Plagiarism Update — Jessica Reed Kraus

Jessica Reed Kraus stylishly photographed for her recent New Yorker profile — credit to Jeff Minton

At 3pm EST on September 10, I was scheduled to talk on the phone with a journalist from a major media outlet. The subject we had planned to discuss was Jessica Reed Kraus, the erstwhile “mommy-blogger” who I had just published an article accusing of plagiarism. Specifically, plagiarism of me. If you go back and read my article, the plagiarism is incredibly brazen and sloppy. Still, she might’ve gotten away with it, as it was only out of pure happenstance that I even saw her offending Substack post; somebody had sent me a link, thinking I would be flattered by her favorable references to me. Instead, I was confronted by a slew of shameless plagiarism. The journalist I’d been scheduled to have the call with had been working a longer-term investigation of Jessica Reed Kraus, so the plagiarism angle would’ve been of obvious relevance. But then just before 3pm, I got a message from the journalist: “Hey... Charlie Kirk got shot?” He needed a raincheck. That was the first I’d heard about the Charlie Kirk incident. And so, for the past two weeks, I have not revisited the subject of Jessica Reed Kraus.

However, it’s now worth a semi-belated followup. On the morning of September 10, Jessica Reed Kraus published a Substack post extending what she said was “a sincere apology to Michael Tracey.” I had already told her in a series of Direct Messages that my preferred resolution to the matter would be for her to publicly acknowledge she had repeatedly plagiarized, and take down her post which contained the most egregious plagiarism. She did end up taking down that post. (Wisely, I saved a copy.) But like most things involving Jessica Reed Kraus, at least in my extremely limited experience, nothing else made much sense.

She claimed that she was in a “rush” when she initially posted the plagiarizing article, and so had “failed to properly include quotation marks around portions of text drawn from his reporting.” But that’s not what the problem was — at all. It wasn’t simply a matter of her failing to include some quotation marks. That still would’ve been bad, if it happened, but could also possibly indicate an innocent mistake, and would be easily correctable.

The actual problem, though, was that she lifted entire paragraphs of mine, switched around some words here and there, and presented them as her own.

For example, here’s one of my sentences:

It was determined over the course of the 2021 trial that De Georgiou, a posh British socialite, minor actress, and underwear model, was above the legal age of consent in England at the time she claims to have first encountered Maxwell and Epstein, hence nothing which occurred to her could be regarded as “illegal sexual activity.”

And here’s a sentence that Jessica Reed Kraus purported to have authored:

Over the course of the 2021 trial, it was established that De Georgiou—a posh British socialite, minor actress, and underwear model—was above the legal age of consent in England at the time she claims to have first encountered Maxwell and Epstein. Accordingly, nothing that occurred to her could be regarded as “illegal sexual activity.”

As you can see, she just swapped out some words and presented them as her own. “It was determined” becomes “It was established,” and shifted further down the sentence. “Hence nothing which occurred” becomes “Accordingly, nothing that occurred.” Etc.

For the sake of brevity, I’m just giving you one example here, but she did this over and over again. Read my full original article to see the rest. (There might even be some more that I missed, but the evidence was so overwhelming that to bother collecting additional examples would’ve been almost superfluous.)

Obviously, adding quotation marks wouldn’t have solved the problem. She still would have pilfered my paragraphs, made some trivial cosmetic adjustments, and then presented them as her own. If she had added the quotation marks she claimed she innocently failed to add, due to being in a “rush,” she would’ve been misquoting me! Because she had already finagled with my sentences! Which strongly suggests willful, conscious plagiarism, rather than an “honest but careless mistake,” as she called it.

There’s no telling how many times she has done this. I also caught her cribbing other materials in a different post. (Again, see my original article.) So, of the two total posts of hers that I had cursorily examined, she plagiarized in both of them! It thus stands to reason that if I went back and looked through the rest of her output (which I’m not inclined to waste time doing) I would find many more examples of plagiarism.

In her “apology,” she tries to act like she was doing me a favor. “I was thrilled to find another source backing my perspective,” she writes. “In the piece posted I included a video of his NewsNation interview, link to his Substack, title of his books, and direct links to two of his recent articles.”

Only problem: I haven’t written any books. I wish I had written some, but I haven’t. (Yet.) So god knows what books she’s even talking about here.

I want to thank the commenter “Implausibly Convenient Alibi,” who warned me in advance not to get “sucked into the vortex” of Jessica Reed Kraus. This was good advice. In our series of DMs, she swung back and forth between trying to blame me, blaming her editor (whose identity she said was a secret), blaming a lack of WiFi, accusing me of maliciously attacking her, accusing me being ungrateful, etc. But I didn’t take the bait, and just kept repeating that my issue was with her plagiarism, and whether she was going to take the necessary action to rectify the plagiarism. I’m not going to post all the DMs, because I guess they could be considered presumptively private, but the sum and substance was constant evasion, incoherent excuses, attempts to emotionally manipulate, and just generally trying to suck me into her “vortex,” which I somehow managed to stoically resist.

Our little saga ended up getting referenced in a September 15, 2025 article in the New Yorker, entitled “How Jessica Reed Kraus Went from Mommy Blogger to MAHA Maven.” I am still steadfastly uninterested in learning what a “Mommy Blogger” is, although I’ve now come to vaguely understand that there was a “Mommy Blogger” to RFK Jr. to Trump pipeline, and Jessica Reed Kraus was apparently the foremost personification of this. OK. Anyway, here is the parenthetical that I’m mentioned in:

(Recently, a fellow-Substacker, Michael Tracey, accused Kraus of plagiarizing his work in a couple of her Epstein posts, one of which was subsequently removed. In a newsletter, Kraus apologized, saying that she had made “an honest but careless mistake” in one instance, but denied that she had done so in another.)

