Forbes Editor Fired Over $6m Payoff Had Threatened Companies Who Dared Hire Outgoing Trump Admin Officials In 2021
Authored by Monica Showalter via American Thinker,
Remember how vindictive the political scenario after Joe Biden first took office? It wasn't just the draconian prosecutions of Jan. 6 protestors, most of whom were non-violent and unarmed, many of them little old ladies. One guy got sent to jail who wasn't even at the scene of the Capitol crowd control incident.
Randall Lane at the ‘Forbes’ 50 Over 50 Luncheon on Dec. 8, 2022. Credit :
Cindy Ord/Getty
There also were the blacklisters. They vowed to hunt down and punish one in one way or another any former official who spent time in the Trump administration, putting them on public lists to ensure that none would be able to find future employment. It was vicious stuff and there were former Trump small fry who were unable to get jobs after leaving the White House for no other reason but this..
The scandal-plagued Lincoln Project drew the most publicity for this blacklisting project, but there was also another skeevy group called the Transition Integrity Project, and together with the Lincoln Project Stasi-wannabes shared big-dollar donors. Both kicked off their blacklisting plans around the same time in the early part of 2021, seemingly coordinating their talking points. I wrote about that here.
There was a third advocate for blacklisting, too - this guy, Randall Lane, the chief content officer at Forbes magazine.
He wrote this:
According to NPR:
As a matter of fact, no, it's not different. All you have do do is look at the statements of Jen Psaki or Joe Lockhart to recognize the real lies. Somehow, those press secretaries didn't bother him.
This was just naked Trump hate, or some kind of talking points obedience as it came at the same time as the other two organizations beating that drum. Very disgusting to see in an editor who clearly was consumed by his own political hatreds, which only made themselves known at that moment. Weird, really.
Turns out this guy was on the take, though, and got fired from his job because of it, failing to disclose a $6 million payment from R.J. Shook, a content partner, in a transation explicitly forbidden by Forbes rules and its handbook. He, uh, forgot.
Really?
It's a rule everyone would have known about and would have been carefully enforced and I know this because I used to work there 20 years ago. I cannot imagine any of the great editors of Forbes I worked with - Bill Baldwin, Tim Ferguson, Laurie Minard, Nigel Holloway, or Luisa Kroll, to take a few examples, ever doing such a thing, it wouldn't happen, they were always very careful to avoid any conflicts of interest or violations of the rules, and they always kept politics out of their writing. They were extremely conscientious editors. They had integrity.
He didn't. So the question raised now is whether someone paid him off for that vindictive call for blacklists of former Trump officials. I have found no evidence it was R.J. Shook or Shook Research, they only revealed that Lane was buyable for the right price. The fact that Lane took big dollars, from Shook Research, which had an interest in rankings of money managers, probably indicated some kind of quid pro quo. So was there another payoff from somewhere else for the loud calls to blacklist? We know the donors were donating. That might be worth looking into given the egregious nature of what he did.
Tyler Durden Tue, 08/18/2026 - 20:55
Continue reading...
[ H/T ZeroHedge ]
Authored by Monica Showalter via American Thinker,
Remember how vindictive the political scenario after Joe Biden first took office? It wasn't just the draconian prosecutions of Jan. 6 protestors, most of whom were non-violent and unarmed, many of them little old ladies. One guy got sent to jail who wasn't even at the scene of the Capitol crowd control incident.
Randall Lane at the ‘Forbes’ 50 Over 50 Luncheon on Dec. 8, 2022. Credit :
Cindy Ord/Getty
There also were the blacklisters. They vowed to hunt down and punish one in one way or another any former official who spent time in the Trump administration, putting them on public lists to ensure that none would be able to find future employment. It was vicious stuff and there were former Trump small fry who were unable to get jobs after leaving the White House for no other reason but this..
The scandal-plagued Lincoln Project drew the most publicity for this blacklisting project, but there was also another skeevy group called the Transition Integrity Project, and together with the Lincoln Project Stasi-wannabes shared big-dollar donors. Both kicked off their blacklisting plans around the same time in the early part of 2021, seemingly coordinating their talking points. I wrote about that here.
There was a third advocate for blacklisting, too - this guy, Randall Lane, the chief content officer at Forbes magazine.
He wrote this:
According to NPR:
As a matter of fact, no, it's not different. All you have do do is look at the statements of Jen Psaki or Joe Lockhart to recognize the real lies. Somehow, those press secretaries didn't bother him.
This was just naked Trump hate, or some kind of talking points obedience as it came at the same time as the other two organizations beating that drum. Very disgusting to see in an editor who clearly was consumed by his own political hatreds, which only made themselves known at that moment. Weird, really.
Turns out this guy was on the take, though, and got fired from his job because of it, failing to disclose a $6 million payment from R.J. Shook, a content partner, in a transation explicitly forbidden by Forbes rules and its handbook. He, uh, forgot.
Really?
It's a rule everyone would have known about and would have been carefully enforced and I know this because I used to work there 20 years ago. I cannot imagine any of the great editors of Forbes I worked with - Bill Baldwin, Tim Ferguson, Laurie Minard, Nigel Holloway, or Luisa Kroll, to take a few examples, ever doing such a thing, it wouldn't happen, they were always very careful to avoid any conflicts of interest or violations of the rules, and they always kept politics out of their writing. They were extremely conscientious editors. They had integrity.
He didn't. So the question raised now is whether someone paid him off for that vindictive call for blacklists of former Trump officials. I have found no evidence it was R.J. Shook or Shook Research, they only revealed that Lane was buyable for the right price. The fact that Lane took big dollars, from Shook Research, which had an interest in rankings of money managers, probably indicated some kind of quid pro quo. So was there another payoff from somewhere else for the loud calls to blacklist? We know the donors were donating. That might be worth looking into given the egregious nature of what he did.
Tyler Durden Tue, 08/18/2026 - 20:55
Continue reading...
[ H/T ZeroHedge ]
