Nicole Shanahan allegedly tried to bribe WaPo reporters

AP Photo/Eric Gay

Nicole Shanahan has “benefited from a huge divorce settlement” from the Google co-founder Sergei Brin to launch themselves into the conservative political ecospherereported The Washington Post – and the reporting includes the astonishing claim that she offered a $500,000 bribe to the paper’s reporters to reveal the sources who spoke about her.

The To inform in-depth profile from Shanahan by Elizabeth Dwoskin, Ashley Parker, Meryl KornfieldAnd Aaron Schaffer“Nicole Shanahan’s astonishing journey from tech royalty to rising MAGA star,” published Wednesday, chronicles the attorney and tech entrepreneur’s path to becoming Robert F. Kennedy Jr running mate and enjoying new-found fame on the right after dropping out of the race and endorsed former president Donald Trump.

Shanahan has become “a powerful advocate” for Trump, the newspaper reported Afterby “encouraging independent voters to support his bid for the White House on Fox News, a series of podcasts and its increasingly popular social media feed.” She has also “rebranded herself as a wellness guru who promises to ‘Make America Healthy Again’ (MAHA)” — an obvious play on Trump’s MAGA slogan.

The article is full of juicy details about Shanahan’s whirlwind romance with Brin — reportedly started after they met while she was engaged to her first husband. Jeremy Kranzwho “soon discovered the affair” and “sought to have the marriage annulled after just 27 days” – a volatile relationship that caused division with Brin’s family and professional colleagues and then plunged into scandal amid a Wall Street Journal report that she was having an affair with Brin’s long-time boyfriend Elon Musk.

The sources for this reporting are: After quoted “34 people familiar with her rise, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive matters, along with court documents, photos, text messages and screenshots,” and noted that many of Shanahan’s former Silicon employees Valley now worries she will use the huge pile of money she got in her divorce settlement with Brin to “tilt the razor-thin race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, or to bring unverified medical views to the attention of to a wide audience.’

The article also includes this anecdote about how Shanahan reacted when she heard about the After was working on a story about her – by trying to bribe the reporters to reveal their sources:

Shanahan became aware of the reporting for this article while she and Kennedy were still campaigning. In June, she texted an employee The Post had contacted to propose a deal: Shanahan said she would pay “your friend” — The Post reporter — “half a million dollars to be a whistleblower” to to expose people Shanahan claimed were spreading false information about her.

The contact relayed the offer to a Post reporter, who did not respond. After multiple requests for interviews with Shanahan since April, The Washington Post sent her a detailed list of questions last week. She said she rejected parts of The Post’s reporting but did not provide specific answers. “I’m so sorry that you feel it’s appropriate to do this for political reasons,” she said. “It is a very sad state our country is in.”

Read the article The Washington Post.

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