prices, civic trust, anxiety signals, and other public data streams.

The thermostat: the long-running tendency of voters to push back against the party in power during midterms.

The result is not a fake horse-race margin. It is a probability. Florida Senate and Governor sits near a coin flip. Safe seats show up as safe. Close races show up as close. And when the model is unsure, it says so.

That matters because we are posting this before the next federal fundraising numbers are fully posted by the FEC. That is intentional.

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Federal candidates file their July Quarterly reports by July 15, covering fundraising through June 30. Once those numbers are in, we will update the model and show what changed. You can see what the Mood Index is telling us now, before the money reports land, and then watch what moves when the FEC data comes in.

That is the whole promise of this project: no hidden answer key, no pretending, no waiting until after the fact to explain what really happened.

We also grade the model publicly. The current backtest Brier score is about 0.12. A coin flip on every race would score 0.25. Lower is better. Perfect is zero. The model has been tested on elections it had not seen before, and November 2026 will be its first live public test.

It may be right. It may be wrong. But it will be visible.

That is more than most pollsters offer.

So go look at mood.voteroi.com. Check your state. Check the races. Watch the numbers move.

And if you want to help us keep building tools like this, independent, transparent, and not owned by the usual consultants, please consider making a contribution:

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We built the Mood Forecast because politics needs fewer recycled talking points and more public receipts.

Now the receipts are live.

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Happy Fourth of July! And to our friends north of the border, a very Happy Canada Day. This is a weekend for fireworks, family, and a little well-earned rest.

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So take it. Fire up the grill, watch the sky light up, and soak in the freedom this weekend celebrates. Because come fall, we have real work to do. The midterms are coming, and American Muckrakers will be in the fight, digging where others won’t and holding the powerful accountable.

That work runs on you. I’ll be candid: funds are low right now. Every dollar you give goes straight into reporting, investigations, and impact. Nothing wasted, all of it used well.

Here’s a special thank you. Anyone who donates more than fifty dollars before July 8th gets a copy of my upcoming book (cover below). It’s a limited offer, donors only, and a future collector’s item you won’t find anywhere else.

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Two quick asks before you head to the cookout. Visit muckrakers.today, poke around, and tell me what you think. And if you’re able, donate here so we can keep the lights on and the stories coming:

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Thank you for standing with us. Enjoy the holiday.

Your Friend in Democracy,

David B. Wheeler, Co-Founder and President, American Muckrakers

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Happy Fourth of July! And to our friends north of the border, a very Happy Canada Day (CORRECTION: July 1st). This is a weekend for fireworks, family, and a little well-earned rest.

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So take it. Fire up the grill, watch the sky light up, and soak in the freedom this weekend celebrates. Because come fall, we have real work to do. The midterms are coming, and American Muckrakers will be in the fight, digging where others won’t and holding the powerful accountable.

That work runs on you. I’ll be candid: funds are low right now. Every dollar you give goes straight into reporting, investigations, and impact. Nothing wasted, all of it used well.

Here’s a special thank you. Anyone who donates more than fifty dollars before July 8th gets a copy of my upcoming book (cover below). It’s a limited offer, donors only, and a future collector’s item you won’t find anywhere else.

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Two quick asks before you head to the cookout. Visit muckrakers.today, poke around, and tell me what you think. And if you’re able, donate here so we can keep the lights on and the stories coming:

Donate Here - $50+ = Free Book

Thank you for standing with us. Enjoy the holiday.

Your Friend in Democracy,

David B. Wheeler, Co-Founder and President, American Muckrakers

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Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

Formatting tips in Substack: set the header PNG as the post’s featured image, drop the book cover in the marked spot, and highlight the donate URL to turn it into a button if you want it to stand out.

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Happy Fourth of July! And to our friends north of the border, a very Happy Canada Day. This is a weekend for fireworks, family, and a little well-earned rest.

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So take it. Fire up the grill, watch the sky light up, and soak in the freedom this weekend celebrates. Because come fall, we have real work to do. The midterms are coming, and American Muckrakers will be in the fight, digging where others won’t and holding the powerful accountable.

