3 days ago
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SALT LAKE CITY — Jennica Pounds has go possibly the astir salient property — after its person — down an enactment to which she has nary nonstop oregon authoritative ties: Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
And nary 1 adjacent knew her sanction until astir 2 months agone — by design.
“I’ve ever been a recluse, a large introvert,” the 43-year-old parent of 2 tells The Post from her Utah home. “Being thrust into fame successful specified a abrupt manner, successful a polarizing manner, was conscionable shocking.”
Known arsenic DataRepublican connected X, Pounds — petite successful oversized achromatic sunglasses and a beige cardigan, with a mysterious, somewhat intimidating air, icy similar a young Joan Didion — doesn’t adjacent enactment for DOGE. But her unpaid efforts for President Trump’s government-slashing inaugural person ruffled feathers anyway.
“I americium helping retired with this due to the fact that if we don’t chopped spending, cipher has a future,” she says. “The enactment itself, astir discovering waste, should not beryllium partisan. Cutting spending is not an ideological thing,”
Pounds has been deaf since contracting spinal meningitis astatine property 2. She is connected the autism spectrum and has expressive dysphasia, a neurological information characterized by trouble successful producing connection portion comprehension remains intact. In an interrogation with The Post, she uses text-to-speech bundle to pass successful a robotic voice.
Pounds cracks a wry grin erstwhile asked if she’d similar a authorities tally wholly by artificial intelligence.
“That’s accelerationist talk,” she types into her laptop earlier deleting the line.
But she’s surely nary instrumentality of Washington elites.
“I americium converging much and much that the conspiracy theorists were right. That this was a superb systems hacking connected the portion of a precise fewer people. And I consciousness similar if a fewer radical tin propulsion this off, past a fewer radical tin halt them, too,” she says.
By Pounds’ estimation, what she calls an “Ouroboros of Interest,” an “infinite wealth hack,” is “the crushed wherefore our shortage spending is truthful retired of control,” and it got a foothold nether President Ronald Reagan with US-led initiatives to combat communism globally.
Instead of dissolving aft the Soviet Union’s collapse, galore of those organizations expanded their powerfulness and influence, acting arsenic a revolving doorway for erstwhile congresspeople and Fortune 500 CEOs to siphon payer wealth successful the sanction of US foreign-policy interests portion producing small of worth successful return, she says.
She points to 1 specified NGO, the States United Democracy Center, that received $17 cardinal successful payer wealth done USAID — but, she says, appears to person done thing with the currency different than nutrient a Muppet video to “promote democracy.”
That’s portion of an endemic signifier — “These groups astir ever person the words ‘Security’ oregon ‘Democracy’ successful their names,” Pounds says — of nonprofits sitting connected payer warfare chests and doing small but big the occasional league oregon YouTube seminar that struggles to get 100 views online.
Prime examples see the US Global Leadership Coalition, contiguous a supergroup of the largest nongovernmental organizations funded by payer wealth done USAID, and the National Endowment for Democracy, made up of the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute.
After Pounds shared a database of USGLC committee members — which included executives from Pepsi, Disney, Pfizer, Google, Citigroup and Land O’Lakes food — the enactment deleted the leafage from its website.
She besides uncovered that Hunter Biden was connected that board, wherever helium played a pivotal relation successful allocating $16.5 million successful USAID wealth to Burisma, the Ukrainian vigor institution whose committee helium besides sat on.
“That close determination is wherefore Hunter Biden was worthy the $50,000/month,” she says of his Burisma salary.
A self-identified “DOGE volunteer” and “small-r republican,” Pounds comes from the satellite of Big Tech, wherever she worked successful programming for Amazon, eBay and Snapchat — processing tracking bundle for sign-language-to-English translation astatine that past one.
Of Big Tech’s liberal lords precocious cozying up to Trump, including her ex-boss Jeff Bezos, she says, “I deliberation these CEOs were ever much connected the libertarian side. Many of them privation to absorption connected the method broadside and don’t privation to truly bash the humanities side. For the deficiency of a amended term, they got bullied into the woke docket of 2020. I deliberation without a motivation core, they tin get bullied backmost into a definite docket again.”
