Makena Kelly: Hey, it’s good to be back.
Lea Feiger: I am very happy that you are here. And Tim Marchman, director of science, policy and security at WIRED. Hello, Tim.
Tim Marchman: Hey, I’m very happy to be here.
Lea Feiger: I’m so glad you’re both here today. We have a lot to discuss. Makena, you wrote this article, which our listeners can check out on WIRED.com. It’s in the show notes. But let’s start with the basics here. Who is Aaron Kofsky and what does he do for JD Vance?
Makena Kelly: Aaron Kofsky is a financial advisor at JD Vance. Vance, of course, is on the Senate Banking Committee, so he works a lot on crypto policy and banking policy. When Silicon Valley Bank went bankrupt, Politico wrote that Kofsky was very key to Vance’s thinking when it came to new regulations in that space. Before joining Vance’s staff, he was on Pat Toomey’s staff, and before that he was also in the SEC.
Lea Feiger: And needless to say, if the Trump-Vance ticket wins, there’s a good chance he’ll follow Vance directly into some bigger political jobs.
Makena Kelly: Good. He is being talked about and some Bitcoin people consider him at least a temporary SEC chairman if Trump were to win.
Lea Feiger: Wow. So why do we care about this guy? Why are we talking about Kofsky today?
Tim Marchman: Well, as Makena’s research shows for over a decade, she’s been posting on Reddit about her use of a truly staggering variety of drugs, including cocaine, various opiate derivatives, and MDMA.
Lea Feiger: I’m talking about a whole host of drugs that we weren’t even familiar with when this story began.
Makena Kelly: Research chemicals.
Lea Feiger: Research chemicals.
Tim Marchman: One is tianeptine, which is also known as gas station heroin. It is illegal in 12 states. It is an unscheduled and unregulated antidepressant that can be purchased in convenience stores and creates an opioid-like effect and has a reputation for causing really unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. And the other drug is kratom, which is a little bit… It mimics the effect of opioids. It is very lightly regulated, unregulated, and commonly purchased in convenience stores. I’m sure many people have seen it when they go to the gas station in some parts of the country. So during this period of time, I wasn’t just writing about how maybe I had done a few drugs here and there. He was writing in detail and just three months ago about smuggling them through the TSA, about their effects on him, about how he was going through withdrawal, and generally writing like he was addicted to heroin and kratom from the gas stations. And the goal of this report is not to judge him for what he does recreationally. The point is that this is someone who occupies a very powerful and quite superior position. So this raises serious questions about, among other things, Vance as a manager and he is a very, very inexperienced politician. And here you have a very key staff member posting all kinds of things online that led to a trail that Makena was able to connect to Kofsky personally. There are many questions about how this could continue for so long.
