The Mamdani Playbook: Politico Coordination, Record Alterations, and Threats Against Forensic Analysis

When a forensic accountant exposed a $2+ million PAC operation disguised as ‘grassroots,’ institutional power struck back with record alterations, coordinated media manipulation through Politico, and legal threats – revealing how political establishments silence forensic investigation.

This sequence of events started when Politico’s Jeff Coltin appeared to coordinate with Mamdani’s campaign to dismiss our bundler investigation as ‘false.’ It escalated to legal threats against both the forensic investigator and Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse, who amplified our findings to his 544K followers—institutional power in action

The legal threat came from Victoria Perrone, treasurer of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign, after we exposed their $2+ million Silicon Valley-funded PAC operation. What began as coordinated media damage control through Politico escalated to direct intimidation tactics when their narrative failed to silence our transparency reporting.

The evidence is devastating and the timeline is bulletproof. This is how a “grassroots revolution” deploys record alterations, coordinated media manipulation, and legal intimidation when you follow the money.

The Investigation That Started It All

What happens when forensic analysis exposes a ‘grassroots’ campaign’s financial irregularities? Legal threats. What began as questions about bundler irregularities would ultimately reveal something extraordinary—Zohran Mamdani’s “working-class revolution” was actually powered by a sophisticated $2+ million PAC operation funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, Hollywood celebrities, and out-of-state tech entrepreneurs.

On June 29th, we published “How Zohran Mamdani’s ‘Grassroots’ Campaign Engineered the Perfect Political Heist,” exposing how the campaign had leveraged a single bundler to generate $1.6 million—representing 94% of all contributions—while triggering $7 million in taxpayer matching funds. The piece revealed that despite 2.8 million Instagram followers, exactly zero people had donated directly through the campaign website. That same day, our investigation gained immediate national attention when we appeared on Newsmax with host Lidia Curanaj to discuss the bundling irregularities we had exposed. During that appearance, we met former Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey in the greenroom and discussed Mamdani’s campaign finances.

The day after, June 30th, we followed up with “The Mamdani Deception: The Grassroots Campaign That Never Existed.” This technical analysis included source code from Mamdani’s website proving the donation infrastructure couldn’t track individual contributions—making the massive bundler attribution mathematically suspicious.

On July 1st, we returned to Newsmax for follow-up coverage with host Lidia Curanaj questioning the campaign’s bundling practices ([Video: Part 1], [Part 2]). The pressure was building.

The Moment Everything Changed

On the morning of July 2nd, former Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey—who had learned about our bundling investigation during our June 29th Newsmax appearance—contacted the NYC Campaign Finance Board with pointed questions about bundler Jerrod MacFarlane for her upcoming New York Post op-ed. She had been following our reporting and wanted official answers.

Within hours, something extraordinary happened. Campaign finance records that had shown MacFarlane bundling $1,603,331.85—94% of all campaign contributions—were quietly altered not once, but twice.

First, MacFarlane’s attribution vanished completely. Then, as if someone realized that looked too suspicious, he reappeared credited with just $5,807. The $1,597,524.85 difference was suddenly reclassified as donations with “no intermediary”—magically transforming professionally bundled money into the appearance of organic grassroots support.

Real-Time Damage Control

The Coordinated Contact

That same evening, July 2nd at 7:15 PM EDT, something revealing happened. Jeff Coltin from Politico’s New York Playbook filled out the contact form on our website with a message that wasn’t seeking information—it was delivering a warning.

The message was aggressively framed—not as a neutral request for comment, but as advance notice that our findings would be dismissed as unfact-checked “theories.” More damning was the timing: Coltin was contacting us on the same day as the record alterations, giving us exactly 13 hours to respond before his article would be published at 8:19 AM the following morning.

But Coltin’s message revealed the first signs of apparent coordinated damage control. His message came just hours after campaign records were secretly altered—suggesting he was either informed by the campaign or reacting in tandem. He claimed “the campaign deleted MacFarlane from the report, which the CFB confirmed”—acknowledging that the campaign had made the deletion while suggesting regulatory approval.