That work runs on you. I’ll be candid: funds are low right now. Every dollar you give goes straight into reporting, investigations, and impact. Nothing wasted, all of it used well.

Here’s a special thank you. Anyone who donates more than fifty dollars before July 8th gets a copy of my upcoming book (cover below). It’s a limited offer, donors only, and a future collector’s item you won’t find anywhere else.

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Two quick asks before you head to the cookout. Visit muckrakers.today, poke around, and tell me what you think. And if you’re able, donate here so we can keep the lights on and the stories coming:

Donate Here - $50+ = Free Book

Thank you for standing with us. Enjoy the holiday.

Your Friend in Democracy,

David B. Wheeler, Co-Founder and President, American Muckrakers

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Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

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American Muckrakers today called on Democratic South Dakota US Senate candidate Julian Beaudion to suspend his campaign and withdraw, citing his financial history and serious questions about how his campaign is spending donor money.

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“I’ve done a deep dive on Mr. Beaudion’s history in Louisiana and South Dakota, and I can say with certainty, and on the record, Julian Beaudion is using his donor’s funds to pay his personal expenses and hire his friends and family,” said David B. Wheeler, President and Co-Founder of American Muckrakers.

South Dakota court records show a pattern of debt-collection and loan-servicing lawsuits and multiple bench warrants for failure to appear. American Muckrakers is also asking whether Beaudion’s candidacy was engineered to split the opposition vote in this three-candidate race and protect the incumbent, Sen. Thomas Pischke (R-SD), who was recently indicted.

“Did the current US Senator recruit Mr. Beaudion to run, to ensure his gravy train in DC doesn’t end? The evidence points that direction,” Wheeler said.

Read the full press release →

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It started with a website and one sentence. In May of 2022, we put up fireboebert.com, and the message on it was not complicated: we helped fire Madison Cawthorn, and now it was Boebert’s turn. [SOURCE: HuffPost, May 2022: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/madison-cawthorn-lauren-boebert-muckrakers-back-firing-campaign_n_62883dc4e4b05cfc268c57d2] The logo, fittingly, was a dumpster on fire. [SOURCE: Smoky Mountain News profile: https://smokymountainnews.com/archives/item/35461] I had just come off the Cawthorn campaign with my co-founder, Colonel Moe Davis, and I will be honest with you about what I thought at the time. I thought I had seen this movie before. I looked at Boebert and I saw Cawthorn’s twin sister. Same act. Same righteousness. Same certainty that the rules were written for other people. [SOURCE: Smoky Mountain News, same URL]

I want to be straight with you about the early days, because I have never pretended to be something I am not, and I am not going to start now.

In June of 2022, we reported on the networks of wealth and influence that quietly decide who rises in American politics. We named names. We reported, based on credible sources and supporting information, on introductions made in rooms most people never get to see inside. [SOURCE: D.B. Wheeler, “Remember Our June 2022 Reporting,” Feb 2026: https://www.americanmuckrakers.com/p/remember-our-june-2022-reporting] We believed then, and I believe now, that citizens have a right to understand those rooms and the people who arrange the introductions inside them.

Some of what we put out in those first weeks, we got wrong on the details. I have said that before and I will say it here. The press pointed out that, unlike Cawthorn, where there was video, some of our 2022 reporting could not be independently corroborated and had problems with dates. [SOURCE: CNN, June 2022, as summarized in Law&Crime: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/lauren-boebert-cannot-silence-speech-from-american-muckrakers-must-face-defamation-lawsuit-judge-rules/] When I was wrong on a date, I corrected it. That is the difference between us and the people we cover. We admit error, we fix it, and we do not retreat from the larger story.

Because here is what Boebert did next, and it is the part she never brings up.

She did not just deny what we reported. She tried to shut us up. She went and got a temporary restraining order against me in June of 2022. [SOURCE: Colorado Public Radio, July 2022: https://www.cpr.org/2022/07/22/lauren-boebert-no-defamation-suit-against-american-muckrakers/] And then a funny thing happened at the hearing to extend it. My attorney showed up. Nobody showed up for her. The judge vacated the order and dismissed the case. [SOURCE: CPR, same URL] Her threat collapsed the first time it touched a courtroom.

