Woke WSJ reporter's past raises suspicions about her doxxing of DOGE staffer

Marko Elez briefly served as a staff member on the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency advisory group. Elez resigned Thursday after a brand-new reporter at the Wall Street Journal dredged up some unsavory social media posts from a deleted X account and pressed the White House about the 25-year-old's connection to the remarks.

While Elez might ultimately be afforded a second chance — a possibility raised by Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk, and others — critics are now giving a second look to the resume of the woke reporter who pursued his professional demise.

Keen observers noted that Katherine Long, who started working for the Wall Street Journal only last week, previously worked for agencies that are now undergoing significant reform as the result of changes implemented by the Trump administration, in some cases at the urging of the DOGE.

Based on her past work experience, some critics have suggested that Long's hit piece on Elez might be something more than just her latest doxxing effort, perhaps instead a form of "retaliation" on behalf of the scandal-plagued government forces with which she once rubbed shoulders.

Before hounding conservatives and Republicans for Business Insider and then working for the New York Times and the Journal, Long worked at the State Department; at the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, the State Department's extension to the Pentagon; and for the U.S. Agency for International Development, apparently through the American Institutes for Research.

In a profile on Fearey, Long said, "Before matriculating at Columbia, I'd been working for the federal government, managing USAID projects in Central Asia."

Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, noted, "Literally the only resume point missing is CIA."

"Katherine Long's resume looks a lot like a regime change operative," wrote Allum Bokhari, the managing director at the Foundation for Freedom Online.

'She should be fired immediately.'

Some critics have also seized upon the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project's Friday indication that the "Business Insider number Katherine uses is linked to an Ok.Ru (Okra) account under the pseudonym Katya Khashimova" as a potential sign that the reporter has concealed her true identity. However, when previously writing for the Columbia Journalism Review and initially when writing for the Seattle Times, the woke reporter went by Katherine Khashimova Long.

Blaze News reached out to Long for comment but did not receive a response by deadline.

Amid the speculation about Long's motivation and background, Elon Musk called her "a disgusting and cruel person" and stated that "she should be fired immediately."

Long noted in her article for the Journal that after co-founding a company to help connect high-schoolers with mentors to improve their chances of going college, then working at SpaceX, Starlink, and X, Elez went to work for the DOGE. The newly minted Journal reporter made sure to note that the Musk-run outfit "has radically upended the federal government in the weeks since President Trump's inauguration, including by largely dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development."

Without making any mention of her past relationship to USAID, Long went on to detail a handful of unsavory tweets posted to X by an account deleted in December that supposedly belonged to Elez.

In July, the user whose handle was allegedly @marko_elez but changed to @nullllptr, wrote, "Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool."

"99% of Indian H1Bs will be replaced by slightly smarter LLMs, they're going back don't worry guys," the user reportedly wrote in December, presumably referring to large language models along the lines of ChatGPT.

' I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life.'

In September, the user reportedly wrote, "You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity."

After Long asked the White House about the deleted account, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated that Elez, who did not respond to the Journal's requests for comment, had resigned from his role.

Elon Musk posted a poll Friday morning, asking whether the DOGE should bring back the "staffer who made inappropriate statements via a now deleted pseudonym?" With over 385,000 votes tallied, 78% of participants in the polls suggested that Elez should be brought back.

Vice President Vance wrote in response to the poll, "I obviously disagree with some of Elez's posts, but I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life. We shouldn't reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back."

"If he's a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that," added Vance.

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