Her anonymous social-media account, @DataRepublican, gained a humble pursuing aft accurately predicting swing-state results successful the 2016 and 2020 elections — but exploded this twelvemonth erstwhile she began gathering AI models to survey authorities spending connected NGOs.
It got the attraction of Elon Musk, who has shared her posts connected his level much than 30 times. She went from 10,000 followers to much than 740,000. Her website, datarepublican.com, acts arsenic a whiteboard tracing authorities grants and the large players involved, creating an scale she says wouldn’t person been imaginable earlier AI, owed to the complexity of accusation involved.
After Pounds posted successful January astir a migrant nonprofit called Global Refuge receiving $229 cardinal successful payer money, Musk responded, “Noted.” Days later, helium announced DOGE was shutting down payments to the group, and successful March, Trump announced a frost connected specified overseas aid.
All this has placed a people connected DataRepublican’s back. Rolling Stone doxed her — Pounds believes a subordinate of the deaf assemblage sussed retired her individuality and leaked it to the erstwhile euphony magazine. The left-leaning Salt Lake Tribune followed up by doxing her husband, Brent Pounds, a erstwhile National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration serviceman turned whiskey maker who runs the Utah distillery Spirits of the Wasatch.
That’s erstwhile the convulsive messages and decease threats started rolling in. Soon, pizzas were being delivered to their house, a noted precursor to swatting, a vile caller inclination of left-wing agitators phoning successful fake constabulary reports to nonstop SWAT teams to blimpish social-media personalities’ homes.
Fearing for her life, Pounds packed up her 2 young children and headed to Florida, wherever she stayed with her parent for six weeks until things calmed down. She was undergoing vetting to go a national appointee — she declines to accidental wherever — but unaware of a tweeting moratorium she decided to withdraw, surmising she could beryllium much influential successful her extracurricular role.
“They lone travel aft you erstwhile you’re a menace to the system. Keep going — you’re doing unthinkable work,” Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 moving mate, tweeted aft Pounds’ doxing. Interim US Attorney for DC Ed Martin offered legal assistance.
Pounds is arsenic unnerved by the wide absorption to Musk and DOGE. Around the clip left-wing terrorists were mounting Tesla dealerships ablaze successful protest, a website popped up with a representation of a Molotov cocktail implicit her husband’s business.
“Why are you warring for Pepsi and Coca-Cola and the oligarchs?” Pounds asks of the DOGE backlash. “It’s astir David and Goliath. You person a broadside that concentrates astir of the political, astir of the corporations, astir of the power. And past you person everyone other who’s conscionable trying to get by.”
Brent and Jennica met successful 2008 connected Match.com and joined soon after. While little politicly engaged than his wife, Brent is an enthusiastic protagonist of her mission.
“She fundamentally won’t fto thing basal successful her way. If you look astatine her life, it’s beauteous overmuch changeless obstacles. She conscionable decides, ‘Well, I’ve got to flooded that,’” helium told The Post.
“She won’t backmost down. If she believes powerfully that what she’s doing is right, she’s not going to beryllium bullied oregon pushed away.”
While Pounds continues to physique bundle to payment deaf people, moving DataRepublican is its ain full-time occupation and has go thing of a household affair. Pounds is truthful beloved successful her ngo to exposure waste, adjacent her mother has gained a fashionable X following, mirroring Musk’s ain mom, Maye.
While Pounds admits she straight communicates with immoderate DOGE workers, she’s ne'er met oregon privately interacted with Elon Musk — not that she wouldn’t invited a powwow with the world’s richest man.
“But not for the crushed others think,” she says. “I privation to marque the lawsuit for him believing successful Christ.”
She can’t beryllium definite wherever each this is heading but believes we’re successful the midst of a 2nd American revolution.
“These radical are blessed to spell afloat throttle and fto the full state crash. Because they’ll astir apt beryllium good nary substance what. They clasp each the power,” she says of America’s NGO-funded shadiness government.
“I can’t foretell wherever it goes. I deliberation this direction, the DOGE direction, is the astir peaceful outcome.”
English (US) ·