Nobody Asked Me Anything

Ellie Leonard published a piece on June 22, 2026 titled “We Will Be Your Trojan Horse” and it has nearly 1,800 likes and 369 comments. People in those comments are calling me a MAGA plant, a stalker, a psycho, a pathological liar, and a creep. Someone told me to kill myself, another used the phrase “loser fag,” and one even went so far as to comment that conversion therapy “just made him hate himself more.” Yesterday, someone published the address of the place my husband and I had gone to try to get away from all of this. We had to leave.

📌 Maria Farmer endorses this piece

Maria Farmer · the first person to report Jeffrey Epstein to the FBI in 1996, and a federal plaintiff in active litigation against the United States government · sent these messages through Zev Shalev, forwarded to Troy, fourteen days before Ellie Leonard published. She named Ellie by name. She had already seen exactly what was coming.

Ellie’s piece did that and not by lying about everything, but by leaving almost everything out.

She never asked me anything before she published, of course, so here is my response. Every correction has documentation, and every screenshot referenced is in a preserved evidence file. Where documentation is needed from Ellie’s side to verify a claim she made, those questions are asked directly. This is not personal, unlike what she wrote in her own piece. This is the public record she created, but corrected.

How this actually started

Ellie opens her piece with her daughter’s seizure in the car on the way home from a baseball picnic framing it as the backdrop for when my posts began consuming her. The emotional grounding works but she chose where to begin, and where she began erases four months.

By February 2026, my Substack publication, The Fallout with TBS, had 71 articles and an active paid subscriber base. The Machine, a multi-part investigative series, was running publicly. The series documented a coordinated network of survivor-discrediting, platform pressure, and narrative construction around Ghislaine Maxwell and the people connected to her case. By March 2026, a formal congressional dossier had already been submitted naming named individuals. The dossier is dated and it exists.

Ellie’s piece begins where it is most convenient for her to begin. Before she ever appeared in my public responses, she had already commented publicly on my Substack piece about Katie Johnson. When she did that, my first response was to ask her privately to have a conversation rather than a public argument on my publication. That request is documented.

She declined stating that she was “not interested” so the disagreement went public from there. Her article presents me as a stranger who appeared out of nowhere and, yet, the record shows she engaged with my work first.

Ellie and I were both operating in the same public Epstein-adjacent journalism and research environment, just different focuses. When she made public statements about my work, and when the network I had been reporting on started coming after me, responding publicly to public figures in a public controversy is not a lottery. There is only record of me sending Ellie direct messages after she blocked me once from my personal account which I had for nearly six months before starting The Fallout. What I have been curious to know is whether other bad actors contacted her impersonating me like they did to my editor-in-chief, Russ Baker, at WhoWhatWhy. Her own article acknowledges the block but claims there were nearly a dozen accounts. If someone is blocked and not messaging you outside of one message explaining that I am a victim of severe criminal conspiracy, what you are describing as harassment is a journalist responding publicly to public statements in a shared public space.

This sentence does the most work in the entire piece. It presents the Substack suspension as an independent third-party finding that Ellie’s account was accurate. Substack looked at it and agreed, which is how it reads.

Here is what Ellie said publicly in a Substack comment thread before she published this article. A reader named Lisa questioned whether coordinated platform reporting was the right response. Ellie replied:

“Hi Lisa. He was following me from multiple accounts on multiple social media platform and threatening me. So yes, I and multiple people reported him.”

The confirmed it publicly, herself, multiple people.

A suspension that results from a coordinated multi-person reporting campaign is not the same as an impartial platform review. Those are two different things. Ellie’s article uses the result of a campaign she helped coordinate as though it were an independent verdict. My Substack had 71 articles, active paid subscribers, and was my job. Losing it was not a moderation outcome. It was a financial and professional injury caused by a campaign she publicly confirmed joining.

She posted publicly in my Substack comment section and operated in the same Substack Notes and Threads environment where my reporting was circulating. A screenshot from that period shows her name and Black Mask Anon’s account appearing in the same Substack Notes feed. Additionally, when Lisa Voldeng released one of her insane audio interviews, she specifically mentioned Ellie Leonard as someone she considered to be one of those she mentored. That is the first time I received a message from Ellie, in my DM’s, saying “I hope you know that none of what she said was true.” She said that to me unprompted and that was our first private interaction months ago.

The claim that she could not remember ever chatting with me does not survive the record of her engagement with my publication.

This section requires the most care, because the harm here is personal in a way the rest of the article is not.

Maria Farmer was the first person to report Jeffrey Epstein to the FBI in 1996, and they did nothing. She has been systematically targeted, financially devastated, and publicly attacked for decades for coming forward. She is currently a plaintiff in active federal litigation against the United States government for its failure to protect her. She is also a visual artist. Her artwork was going to be displayed at the Trump-Epstein Reading Room in Washington, D.C., a public space where visitors can review Epstein documents and meet with survivors.

