JD Vance’s Senate Office Fires a Key Advisor Who Posts About Drug Use on Reddit
A recent WIRED investigation found that Kofsky had posted extensively on Reddit over a period of years about using opiates and cocaine, as well as calling Vance a “Trump boot licker.” A recent WIRED investigation found that Kofsky had posted extensively on Reddit over a period of years about using a variety of drugs, including cocaine and opiates, and called Vance a “Trump boot licker.”
WIRED had been preparing a story about the news and had asked Kofsky to comment by Monday morning. He sent Politico’s Morning Money, which stated that he had left Vance’s office, before the deadline. It was “an honor to serve Senator Vance and the people of Ohio over the past two years,” he told Politico, and he was “thankful that dark period in my life is far behind me.”
Kofsky continued, “Listen, I definitely screwed up, but we’ve reached an unprecedented level of absurdity when this much work goes into smearing an America First staffer.” He went on to question WIRED’s motives for publishing the piece, saying “something else is going on here.”
According to Kofsky, he was suspended on October 16, the same day WIRED published its report, and was subsequently fired. He tells WIRED that he’s sure the Reddit posts exposed were ultimately responsible for his firing. “I’d note that those posts were written in good humor and didn’t hurt anybody.”
Vance’s office declined to comment.
Under the username PsychoticMammal, Kofsky posted about using cocaine, opiates, kratom, and many others for more than a decade. He described his withdrawal symptoms after trying to quit tianeptine (also known as “gas station heroin”) and kratom. He gave advice to other users about how to get drugs past TSA checkpoints. Kofsky rated all the drugs that he’d tried on a 1-10 scale in one of his posts. Kofsky posted the video to several drug-related subreddits, including r/Opioid_RCs, r/Drugs, r/Opiates, and r/ObscureDrugs.
“Surprising! Politicians know about nitazenes. Ohio Senator JD Vance Asks Witness About Nitzenes. Is this just me or is it super surprising? Kofsky posted about the video in r/ResearchChemicals. I can’t imagine any of his colleagues know anything about them,” Kofsky posted about the video in r/ResearchChemicals.
Kofsky appears in the background of the video.
“Like millions of Americans, I’ve struggled with drug use, which in my case was mostly an attempt to self medicate against the effects of epilepsy and epilepsy medication,” Kofsky said in a statement to WIRED last month. “I regret making these comments.” He wrote “much of the language” for Vance’s proposal to regulate cryptocurrency and consulted with a number of crypto firms on its policies, according to Politico. He wrote “much of the language” for Vance’s proposal to regulate cryptocurrency and consulted with a number of crypto firms on its policies, according to Politico.
“I was an asset to Vance’s office,” he says, “and will be an asset to whatever organization I end up with next.”
Shortly before publication of this story, Kofsky took to X to share his version of events.
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