“In 2015, Cheri Jacobus ( @CheriJacobus), a seasoned Republican political operative with a long and impressive resume, was asked to take a job with the Trump campaign. She declined.... Thread. 1/ https://gregolear.substack.com/p/blacklisted-an-interview-with-cheri

...Months later, when she blew the whistle on one of Trump’s early lies—that his campaign was self-funded, and that he wasn’t in any way involved with a secret super PAC—the vindictive candidate and his goons did what they could to ruin her life.... 2/

...Trump denigrated her on Twitter. FOX stopped booking her. CNN blacklisted her. She was catfished. Her AOL account was hacked. She began to fear for her safety.” 3/

“I saw that Lewandowski lied to the Post...I then came forward to confirm that the Post report was correct, & that Lewandowski & Trump were lying. Lewandowski then had to recant, and Trump quickly shuttered the super PAC to make the story go away.” - @CheriJacobus 4/

“I was immediately canceled on and blacklisted by FOX. Bill O’Reilly hopped on Gretchen Carlson’s show—midday—to lie for Trump and said Trump had no super PAC.” 5/

Jacobus knew what she knew bc she had previously met w/ & turned down a job w/ Trump’s campaign. Desperate to undermine her credibility re: his super PAC $$$, Trump falsely claimed she had come to them & been turned down. In reality, it was Jacobus that turned down Trump. 6/

“CJ: CNN banned me after the Trump tweets. They treated his lies as true and decided I was no longer credible as a political pundit—and had a “conflict,” as I was later told....” 7/

“The summer before, Lewandowski, in an attempt to impress me so I’d work for the campaign, bragged that Trump was great friends with Roger Ailes and Jeff Zucker [CNN chief] and had both of them ‘in his pocket.’” 8/

“(At that time I was not aware or was not remembering that CNN chief Jeff Zucker & Trump were best friends & that Zucker had greenlit The Apprentice...when he was head of Entertainment at NBC). I didn’t believe him at the time, but by Feb., I knew he was telling the truth...” 9/

“One reason I know Zucker was actively protecting Trump was that not only did he ban me after I brought up that super PAC, but the transcript from only that segment was scrubbed from their archives. The rest of the show is there. I was told this by a reporter who checked.” 10/

“McGahn said Trump would delete the defamatory tweets about me if I signed an NDA agreeing not to sue, & to not give any details about discussions I’d had in Trump Tower the summer before (i.e., about that super PAC this former FEC commissioner was helping Trump lie about).” 11/

“I refused to sign the NDA. I was told by my pal who had first approached me the summer before to work for Trump that McGahn was extremely upset and wanted to know “WTF was going on.” He thought we had a deal. There was now a target on my back.” 12/

“In August 2016, POLITICO was coming out with an in-depth investigative piece on the catfisher that they’d been working on for more than four months. The final item was to call Team Trump for comment & to inform them that the investigative piece was about to be published.” 13/

“No one but me, Rick [Wilson] & a couple of others...knew that this piece was being written. But as soon as Trump team were told—but b4 publication—my email was hacked & emails were deleted, including those from the catfisher with the IP addresses & other identifiers.” 14/

“By 2016, I’d been on TV as a political pundit over 1500 times since 1997. It was a marketing tool for my consulting business. As a single, self-employed woman, it was rather important. In one fell swoop by Trump, it was gone. And I’d done nothing wrong.” 15/

“Initially at the catfishing, I contacted Preet Bahara’s office. Later, once I was hacked, they got the SDNY (FBI) cyber crime division involved...Now that the FBI had a federal crime, they officially launched their investigation. “ 16/