First off, I find the description of me as a “fellow-Substacker” to be obnoxious and condescending — and I told the New Yorker fact-checker as much after I’d talked to journalist Clare Malone. It comes across as subtly trying to put me on par with Jessica Reed Kraus, simply because we happen to use the same publishing platform. Whenever people ask me what my preferred title is or whatever, I just say “journalist.” Not that complicated. I would never voluntarily self-identify as a “Substacker,” as much as I appreciate Substack, because it’s such a dumb and trivializing little label. And as I explained to Clare Malone, it would be as though I referred to her as someone’s “fellow-tweeter” — rather than as a “journalist” — simply because she happens to use the same social media platform as someone else she’d engaged with. That would obviously be intended as a petty dig. Not that I’m above petty digs, but I’m not sure what I would’ve done to warrant it in this circumstance. I just got randomly plagiarized, pointed it out, agreed to talk to Clare Malone about it when she contacted me, and then for some reason I end up getting snidely characterized as “fellow-Substacker” in the pages of the New Yorker. Whatever.

Something else in the New Yorker article stood out. It was reported that “Kraus said that her annual revenue from Substack subscribers is more than a million dollars,” and on top of that, “advertising brings in an average of twenty thousand dollars per month.”

Jeez, maybe I should start plagiarizing! Seems lucrative!

Seriously though — she’s making that kind of money from her bizarre mommy-blogging to MAGA-cheerleading Substack, and she can’t get it together to produce original content without shamelessly cribbing from others? Or to even verify basic facts in the “apology” post she was compelled to issue — like whether I have written any books? Who the hell is this lady?

A bunch of people contacted me claiming that when you register a new account on Substack, you are automatically subscribed to Jessica Reed Kraus, because she’s so aggressively boosted by the Substack algorithm. I haven’t been able to confirm if this is true. Chris Best, the Substack executive, weirdly has not responded to my emails and texts. But last I checked, she was the second-most popular “culture” writer on Substack, so it wouldn’t be surprising if new users are “recommended” her publication by default. In which case, Substack is algorithmically boosting a serial plagiarist, which seems like a problem — even if she doesn’t appear to fully grasp that what she’s doing is plagiarism. Frankly, she seems to exist on some other plane of reality that I don’t have much interest in visiting, because my brain might melt. In our DMs, I asked if she considers herself a journalist, and she said no, despite previously having described herself as a journalist, as recently as February 2025. But then she changed her mind, or something. Which I guess she thinks gives her license to plagiarize? Who knows. Again: I’m trying to avoid getting sucked too far down this vortex.

That said, I couldn’t help but notice when Jessica Reed Kraus popped up recently in a totally unrelated context. I had been listening to the podcast interview with Pam Bondi in which she notoriously vowed to crack down on “hate speech.” The podcast was hosted by Katie Miller, who just happens to be the wife of Trump White House operative Stephen Miller, but I’m sure that had nothing to do with how Katie was able to score the Attorney General as a guest on her newly launched podcast. Anyway, after they got done explaining how the Justice Department planned to clamp down on disfavored political speech, Katie asked Pam to fill everyone in on the cool new “group of other conservative women” she was part of.

“Oh, so this is funny,” Bondi said. “This is a small little group” that just started up, and they all gave her permission to reveal their existence exclusively on Katie Miller’s podcast. “It’s just a group of women who truly — we rely on each other, we share stories, when one of us gets beat up, we’re all there to protect each other.”

They text a lot, chat on Zoom, and have had one in-person meeting, but plan on doing more, Bondi said. Members of this “eclectic, fun group of women” include Pam Bondi, Danica Patrick, Tulsi Gabbard, Lara Trump, Vani Hari (“The Amazing Food Babe”), Mikhaila Fuller, Dr. Gabrielle Lyons, Meghan McCain, Cody Sanchez, and — you guessed it — Jessica Reed Kraus.

God, we are so “cooked,” as the kids like to say.

Jessica in the upper left-hand corner of this group of amazing conservative women

Then there was yet another totally unrelated context in which Jessica Reed Kraus popped up recently. CBS News just published a new article on the events leading up to Jeffrey Epstein’s death, and it contains some previously unreported details surrounding Nicholas Tartaglione, a former cop and convicted quadruple murderer who was Epstein’s cellmate during a portion of his stay in federal custody. On July 23, 2019, Epstein was found unresponsive in his jail cell. The officer who discovered him wrote in a memo that Epstein said “his bunkie” — Tartaglione — “tried to kill him.” Epstein later seems to have modified his story, and the episode is chalked up as a suicide attempt, but it’s still murky what exactly went on. Either way, Jessica Reed Kraus, also known as “House Inhabit,” makes a cameo:

Tartaglione said in a recent interview with the podcast “House Inhabit“ that Epstein also left a suicide note and had even offered Tartaglione money to kill him. Neither of those details, if true, are referenced in any of the Bureau of Prison records that were reviewed by CBS News.

It would be great to know what role, if any, Nicholas Tartaglione played in the death of Jeffrey Epstein. But if any of the relevant information has to be filtered through the dysfunctional “vortex” of Jessica Reed Kraus, we’re pretty much screwed. Or “cooked,” as the kids like to say.

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