Watch what you post online, kids.
As Wired reports, Aaron Kofsky, a top financial policy advisor to Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, used to post online about his love for various drugs — cocaine, oxycodone, MDMA, and kratom, among many others — tips for how to smuggle said drugs through airport security, and even suggested that "half of Congress" probably "rails lines."
In addition to advising Vance on financial policies related to cryptocurrencies and banking regulations, Kofsky has held roles at the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee and as an advisor to former Securities and Exchange Commissioner Mark Uyeda. He also advised former Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey.
Yet, as Wired reports, Kofsky has meanwhile spent his time in Washington posting prolifically in multiple drug-happy Reddit forums under the handle @PsychoticMammal, with his 11-year history of posts about loving, doing, and transporting drugs spanning the course of his political career.
Wired was able to link the account to Kofsky by cross-referencing its unique handle with other accounts across the web.
Wired's reporting is significant in part because of Vance's hardline stance against drugs, and Kofsky's reported role in helping "Vance flesh out his opposition to some cryptocurrency regulation," as Politico reported earlier this year.
In one particularly egregious post dating back to May 2022, PsychoticMammal took to the r/Cocaine subreddit to suggest that users looking to ferry cocaine through airports might try "putting a bag in between pages of a book or in your wallet."
"I've never had an issue," PsychoticMammal noted of their method.
According to Wired, Kofsky would have been advising Toomey at the time. That same month, the account wrote that "coke then opiates is always my go-to."
More recently, in January of this year, PsychoticMammal took to Reddit to disparage Vance, calling him a "Trump boot licker" in a since-deleted post to the forum r/ObscureDrugs while discussing a video of the Ohio senator questioning a former Drug Enforcement Administration official about the synthetic class of opioids known as nitazenes. (The video was posted by PsychoticMammal, who shared the clip — in which Kofsky is clearly visible in the background — to multiple subreddits.)
"I just can't believe that this Trump boot licker Vance is ahead of the curve here," the user wrote, as quoted by Wired.
In a statement to Wired, Kofsky acknowledged the posts, writing that "like millions of Americans" he's "struggled with drug use," a compulsion he attributed to a personal battle with epilepsy.
"I deeply regret posting these comments," he added. "I'm not proud of this and I'm embarrassed it's being publicized in this way, but I am thankful to say that part of my life is behind me."
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