Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s office has fired key financial policy adviser Aaron Kofsky. 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. Shortly before the deadline he’d been given, he forwarded Politico’s Morning Money newsletter, which reported that he’d left Vance’s office. 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. “I’m sure it was ultimately because those silly Reddit posts were exposed,” he tells WIRED. “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 wrote about experiencing withdrawal symptoms from trying to kick tianeptine, or “gas station heroin,” and kratom. He advised other users on how to transport drugs through TSA checkpoints without getting caught. In one post, Kofsky listed all of the drugs he had tried up until that point and rated them on a scale of 1 to 10.
As recently as January, Kofsky posted a video from a Senate committee hearing of Vance questioning a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent on nitazenes, or manufactured opioids. Kofsky posted the video to several drug-related subreddits, including r/Opioid_RCs, r/Drugs, r/Opiates, and r/ObscureDrugs.
“Surprising! Politician knows about nitazenes. Ohio Senator JD Vance Asks Witness About Nitzenes. Is it just me, or is this super surprisng? Like I’m just confused how this guy had heard of zenes? 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 deeply regret posting these comments. 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.”
Kofsky played a significant role in shaping Vance’s banking and financial services policy. 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.
You can follow all of WIRED’s 2024 presidential election coverage here.