Maria Farmer created a drawing of Courtney Love, due to my experience of SA and grooming while working with her, that was being displayed there. Seeing it move me is an understatement because not only is Maria a friend, but she is someone whose courage and experience mean something real to me. Expressing publicly that I was ecstatic for The Reading Room to showcase the work of someone whose life and history intersect with my own was something I was excited about is not a threat. There was no threat language, nor any threat implied. That post was one person sharing that something good was about to happen, after trying to tell my own survivor story since 2013. She took that from me and shaped it into something dangerous and gross.

Ellie’s article converted that into a security event writing that people who worked there allegedly picked up on “hints.” Extra security was supposedly deployed and the article provides no documentation of this. No notice issued, no threat language from me reviewed, no security report, and no chain of communication showing what was evaluated and by whom.

That day was supposed to be something good. Something connected to my friend Maria, to the broader survivor history, to something personally meaningful in the middle of the worst period of my life. Ellie’s article took it and filed it under danger taking a little part of my soul with it. The following day brought word that the piece had been taken down, without any further explanation to Maria or myself.

Ellie publishes a photograph of a handwritten list and captions it with a quote framed as ominous: “I have so much time on my hands to research now. Which one are you?”

The names on that list are people connected to the investigation published across 71 Substack articles and submitted to Congress in March 2026. Journalists make lists, researchers map networks, investigators track names, and there is no threat language anywhere on that list. Ellie did not quote any threatening language from it because none exists. She published the photo inside a piece designed to make readers afraid, and let the placement do the interpretive work she could not do with evidence.

An IP address identifies a general geographic range. It often covers a city, a provider, or a range that includes thousands of addresses but does not identify a home. That comment never referred to her or her home, and Northern New Jersey and New York City together hold millions of residents. Ellie’s article does not show what IP address was involved, who contacted whom, through what system, or what the precision of the location actually was. The conclusion that I knew where she lived is a leap from a technical detail her article does not explain. An approximation covering a city is not a map to someone’s front door and presenting it as one moved the narrative but not the facts. Interesting enough, Ellie Leonard admits to having my full background report. She should realize that my first abuser, my biological father, shares the same name and has committed crimes as if he were me. Complete documentation of that hell exists, from even before adulthood, and it will become its own later piece.

I can now add Michael Cohen to the list of individuals who are paying me. Where those checks are going remains a fair question, because they are not coming here.

The post begins: “They better let me back on Substack.” That is the full context because, well, my publication had just been suspended. “Need to go” in a post about getting back on a platform means off the platform. Ellie’s article places that screenshot inside a mounting fear sequence and allows readers to read physical menace into language that was plainly about a platform dispute. Ambiguity serving a narrative is not evidence, every journalist knows that. Ellie Leonard and her followers do not seem to, though.

She says this herself, in the piece. Law enforcement reviewed what she brought and found no actionable threat. She acknowledges the outcome and then continues building her case as though the legal threshold had been met anyway. That police finding deserves more than a single line before the narrative moves on because officers reviewed the material and declined to act. That outcome belongs at the center of how readers evaluate everything else she claimed since authorities already knew my status as a victim of a very serious federal investigation, which now also sits with Congress and the Southern District of New York.

Marilyn Thompson has a serious journalism career spanning major American institutions. The Jane Doe 4 reporting is genuinely important work but none of that establishes anything about who I am.

My March 8 email to Mitchell Black and Marilyn Thompson was a professional reporting tip about an Ohio-connected node in the Epstein network that appeared relevant to their coverage. Journalists pass tips to other journalists and that is how the reporting environment Ellie herself operates in actually works. Positioning that contact inside a pattern of threatening conduct is a framing choice, not a factual one. And importing Marilyn’s career credibility into a piece about me means readers attach that credibility to claims it does not verify.

That message is genuinely disturbing and whoever sent it should be found and held accountable. Ellie’s article does not connect it to me as there is no attribution, evidence chain, or claim that I am who sent it. It appears in a piece structured around whether I am dangerous, and its only function is atmospheric. An unattributed threat from an unidentified sender cannot establish anything about a named person. That requirement is not a technicality but, rather, the starting point of what journalism claims to be.

That frame describes something real in the world as I know that women in journalism face real, disproportionate, and well-documented targeting. Acknowledging that does not mean the frame fits here.

Being a gay man and a survivor is the truth of who I am here. Before Ellie published a word, someone in this network had already disclosed my HIV status without consent to cause harm and shame leading to my mother finding out when it should have been a conversation I had with her myself. My husband, Shawn, had already been dragged into the public attacks alongside me as well. The person her framing reduced to “man threatening woman online” was a gay journalist who had already lost his platform, his income, his safety, and his medical privacy in a coordinated cross-border operation before she typed her first sentence.