The 13-Hour Publishing Window and the Phantom CFB Email

At exactly 8:19 AM EDT the next morning on July 3rd—just 13 hours after his contact—Politico published Coltin’s piece with a completely different narrative. What had been described in the email as a campaign deletion suddenly became the CFB’s fault entirely. The article claimed, “it was a clerical error by the NYC Campaign Finance Board,” a “data entry error,” and a “glitch in our system” supposedly confirmed by a CFB staffer.

The article claimed campaign spokesperson Andrew Epstein had provided “an email” from a CFB staffer confirming the “glitch” explanation. But this supposed CFB email was never published, never shared for verification, and contradicted Coltin’s own private correspondence where he acknowledged “the campaign deleted MacFarlane from the report.”

This pattern suggests coordinated activity: Coltin’s private email acknowledged the campaign’s deletion, but his published article blamed CFB system errors while claiming to have CFB documentation that was never made public. The campaign successfully executed a blame-shifting operation where their data entry error (made by campaigns when filing) was reframed as a CFB system glitch.

The article called our documented findings “false” when we had simply reported information directly from the CFB website—meaning Politico was labeling our use of official government records as “false” while printing unverified campaign spin as fact. This represents a coordinated shift in blame strategy. In the email, Coltin acknowledged the campaign had made the deletion. In the published article, the campaign was absolved and the CFB was blamed entirely. The article claimed campaign spokesperson Andrew Epstein had provided documents supporting these new explanations—but none of this documentation was published or shared for independent verification.

The Narrative Shift

The evidence points to either the campaign provided questionable documentation to shift blame to the CFB, Coltin deliberately withheld evidence of the real sequence, or multiple government officials lied about system errors. Any of these scenarios suggests coordinated disinformation designed to protect the campaign while scapegoating regulators.

Coltin’s article proceeded without any attempt to verify our side of the story, despite his supposed request for comment. We didn’t discover his email until 10:03 AM when it was caught by our spam filter—hours after his 8:19 AM publication. However, the 13-hour window from his 7:15 PM contact to his 8:19 AM publication was clearly insufficient for genuine fact-checking, especially given the overnight timing. This wasn’t objective journalism—it seemed to function as coordinated damage control, advancing a predetermined narrative that shielded the campaign from accountability.

Our Counter-Investigation

But while Politico was preparing coordinated damage control—likely writing and submitting Coltin’s article within hours of his 7:15 PM contact—we were already documenting the evidence that would expose the entire operation.

By 4:55 AM on July 3rd, we had published “CAUGHT: Mamdani Campaign Finance Records Altered Twice After We Exposed $1.6M Irregularities,” complete with before-and-after screenshots proving the alterations had occurred. At 8:19 AM, Coltin’s damage control piece was published on schedule.

That evening, we published “EXPOSED: How Politico Coordinated Damage Control for Mamdani’s $1.6 Million Campaign Finance Scandal,” documenting how a major news outlet had become an extension of campaign communications strategy.

The timeline reveals the sophisticated nature of the operation: while we were providing forensic evidence of record alterations, they seemed to be executing a coordinated media strategy to dismiss our findings before they could gain traction. What should have been a routine fact-checking process became what looks like a carefully orchestrated campaign to protect political interests through institutional media manipulation.

The $82,000 Question

Central to this entire scandal was a significant apparent professional oversight. Victoria Perrone is the President and founder of Spruce Street Compliance, which was paid $82,000 by the Mamdani campaign for compliance services and is responsible for monitoring filings to ensure accuracy and adherence to campaign finance laws — including intermediary attributions like those at issue here.

Perrone’s close involvement with the campaign is evident from her June 26th social media post showing her posing with Mamdani at a campaign event—just 72 hours before our investigation would expose the financial irregularities her firm was paid $82,000 to monitor.

