Bulwark Takes - The Pentagon Tried to Blackmail a Reporter—Just for Asking Questions

Episode Date: December 13, 2025

Tim takes on a disturbing press-freedom story: after a Mother Jones reporter asked the Pentagon about a senior adviser tied to Pete Hegseth, Jack Posobiec, a Pentagon-connected figure, sent threatening emails targeting the reporter’s personal life. Read the Mother Jones story: “I Asked the Pentagon About Pete Hegseth’s Mentor. Then the Threats Started.” — https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/eric-geressy-goodreads-pentagon-dod-pete-hegseth-jack-posobiec-threat/

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like making renewable diesel from agricultural waste, people trading and shipping fuels to our customers, and people helping truckers fill up and get maintenance at our convenient locations. They're part of almost 300,000 jobs BP supports across the country. Learn more at p.com slash investing in America. Hey, everybody, Tim Miller from the Bullwark here. A really crazy story from our friends at Mother Jones.

I wanted to highlight for you. It is by Dan Friedman, a good reporter over there. And the headline of that story is, I asked the Pentagon about Pete Higgsett's mentor, then the threat started. This story, you know, is going to get into some sexual accusations back and forth that we're going to need to go through to kind of understand what's happening. But I just want you to really understand why this is such an important story why I want to focus on it here.

The fact that a reporter could reach out to the department, ask about a high-ranking official's behavior, and asking questions about their past for a profile, like that is the right of a reporter in this country. Like we have freedom of the press, we have freedom of speech, and that this administration's response to that, those requests has ended up being the real story here. And this is a Department of War, Department of War, Department of War, Department of War.

The Department of War has kicked out all of the real reporters from the Pentagon. And it's crazy we don't like talking about this every day. Like that North Korea, USSR style coverage of our military, at least within the Pentagon Press Corps right now. It's just only sycophants are allowed in there. They've kicked out all the real reporters. And so simultaneously when they're doing that, When people outside the building outside the Pentagon are trying to do reporting, you're about to see how they act and how they treat folks doing real reporting, which is to intimidate and threaten them using cutouts and using friends of the department and friends of Hague Seth. So it is a truly astonishing and un-American behavior from our Department of War, which is what we're calling it now, Department of War.

Here's the story. Here's how it starts. Six weeks ago, Jack Posobio asked me to comment on whether I have a creepy fetish for Asia. Asian women. This was one of several false and wildly pressed allegations at the far right pundit and newly minted member of the Pentagon Press Corps. This guy's in the press corps, said he planned to include in a story I'm writing about you. Freedmanor, I'd say, immediately understood this email to be a threat. Those not made explicit because the day before I'd sent the Pentagon press office a series of questions concerning Eric Gressy, a senior Pentagon advisor

to Pete Hegseth. Gressy had been a longtime friend and mentor of Hegseth. He's part of the Pentagon effort to install a warrior ethos within the U.S. military, and he now leads a team reviewing the role of women in the armed forces. So I think reasonably, Friedman was looking to his past and was asking questions about this guy who is reviewing the role of women in the armed forces and wants to, you know, know whether past allegations of his behavior with women are true. For the response to that from the Pentagon, not to be, not simply no comment, not simply, oh, I want to correct the record, not, I didn't, not even complaining about the fake news.

So the response to be to go to get some fake news adjutoprop reporter and have that person go after the reporter doing a real, real work investigating the department, and to have this hack threaten them. That is crazy. That's house of cards type stuff. Like that, like what? this reporter's personal life is being threatened by a supposed reporter who's there to cover a very important department, the one that's overseeing the bombings in the Caribbean right now.

This guy, if you don't know, Pizza Gate, Jack Posobi, I've got out with him a fair amount over the years, and he was one of the leading purveyors of Pizza Gate. Pizza Gate, as I think probably most people watching this, no, ended up resulting in one of the folks who consumed the various influencers pushing this, far-right influencers pushing this, including Pesobiac. One of them was radicalized with such a degree that he went to a literal pizza parlor with a gun in Washington, D.C., threatening and menacing people, looking for the supposed child sex ring this in the basement of the pizza parlor. Posovic was, like, involved in pushing all that. And he was on the scene one time. One time he pushed back from me and saying, he wasn't really him because he was just trying to get to the bottom of it.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We were just trying to get to the bottom of it, you know? He was just asking questions about the supposed child sex trafficking wing in the basement of a pizza parlor with no basement. So that's Posovic. He's now supposedly a reporter with the obligation of holding people in the Department of War to account and reporting on what's happening inside the department. And instead of doing that, what he's doing is doing the dirty work of Heng Seth and his minions by going after a reporter who was actually doing. Some real journalism.

For a little more background on Gressy, Higgseth once called him, Gressy, again, being the guy that Friedman was reporting on from Mother Jones. Gressy, Hegseth once said, was my toughest critic and my best mentor. Hegset this March presented him with the Distinguished Service Cross, and he's super influential inside the Pentagon. And so among the things that Friedman was asking about was in 2016, Gressy lived with a woman who evidence suggests may be a Chinese national. There's some reasonable questions there about somebody who's like a senior advisor to the head of our military, was entangled, you know, possibly the Chinese spies.

