At OpenTheBooks.com, we believe transparency revolutionizes U.S. public policy and politics.
As a regular contributor to Forbes since May 2014, I published 206 investigations while writing an estimated quarter million words on the platform. In May 2018, Forbes upgraded my title to senior policy contributor.
Over this nearly eight year period, my articles were a-political and used hard data to fact-check Republicans, Democrats, and unelected bureaucrats. Since 2019, I published 112 articles for 13,031,558 views – an average of 116,353 views per investigation.
Here are three examples of our original reporting:
- The Biden Administration left behind up to 600,000 weapons, 75,000 military vehicles and 16,000 night vision devices in their hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan.
- No, President Donald Trump didn’t drain the swamp – the swamp grew by 50,000 executive agency positions during his four years.
- In 2004, Dr. Fauci received a permanent pay adjustment for his biodefense work. In other words, Fauci was the top-paid federal employee precisely because he was paid to stop a pandemic.
In 2020, I published 36 investigations at Forbes and the editors chose 26 for special showcase on the platform, a designation called “Editors’ Pick.”
The first piece I published in 2021 broke national news that Dr. Fauci was the most highly compensated federal employee and even out-earned the president, four-star generals, and 4.3 million colleagues. That piece alone has 900,000+ views.
However, none of the 56 articles I published during 2021-2022 received an “Editors’ Pick” designation.
Something changed at Forbes after I wrote about Dr. Anthony Fauci.