We did not stop. We filed a complaint against her with the House Office of Congressional Ethics. [SOURCE: CPR, same URL] We kept the pressure where it belonged, on the record and in the institutions that are supposed to hold these people accountable.

She won her primary that summer with sixty-six percent. [SOURCE: CPR, same URL] I will give her that. But then came November, and the district that was supposed to be a safe Republican seat nearly threw her out. She beat Adam Frisch by five hundred and forty-six votes. [SOURCE: Yahoo/WesternSlopeNow: https://news.yahoo.com/lauren-boebert-facing-defamation-lawsuit-231749545.html] Five hundred and forty-six. Remember that number, because a woman who wins by five hundred and forty-six votes is a woman who is paying attention to people like us.

Then she handed us September of 2023, and honestly, she did most of the work herself.

You know the story. Most people don’t know we broke the story and were first to report it.

The Buell Theatre in Denver, a city-owned house, a touring production of Beetlejuice. According to the city’s own incident report, she and her date were warned at intermission after three separate complaints, vaping, singing, causing a disturbance, and when a fourth complaint came in during the second act, security walked them out. [SOURCE: Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/13/lauren-boebert-beetlejuice-musical-ejected/; NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/lauren-boebert-was-escorted-beetlejuice-show-denver-allegedly-causing-rcna104793] The usher wrote in his report that when he told them they would be trespassing, they told him to go get the police, and that in the lobby one of them said, and I am quoting the report, “Do you know who I am.” [SOURCE: Scripps News incident report via AOL: https://www.aol.com/footage-shows-rep-lauren-boebert-221918920.html]

And what did she say? She said she was guilty of “laughing and singing too loud.” Her campaign denied the vaping. [SOURCE: NPR: https://www.npr.org/2023/09/13/1199188010/lauren-boebert-theater-beetlejuice-denver] Then the surveillance video came out, and the video showed the vape pen and the smoke and the flash photos, before the show had even started. [SOURCE: Scripps via AOL, same URL] That is the whole woman, right there in ninety seconds of theater security footage. Tell the easy lie, and assume the tape will never surface. The tape always surfaces.

Her own party noticed. Republican county commissioners started lining up behind her primary challenger, and more than one of them said the Buell Theatre was the last straw. [SOURCE: Yahoo/WesternSlopeNow: https://news.yahoo.com/lauren-boebert-facing-defamation-lawsuit-231749545.html]

So in December of 2023 she did the most Boebert thing imaginable. She ran. Not from politics, from her own district. She announced she was abandoning the Western Slope seat she actually lived in and moving hundreds of miles across the state to run in a safer, open district. [SOURCE: Roll Call: https://rollcall.com/2023/12/28/boebert-still-faces-fight-after-district-switch/; Colorado Sun: https://coloradosun.com/2023/12/29/the-unaffiliated-20231229/] She called it a fresh start. I called it what it was. When the going got tough, she abandoned the people who elected her.

Now. The part she really does not want repeated.

While all of this was happening, we had taken her to federal court. Not the other way around. In 2023, American Muckrakers and I sued Lauren Boebert in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, because she had made false statements about us, and because she had threatened our donors, the people whose contributions make this work possible, with lawsuits for the crime of supporting independent reporting. [SOURCE: Colorado Newsline: https://coloradonewsline.com/2024/06/26/boebert-defamation-settlement-lawsuit-colorado/; complaint, D. Colo. 1:23-cv-01463: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67489406/american-muckrakers-pac-inc-v-boebert/]

On June 9, 2024, a federal magistrate judge, the Honorable Kathryn A. Starnella, issued her written opinion. And she found that Lauren Boebert defamed me. Five separate times. [SOURCE: Newsweek: https://www.newsweek.com/colorado-lauren-boebert-lawsuit-american-muckrackers-1918210] She agreed that our donors never should have been threatened, and she let our claim over those threats move forward. [SOURCE: Reason/Volokh: https://reason.com/volokh/2024/08/12/empty-threats-to-sue-donors-of-entity-that-allegedly-defamed-you-could-be-tortious/] The same opinion held that public advocacy websites like ours are public forums, a ruling other courts have since cited. [SOURCE: Doe v. Alwan briefing citing the opinion: https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2025/01/Doe-v.-Alwan-MTD-file-stamped.pdf]