The PAC Coordination Network

Our July 8th investigation, “The $2 Million Grassroots Laundering Operation Behind Mamdani’s Revolution,” revealed the full scope of what triggered this unprecedented retaliation campaign. We had documented a $2+ million PAC ecosystem that contradicted every element of Mamdani’s “grassroots” narrative.

The coordination evidence was undeniable: shared vendors between supposedly “independent” PACs, same-day expenditures suggesting coordinated timing, and the smoking gun—WFP National PAC’s June 11th payment to Make The Road Action of exactly $45,697.14, the same figure referenced in our investigation as evidence of real-time coordination—a precision that defies coincidence.

The Elite Funding Network

The elite funding network told the real story. Leaders We Deserve PAC, which contributed $300,000 to WFP National PAC, was funded by Silicon Valley “godfather” Ronald Conway ($300,000), Bill Gates’ daughter Phoebe Gates ($75,000), Steven Spielberg & Kate Capshaw ($25,000), and GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner ($20,000) among others.

While Mamdani told NBC News “I don’t think that we should have billionaires,” his political rise was powered by the exact billionaire class he condemns.

Independent Validation

Our findings were independently validated by The National Pulse, which reported that Mamdani “received over $2 million in PAC spending” from “Silicon Valley billionaires and elite Democratic Party donors,” confirming that “the total PAC spending on behalf of Mamdani runs about $300,000 more than his campaign committee was able to raise, calling into question just how ‘grassroots’ the political operation really was.”

The Escalation to Legal Threats

The Dark Money Exchange

On July 6th, we posted a tweet connecting Mamdani’s anti-colonialism rhetoric to his financial hypocrisy: “Zohran Mamdani lectures you about colonialism while sipping iced coffee on stolen Lenape land—funded by NYC taxpayer subsidies and nonprofit dark money. The only thing he’s decolonizing is your wallet.” This referenced the PAC coordination and “dark money” funding that would be fully documented in our upcoming July 8th investigation.

This response from a compliance expert who managed $80 million for Senator Fetterman’s campaign was remarkable. “Dark money” refers to political spending by organizations that don’t disclose their donors—a basic concept in campaign finance. For someone overseeing professional compliance operations to claim ignorance of this fundamental term raises serious questions about professional judgment.

The exchange gained wider attention when The National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam intervened, posting our campaign finance records and responding to Perrone: “You’re a campaign finance person pretending not to know what dark money is? Ok, sure.” Perrone continued the evasive pattern, replying “That’s a PAC…” as if PAC coordination somehow negated dark money concerns. Kassam responded, “Holy shit are you really this ignorant or are you pretending? A lot of people are going to see these tweets and start questioning why you’re playing dumb here. Very sketchy!”

Two days later, on July 8th, we published our comprehensive PAC investigation, “The $2 Million Grassroots Laundering Operation Behind Mamdani’s Revolution,” which cited Perrone’s July 6th tweet as misleading given the clear coordination we had documented.

The Retroactive Spin

On July 10th at 6:36 PM, facing scrutiny over her apparent ignorance claim, Perrone attempted damage control:

This attempted clarification—changing “What’s nonprofit dark money?” to claiming she meant “What nonprofit dark money?”—was transparently calculated. Whether she was claiming ignorance of the concept or demanding specifics about Mamdani’s funding, both scenarios are damaging for a professional compliance expert. She was literally rewriting her public record in real-time as our investigation gained traction.

The Final Threat

The final escalation came on July 11th when Raheem Kassam—Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse with 544K followers—amplified our campaign finance visuals to his massive social media audience. This represented a dangerous expansion beyond our previous television coverage: our forensic documentation now spreading virally across social media with the credibility of a major media figure’s endorsement.

Within hours, at 12:29 PM that same day, Perrone issued her legal threat:

The threat came as a reply to Kassam’s amplification. However, the X reply mechanism reveals the true target: when Kassam retweeted our CFB documentation, Perrone’s reply to his retweet automatically included our @handle because we were the original poster.

