Early in 2023, Raw Story announced that it would heavily invest in our investigative journalism with the goal of bringing you hard-hitting and incisive news you wouldn’t find elsewhere.
Since then, Raw Story has hired a team of investigative journalists and published several hundred exclusive stories and reported commentaries that have together shone significant light into the darkest corners of politics and government.
We’ve also won three major national awards for this work, including Editor & Publisher naming Raw Story the “best news/political blog” of 2023.
So as we end this year and await the next — there will be no lack of opportunities for investigative journalists in 2024, it’s safe to predict — let’s take a look back at Raw Story’s top 23 investigations of 2023, as selected by Raw Story’s staff.
(And if you have a favorite that’s not on this list, drop me a message at levinthal@rawstory.com to let me know which one.)
Without further ado:
1.) ‘Our best face’: How ‘peaceful’ MAGA leader Amy Kremer cultivated ties to a violent Three Percenter group
Amy Kremer. Gage Skidmore.
The opening salvo in investigative reporter Jordan Green’s three-part series into an unknown subplot in the days leading up to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
2.) They blew up my life’: Fox News, a hidden camera and threats to an Indiana school administrator
‘They blew up my life’: Fox News, a hidden camera and threats to an Indiana school administrator
Indiana public school administrator Jenny Oakley. Doug McSchooler / Raw Story
The tawdry tale of how a cynical conservative crusade against wokeism smeared a public school educator.
3.) Losing track: ‘Old school’ policies and practices put national security at ‘high risk’
Losing track: ‘Old school’ policies and practices put national security at ‘high risk’
Digital illustration by Roxanne Cooper / Midjourney
You’ll never think about pen, paper and the nation's security in quite the same way again thanks to investigative reporter Alexandria Jacobson and her three-part "Losing track" series.
4.) Neo-Nazi Marine Corps vet accused of plotting terror attack possessed classified military materials: sources
A still from a propaganda video shows a neo-Nazi group that included Jordan Duncan conducting firearms training in Idaho in July 2020.
Courtesy U.S. Department of Justice
Raw Story exclusively learned that a man jailed for allegedly plotting to attack the power grid and commit acts of racial terror stands accused by the government of possessing classified Defense Department materials on a computer drive at the time of his arrest.
5.) 0-for-1,523: Senators attempt to explain why they never punish other senators for ethics violations
Since 2007, the Senate Ethics Committee has received 1,523 complaints alleging violations of Senate rules. In exactly zero cases did it vote to issue a “disciplinary sanction” — the most damning form of punishment against a wayward senator, a Raw Story analysis of congressional records indicated.
6.) Why big-time politicians are surrendering gobs of campaign cash to an unlikely source
Some of the nation’s most notable politicians danced cheek-to-cheek with the crypto industry, which was all too happy to line their pockets with campaign donations — until matters got very, very complicated.
7.) Selling hate, vulgarity and violence: How Trump and MAGA overran a quaint Midwest festival
Some of the pro-Donald Trump and anti-Joe Biden T-shirts for sale at the Mansfield, Ind., site of the recent Covered Bridge Festival. Curse words — many of the shirts featured them — have been redacted. Mark Alesia/Raw Story
It’s a shocking scene from rural Indiana. But you might very well recognize it in your own backyard.
8) ‘Monuments to me’: How politicians use donors’ leftover 'zombie' cash to buy themselves legacies
During the past decade, federal-level politicians have given more than $14 million in surplus campaign funds to non-profit institutions of higher education, a Raw Story investigation of Federal Election Commission records showed. While the practice is generally legal, campaign finance experts say such arrangements become ethically murky when the donations, directly or indirectly, create what amount to monuments to the lawmakers’ political legacies.
9.) A deafening silence from Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s Black football players
Contributing columnist Donnell Alexander contacted dozens of Black players across the last 30 years of Auburn football rosters to ask a simple question: should Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the school’s former coach, be denounced for his racist remarks? Their silence often spoke greater volumes than their comments.
10.) Ronna McDaniel's hair and makeup have cost GOP donors nearly $100,000
Ronna McDaniel (CNN screenshot)
When the Republican National Committee’s leader goes on television, conservative donors are helping make her hair and skin look their best, according to an analysis of federal campaign data by senior editor Sarah Burris.