And maybe not. It's certainly something worth looking into. It wasn't something that was, you know, recklessly reported and bandied about. The reporter also asked about a 1997 case where a jury acquitted him of a domestic violence charge after an accusation by his then-wife. The reporter uncovered at Mother Jones was that Goressey had a Goodreads account, rare person in the Trump administration, to read. So shout out to Gressy for that. But among the things he was reading was books featuring stories about Asian wife sharing. There were pornographic works with title such as Asian wife went with her dad's friend, a cuckold story.

These reviews appeared alongside some books by Hegseth, which, you know, were probably written at about the same level. You know, Hegseth is known for his like porn level writing. The books, not the Hegseth books, but the books that Gressy was reading include details. descriptions of cuckolding, group sex, lady boys, etc. Again, I just want to reiterate, because I don't want anybody to misconstrue. The board YouTube feed is one that is like, you know, really, like, I'm out here, like, Mike Johnson looking into the porn that people are watching. Like, I don't.

I don't really care. If you want to read a book about lady boys and cuckolding, like, God love you. This is America, USA. I also think that if you're going to be a senior. advisor to the military, and you're going to be overseeing what role women have in the military, and you have been accused, acquitted, but accused in the past of domestic violence. You've had some questionable relationships. You know, you have an open account on goodreads that demonstrates the type of material.

Like, it's worth mentioning in a story. It's worth asking about. And, you know, and I think, again, in a free country, I think the right thing to do would be to either have said no comment or to have Gressy called Friedman and be like, what kind of porn books are you reading, bro? Like, can I see your, can I see your porn hub account? Like, yeah, okay, I read a couple of the late ladyboy books. Guilty.

I also respect ladies in the military. And, you know, I don't appreciate this, you know, kind of journalism. That's a perfectly appropriate pushback. That's fine. We can do that. Like, you know, there can be a give and take between reporters and representatives of the government. That's not what they did.

They sicked Pesobiac on him. So it wasn't just the one time. I think it is worth mentioning that then after Friedman had thought maybe, you know, Pesobic was just rattled in his cage and he could continue on with the story, he heard from Pizza Gate Jack again. Jack said to him, I am, quote, finalizing my story and he wanted to know if me, being Friedman, his wife, or your in-laws, wish to comment. That message arrived one hour, 40 minutes after Friedman had written to Goresse, posing some last questions for him and telling him he was, quote, finalizing his story.

So you can just see what happens here. Like, Jack was mirroring the questions slash accusations that Friedman was offering to the press team at the Pentagon regarding Goresse. He was mirroring those questions and throwing them back on him and doing it in a way that was accusatory in the threatening, and frankly, is an attempt to blackmail. To his credit, Friedman in the Mother Jones story acknowledges that Posobic, in his, you know, emails in his various emails threatening him, included, said that he had two sources about, you know, certain behavior with women that this reporter had engaged in. And Freedman, to his credit, it's in the story that, like, he, one of the sources may have been a woman. He had a brief relationship with

a decade ago. Let me just continue reading this. He goes, Contrary to the email's depiction, however, that relationship was amicable. He says, but it was part of some personal messiness, especially around the end of my first marriage, and that is embarrassing. So, like, I said, everybody has stuff to be embarrassing that they've done, that they don't want their mom to learn about. The government shouldn't be blackmailing people with that because they are upset that reporters are trying to bring some sunlight to the types of people that have very influential roles in our military. It's crazy that that is happening. It's crazy that the person doing it, Jack Fasobiac, is allegedly a reporter himself.

Like, he's obviously in, you know, with the Pentagon press team. Like, he is pretending to be a reporter, but in fact, he's an arm of the Pentagon press team. And so that is the type of adjut prop we have inside the Pentagon right now. Like, not just, yes, sir, you're so great, sir, nice push-ups, sir, but like, what can I do for you to go after your foes? Those are the people that are now supposedly representing the Fourth of State at the Department of War. Really astonishing. I mean, not astonishing with this group, what you'd expect from this group, but the details of this story are crazy.

Go read the whole thing over at Mother Jones, support their journalism. Appreciate Dan Friedman for his work and for not being bullied by, um, by, by, Hig Seth and Pesobiac. All right, subscribe to us here as well. We'll keep you posted when I see stuff that catches my eye. They want to pass along to you guys. And make sure that hit that little bell and comment and make sure you know what's up with us because I'm always looking out for you.

All right, guys. We'll see you soon. Peace. Behind those warm and cozy nights at home, thousands of employees at BP go to work every day. People producing more U.S. natural gas. People building grid scale solar capacity. people turning landfill waste gas into pipeline quality renewable natural gas and people delivering all of that power where it's needed.

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