Remember Our June 2022 Reporting on Wexner, Cruz & Boebert?
Vindication has a Price. And we paid it.
I never anticipated that asking hard questions about powerful people would cost me years of my life, my income, and my peace. Yet that is precisely what followed our June 2022 investigation into Lauren Boebert’s rapid political ascent.
We reported, based on a credible eyewitness source named Cindy and supporting information, that Boebert had been introduced to Ted Cruz at a private gathering in Aspen, at the home of billionaire Les Wexner. The story was part of a broader examination of the networks of wealth and influence that can quietly determine who rises in American politics. We believed then, as I believe now, that citizens have a right to understand those introductions and the people who facilitate them.
The response was immediate and severe. Boebert’s spokesperson declared the allegations “totally false” and “disgusting.” She posted on X: “Fact Check: Not true. Fake News.” Her team threatened legal action against American Muckrakers and signaled they would pursue our donors as well.
CNN’s Daniel Dale published a fact-check that identified several inaccuracies in our report, including a mistaken timeline on Cruz’s campaign contributions to Boebert. I acknowledged to Dale that we had been sloppy on certain details and that we owned those errors. Deadlines are unforgiving, sources can vanish, and sometimes material is released before every fact is triple-checked. I have never shied away from that responsibility.
At the same time, I told Dale, and I maintain this position, that the core narrative rested on a credible source who was in a position to know, and that the central claim warranted serious examination. Dale was unable to independently confirm or refute the Aspen meeting itself. He presented Boebert’s denial plainly and fairly. We accepted the legitimate criticism, corrected what required correction, and continued our work.
What followed was far more consequential. Boebert filed a protective order against me personally, alleging threats I never made. We responded by filing a federal defamation lawsuit against her in North Carolina State Superior Court, and later removed it to Federal Court, in Denver.
Throughout the litigation, it became clear that Boebert was desperate for the case to disappear. She pressed repeatedly for a settlement that would silence us. We refused. We refused because the principle at stake, whether elected officials can use the threat of legal action to intimidate journalists and their financial supporters, was too important to compromise.
The Federal Magistrate Judge in Denver ultimately ruled in our favor on a critical point: he found that Boebert had illegally threatened our donors. That finding stands as a formal recognition that the tactics deployed against us crossed legal boundaries and is also a precedent available to other that are wronged. After years of costly litigation, we reached a settlement in 2024 that preserved our unrestricted right to continue reporting on her. The case was resolved, but the financial and personal toll was immense. Donations to American Muckrakers collapsed in the aftermath. My income, which depended entirely on this work, was devastated. Yet the principle held.
Today, in February 2026, the landscape has shifted markedly. Elon Musk has publicly described Les Wexner as a “co-conspirator of Epstein” in posts on X,
pointing to newly unredacted Department of Justice files that detail Wexner’s financial and personal ties to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Epstein’s black book includes David Koch, the late conservative megadonor whose family’s political apparatus has long overlapped with the same networks that elevated Boebert and Cruz. These documented connections reinforce the broader pattern of elite access and influence our reporting sought to illuminate.
The Aspen gathering we described was not a casual social occasion. It was a point of intersection in a larger system, one that Epstein actively exploited and that figures like Wexner and the Kochs occupied. Our story, though imperfect in places, was directed toward that reality long before it became headline news.
I do not pretend every detail was flawless. I do assert that we were ahead of the curve, that we stood our ground when powerful interests demanded silence, and that persistence in the face of defamation and financial pressure is what independent journalism requires.
American Muckrakers endures because of readers who share that conviction: that power must be held accountable, that the public deserves answers, and that truth is worth defending even when the cost is steep. We continue this work through our Substack, our podcast MUCK YOU!, and our daily reporting on X. But we cannot sustain it without your support.
If you value journalism that admits its errors, corrects them, and still refuses to retreat from the larger story—if you believe elected officials should not be permitted to illegally threaten the financial backers of independent reporters—then I ask you to stand with us.
Your subscription or one-time contribution keeps this work alive. It enables us to keep asking the questions others avoid and to keep exposing the intersections of wealth, politics, and predation that shape our democracy.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for believing the work matters.
Together, we continue.
DBW
David B. Wheeler is President and Co-Founder of American Muckrakers and a candidate for Clerk of Superior Court in Mitchell County, North Carolina. His views are his own, and written directly by David, with spell checking and minor edit by AI. An essay or story is never independently generated by AI and posted. That would be just stupid.
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