11.) Tennessee cops let violent neo-Nazis off with warnings after they menaced a charity drag show
William Beals, a 15-year-old boy and Sean Kauffmann (l-r) outside a drag show in Cookeville, Tenn. on Jan. 22. Robert Bray is in the background at left.
Courtesy Josh Brandon
The chilling product of Green unearthing police bodycam video by utilizing the Tennessee Public Records Act.
12.) Lawmakers, law breakers: 37 members of Congress have violated a conflicts-of-interest law
George Santos
George Santos, R-N.Y., at a conference in Las Vegas last month. (Wade Vandervort/AFP)
During 2023, Raw Story exclusively identified more than three-dozen federal lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans, leaders and back-benchers — who broke a law Congress designed to police its own members’ actions.
13.) Revealed: Nearly $500 million continues to sit in a bloated, unused government fund
Stacks of money (Shutterstock)
Remember this revelation the next time the federal government is scrambling to fund something — or if you’d like a little money in your own pocket.
14.) ‘Protect them’: How S.C.’s honor-bound military college camouflaged its connection to Rudy Giuliani
In a series of internal The Citadel emails, which Raw Story obtained through a South Carolina Freedom of Information Act request, school officials detail how they decided to close ranks, protect themselves and deflect scrutiny over officials’ decision to let Giuliani keep an honorary doctorate degree the school gave him.
15.) Dem senator used to bash lobbyists. Now they're feting him at exclusive D.C. fundraisers.
Raw Story investigative reporter Mark Alesia and congressional correspondent Matt Laslo caught one long-time senator, who faces a tough reelection campaign, in a big-money pickle.
16.) KKK members pulled guns on pro-LGBTQ protesters — but Kentucky officers let them go free: police docs
Video shows KKK member Clayton Segebart waving a gun during an LGBTQ rally in Corbin, Ky. as Kenneth W. Hutton, a former city employee, looks on. Courtesy AJay Anderson
Two purported Ku Klux Klan members allegedly terrorized a pro-LGBTQ rally in Kentucky, and one pulled a handgun on protesters — but law enforcement officers on the scene did not arrest them, according to local police documents obtained by Green through a Kentucky open records request.
17.) Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition includes white nationalist, advocate of killing Obama
Trump at St. John's Episcopal Church (Photo: White House/Flickr)
Alesia shows how some of the former president’s most dogmatic 2024 supporters aren’t only preaching fire and brimstone, but violence and racism.
18.) Cyberthieves jacked a U.S. senator's campaign and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars
Raw Story revealed one of the most egregious instances of theft from a political committee amid a nationwide epidemic of political thefts.
19.) Revealed: Bomb-loving neo-Nazi is now menacing children
Jarrett William Smith in the Army in 2019 (left); Smith at an anti-LGBTQ protest in Sanford, N.C. last month.
Courtesy federal courts; Jordan Green
A former U.S. soldier-turned-neo-Nazi, who recently served a federal prison sentence for distributing bomb-making instructions for killing former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, protested outside a children’s story hour led by drag performers in October, Raw Story confirmed.
20.) Why aren’t corrupt lawmakers denied their pensions? Here's who to blame.
As Jacobson explains in troubling detail, there’s a lot of blame to go around, indeed.
21.) Angry, violent and abusive: Unsealed court docs allege Stewart Rhodes created ‘constant fear’ at home
Stewart Rhodes (Photo by Nicholas Kamm for AFP)
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — a key figure in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — beat his kids, used the toilet in their presence, encouraged them to use drugs and harbored an “obsession with sex (that) led him to incredibly inappropriate behavior around the children,” court filings obtained by Raw Story alleged.
22.) How Waco got Donald Trump to pay a huge bill for his MAGA rally
Trump’s presidential campaign committees are notoriously stingy when it comes to helping pay for and defray public safety costs associated with Trump rallies. But one central Texas city had some ideas.
23.) Trump golf course isn’t making the grade: code violation records
One of Trump’s California golf courses is deep in the rough, according to local documents Jacobson unearthed.
Have a confidential tip for Raw Story's investigations team? Email us at tips@rawstory.com or send your tip by mail to: News Tips, Raw Story, PO Box 21050, Washington, DC, 20009.
