Nicole Shanahan offered to pay a reporter $500,000 to expose their sources: report
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- Nicole Shanahan offered $500,000 to a reporter to reveal their sources, The Washington Post reported.
- Shanahan was RFK Jr.'s running mate before the pair dropped out and endorsed Trump.
- The Washington Post continued its profile on Shanahan despite her alleged offer.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s former running mate, Nicole Shanahan, offered to pay a reporter $500,000 to "expose people Shanahan claimed were spreading false information about her," according to The Washington Post.
On Wednesday, the newspaper published a profile on Shanahan, a 39-year-old California-based attorney, founder of patent technology company ClearAccessIP and the Bia-Echo Foundation, and the ex-wife of Google cofounder Sergey Brin.
During the reporting process, the Post reported Shanahan found out that the outlet had contacted one of her associates for its story. In June, Shanahan asked via text if the associate would relay an offer back to the Post reporter: "half a million dollars to be a whistleblower" about the sources she believed had wronged her, according to the outlet.
It's not clear specifically which reporter Shanahan made the alleged offer to, but Ashley Parker, the Post's Senior National Political Correspondent posted about the offer on X on Wednesday.
"When we began reporting on Nicole Shanahan, she offered us $500,000 to be 'whistleblowers' and share our sources," Parker wrote on X with a link to the piece. "We declined — but kept reporting our profile."
Shanahan did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment on The Washington Post's reporting.
At the time the reporters were reaching out, Shanahan was still campaigning for the vice presidency alongside Kennedy Jr. before the pair dropped out in August and endorsed Donald Trump.
Shanahan's associate told the Post reporter about her offer, which the reporter did not respond to, the outlet reported.
When the Post finally got a response from Shanahan after months of reaching out to her for comment on the story, Shanahan rejected some of the outlet's reporting without providing further details, the outlet says.
"I'm so sorry you feel it is appropriate to do this for political motivations," Shanahan told the Post in her response. "It's a very sad state our country is in."