More importantly, Perrone had been directly engaged with us since July 6th when she replied to our tweet about “nonprofit dark money.” Her July 11th reference to “I corrected my tweet” clearly referred to her July 6th response to us, making the targeting obvious. She was targeting us—the original investigator—while using Kassam’s amplification as the pretext.

Given her direct engagement history with us, combined with the unclear phrasing of her threat following Kassam’s retweet, we asked for clarification about whether she was threatening us, Kassam, or both. She hasn’t responded.

Update: As of Sunday morning, July 13th at 9:00 AM, Victoria Perrone has had more than 41 hours to clarify whether her defamation threat was directed at the forensic investigator, the prominent journalist who amplified the findings, or both. She has not responded, despite her pattern of immediate social media engagement throughout this investigation. Her silence after we documented the X mechanics that prove she was targeting the original investigator suggests the threat was exactly what it appeared to be—an attempt to intimidate transparency reporting.

The Professional Questions This Raises

If this was truly about protecting accuracy, why didn’t Perrone address the substantive issues raised in our analysis? Instead of threatening legal action, why not provide the missing documentation or explain the compliance oversight failure? Either she’s confident the evidence can’t be refuted (making the threat frivolous), or she knows it can be refuted but chooses intimidation over transparency. Both scenarios expose the threat as an abuse of legal process designed to silence legitimate investigation rather than correct any actual errors.

Perrone’s threat lacks any legal foundation: Publishing accurate analyses of official government records is protected speech serving the public interest. Our investigation followed professional forensic accounting standards, sourced every finding to official documents, and has been validated by subsequent events—including the campaign’s own record alterations.

Complete Documentation Preserved

Given the documented pattern of record alterations and tweet revisions throughout this investigation, we have preserved complete screenshots of all relevant social media exchanges and campaign finance records.

View Complete Tweet Thread Documentation

This preservation includes:

• Victoria Perrone’s original July 6th “What’s nonprofit dark money?” response
• Her July 10th attempted revision claiming she meant “what” not “what’s”
• Her July 11th defamation threat directed at unclear targets
• Our July 11th request for clarification (still unanswered)
• Raheem Kassam’s CFB documentation that triggered the final threat

Screenshots preserved due to documented pattern of post-publication alterations by campaign officials and the public interest in maintaining an accurate record of this intimidation campaign.

What started as a data trail led to a defamation threat.

Conclusion: When Masks Come Off

Victoria Perrone’s defamation threat represents the moment when the Mamdani campaign’s “grassroots revolution” revealed the institutional machine underneath.

Based on publicly available records, we published official government records and faced coordinated retaliation involving record alterations, real-time media coordination, and legal intimidation—all deployed by a campaign that built its brand around fighting exactly these kinds of elite power plays.

The truth has a way of coming out. Official filings don’t lie. Spreadsheet patterns don’t change when the camera’s on. And defamation threats don’t erase forensic audits. This isn’t about politics—it’s about forensic accounting. The mathematics of deception remain constant regardless of the political narrative. And the last thing the Mamdani campaign wants is a pissed-off forensic accountant defendant who relishes subpoena power.

The Mamdani campaign can threaten, coordinate, and manipulate. But they cannot change what the official records reveal: their “grassroots revolution” was an elite operation from day one, funded by billionaires and coordinated through professional networks.

The only question now is whether voters will accept the manufactured narrative or demand accountability from those who claim to represent them while deploying every elite tactic to avoid scrutiny.

If regulators quietly change records under media pressure, and journalists echo campaign spin without evidence, who protects the integrity of public data? Democracy depends on who’s allowed to ask the questions—and who gets punished for it.

This investigation is based on Federal Election Commission filings, NYC Campaign Finance Board records, and documented public communications as of July 13, 2025. All amounts and dates are verified through official government sources. The forensic analysis presents documented financial relationships and coordination patterns based on official records.

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Written by Sam Antar

Forensic Accountant & Fraud Investigator

© 2025 Sam Antar. All rights reserved.