Sit with that for a second. The woman who got a restraining order to silence me, the woman who threatened the people who fund us, the woman who called us liars on television and on X, walked into federal court and walked out with a judge’s signature on a document that says she is the one who defamed somebody.

We settled later that month. The terms are confidential, and I am going to keep them that way. The case was dismissed with prejudice on July 8, 2024. [SOURCE: Colorado Newsline: https://coloradonewsline.com/2024/06/26/boebert-defamation-settlement-lawsuit-colorado/; docket order: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67489406/american-muckrakers-pac-inc-v-boebert/]

Vindication has a price. I paid it. Years of my life, my income, and my peace. [SOURCE: D.B. Wheeler, Feb 2026: https://www.americanmuckrakers.com/p/remember-our-june-2022-reporting] I would pay it again tomorrow.

So when people ask me why American Muckrakers is so entwined with Lauren Boebert, why we keep coming back to her, this is the answer. We did not pick a fight with a random congresswoman. We told the truth about a powerful person, she tried to make us pay for it, and a federal court told her she was the one in the wrong. That is not a grudge. That is the job. The job is to put the truth on the record and make it stick, no matter how much money or how many lawyers stand on the other side.

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She is up for reelection in 2026. She raised about seven hundred and twenty-three thousand dollars last year. [SOURCE: FEC committee C00728238: https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00728238/] She is not going anywhere.

Neither are we. Over the coming days, we’ll have more to say and will be doing everything we can to beat Boebert at her own game.

Join us, help fund our informational campaign against this menace: www.voteroi.com/support We need your help today.

DBW

About the Author

David B. Wheeler is President and Co-Founder of American Muckrakers, a public-interest accountability organization best known for exposing political hypocrisy, corruption, and misconduct. He has spent decades building organizations, working internationally, challenging powerful people, and occasionally making them wish they had chosen a quieter line of work. He believes in public records, hard evidence, civic courage, and the useful art of firing fools.

Disclaimer

The views expressed here are those of the author. This publication is for commentary, accountability, and public-interest reporting purposes. Nothing here should be taken as legal advice. Readers should evaluate the facts, review source materials when available, and reach their own conclusions.

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And here is the thing: Brian Bengs can win.

South Dakota voters are independent-minded. They know when Washington is broken. They know when the two-party food fight is not solving the cost of living, rural healthcare, veterans’ issues, corruption, or the basic problem of politicians answering to party bosses instead of real people. Brian’s campaign cuts straight through that noise. His message is simple: not red, not blue, just South Dakota.

He is already on the ballot. He has run statewide before. He has name recognition, military credibility, legal experience, and a serious independent lane in a state where voters are tired of being taken for granted. This is not a vanity campaign. This is a real race, and the way Brian wins is by building the biggest independent voter-to-voter effort South Dakota has seen in years.

So today, we are going to talk about his background, why this race matters, how an Independent can beat the machine, and what people across South Dakota and across the country can do right now to help.

You can learn more about Brian at bengsforsouthdakota.com.

And you can donate directly through VoteROI at voteroi.com/bb.

Brian Bengs is here. Let’s get into it.

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Takeaways:

• Brian Bengs appreciates the recognition of having a week named after him, marking a significant moment in his campaign journey.

• The podcast emphasizes the importance of engaging with voters and understanding their needs, especially in rural areas like South Dakota.

• Poll results indicate that Brian Bengs is in a competitive position against Mike Rounds, highlighting the potential for victory in the upcoming Senate race.

• The discussion revolves around the challenges faced by Democratic candidates in South Dakota, with a focus on the structural difficulties of a three-way race.