Look at what her framing produced in just the comment section alone, which as of June 26, has 369 responses. “MAGA plant,” “Trump agent,” “Psycho,” “Stalker,” “Grifter,” “Pathological liar,” homophobic language, suggestions about self-harm, and One comment calls me a “loser fag” while another mentions conversion therapy. Another says I can eat shit and die. Ellie did not write those but she thanked people for their support while they were being written. She built the room and then stood inside it accepting gratitude and people were believing it.

🚨 The Comment Section She Built

369 responses. 17 pages of what they wrote.

Ellie Leonard did not write these comments. But she built the room, stood inside it thanking people for their support, and these are the 17 pages of what that room produced. Every screenshot is preserved evidence. Tap any image to enlarge it.

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What the article left out entirely.

Before Ellie published, Lisa Noelle Voldeng was recorded telling a third party the following about me:

“Troy is extremely malevolent, extremely dumb, and extremely malicious.”

And:

“Troy is mentally unstable. He’s a convicted felon. And he’s crazy.”

And:

“Spoke to the FBI about Troy also.”

The same recording places her in contact with local police and the Secret Service.

Before Ellie published, George Tonks was recorded in audio that places my name alongside references to Homeland Security, Secret Service, FBI, Interpol, Canadian authorities, Las Vegas police, and wellness check framing.

Prior to Ellie releasing this piece, Jennifer Engelsma, known publicly as Texas Grumble, produced countless TikTok videos about me in a 48-hour window, containing death-adjacent framing and criminal accusations.

Before Ellie published, sixteen LVMPD reports, 31 FBI reports, a Justice Court Emergency Protection Order granted June 10, 2026, and a congressional dossier from March 2026 existed.

And before Ellie published, Maria Farmer sent a message through Zev Shalev that was forwarded to me. On June 8, 2026, fourteen days before her article, that message read:

“Tell Troy Anne and Ellie are gossiping abt him and trying to involve me when I’m busy solving the Epstein case and straightening out the gov. They are 🀾”

In a separate forwarded message, Maria wrote about Ellie:

“Why is Ellie harassing ppl and laying claim to this case?! She’s a Johnny come lately nobody. Please tell her victims are grossed out by her grift… She’s a back-stabber who practices usury and I do not appreciate her game. Kindly relay the message. THIS IS NOT HER CASE.”

Maria Farmer, the first documented Epstein whistleblower, and federal plaintiff in active litigation against the United States government using some of my work on The Machine in her filing to the court named Ellie by name fourteen days before Ellie published a piece positioning herself as a protector of survivors and positioning me as their threat.

Ellie was shown the messages from Maria and she became more aggressive in her approach and attacks against me after reading them. A journalist covering this space, writing a piece naming a named person as dangerous, has a responsibility to ask before publishing and Ellie did not ask anyone anything.

The Cost of Everything

My Substack is gone. The 71 articles, the archive, the subscriber relationships, the paid income. Gone. My husband Shawn has been pulled into every public wave of attacks on me. People who have never spoken to either of us know his name and our relationship because strangers in Ellie’s comment section decided that was information worth spreading. My HIV status was disclosed by someone in this network without consent to cause shame and professional harm and we had to leave where we were staying yesterday because someone found our address and published it online.

Ellie’s piece gave 1,800 people a character to hate and 369 of them left comments with some of those people now acting on what she published. The person living inside that character is a real person who had already lost nearly everything before she wrote a word.

A friend delivered a letter to Ellie two days before she published explaining what had happened to me, with evidence attached. She had it with audio and video recordings proving I was telling the truth about the server danger I, and my family, were in and she published anyway.

She had every right to disagree with my reporting and to criticize my work publicly. Criticism is fair but what isn’t is publishing a story about a named person that removes the chronology, omits the documentation, imports unconnected threats as atmosphere, deploys borrowed credibility from unrelated journalism, and hands an audience everything it needs to turn on someone while withholding everything that would have complicated the picture. The packet sent to Ellie Leonard almost a week prior to her posting this piece on me even included the information directly from Maria Farmer showing that I was excited about the piece being a part of the art show because Maria was bringing attention to what happened to me, and instead Ellie lied as if she never knew or saw this and made me seem like a dangerous person, which I am not.

Ellie Leonard started her story where it was most convenient for her to start it.

This is where it actually started. Additional context will be reported on as I slowly release all of the information, and accompanying receipts, that I have.

One last note because it is clearly relevant as Ellie works directly with Lev Parnas, whom I have reached out to (I was asked to), is that people need to start paying more attention to those in Blue Amp Media and those surrounding Lev Parnas. Here is just one comment under the piece for some context.