• Brian Bengs stresses the need for campaign resources and grassroots support to effectively challenge the incumbent and raise awareness.

• The speakers agree on the critical importance of local engagement and the necessity of addressing systemic issues affecting constituents in South Dakota.

Links referenced in this episode:

• Bengsforsouthdakota.com

• voteroi.com/bb

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• PPP

• South Dakota Democratic Party

It’s Brian Bengs Week on American Muck, and this episode of Muck You features David Wheeler in conversation with Travis Paulson, a farmer and ag entrepreneur from Wallace, South Dakota.

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This is the kind of conversation we need more of: grounded, rural, practical, and focused on what South Dakotans are actually facing. Travis brings the perspective of someone who understands agriculture, small communities, hard work, and the gap between what people need and what Washington usually delivers.

Brian Bengs is running for U.S. Senate in South Dakota as an Independent, offering voters a serious alternative to the same tired party machinery. His campaign is about service, independence, accountability, and giving South Dakotans a voice that is not owned by either political party.

Learn more about Brian at bengsforsouthdakota.com.

Donate to help Brian Bengs at voteroi.com/bb.

Donate to Brian Bengs Here

Listen to the full episode here or wherever your get your pods.

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Takeaways:

• Travis Paulson shares his journey from construction management to taking over the family farm.

• The agricultural landscape in America is changing, with family farms facing increasing challenges.

• In South Dakota, farmers are struggling to compete with rising land prices and market fluctuations.

• Travis emphasizes the importance of integrity and honesty in politics, particularly in agriculture.

• He discusses the impact of foreign relations on the agriculture industry, especially regarding soybean exports.

• The precision agriculture business is evolving, and Travis and his son are at the forefront of this change.

Links referenced in this episode:

• yieldmaxagronomics.com

• bangsforsouthdakota.com

• voteroy.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Mankato State University

• South Dakota State University

• Precision Planting

• Mutiny Crop Performance

• Yieldmax Agronomics

In this episode, David Wheeler continues our series on Brian Bengs’ independent campaign for U.S. Senate in South Dakota with guest retired US Navy Captain Scott Butler.

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The conversation looks at why Bengs’ campaign matters, what an independent candidacy can offer in a state dominated by party politics, and how South Dakotans might respond to a candidate running outside the usual partisan machinery. Bengs brings a background as a military veteran, attorney, educator, and public servant, and his campaign raises a larger question: can voters who are tired of the two-party trap still build a serious alternative?

This is one in a series of conversations examining Brian Bengs, the South Dakota Senate race, and the possibility of a more independent politics in 2026. Listen to the epidsode below or on your favorite pod distributor like Apple or Amazon or Spotify.

Please support Brian’s campaign here: www.voteroi.com/bb or at bengsforsouthdakota.com

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Takeaways:

• Captain Scott Butler shares his strong belief that Brian Bengs is the right candidate for the Senate, emphasizing his dedication and work ethic.

• The relationship between Scott and Brian Bengs is rooted in years of military service, reflecting a deep mutual respect and camaraderie.

• Scott recounts how Brian Bengs handled difficult situations during their time at NATO, showcasing his principled approach to leadership and accountability.

• The discussion highlights Brian Bengs's commitment to ethics in politics, emphasizing the importance of integrity and public service in his campaign.

• Scott Butler describes South Dakota as a welcoming place, suggesting that Brian's approach to politics aligns well with the values of its residents.

• The podcast emphasizes Brian Bengs's independence from political parties, which Scott believes enables him to advocate for the people of South Dakota without self-interest.

Links referenced in this episode:

• vote roi.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• American Muckrakers

• United States Air Force

• NATO

• North Atlantic Treaty Organization

• Northern South Dakota State

• Senator John McCain

This episode is part of Brian Bengs Week, our focused push to lift up one of the clearest, most serious, and most needed voices in South Dakota politics.

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Brian Bengs is running to bring accountability, decency, and common sense back into public service. This conversation is about why that matters, why South Dakota deserves better, and how ordinary people can help build something stronger than the noise.

Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And please donate today at bengsforsouthdakota.com or voteroi.com/bb.

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