Reuters Shelved 'Buff My Balls Beto' Hacker Story Until After 2018 Senate Race

A Reuters journalist struck a deal to shelve a scoop that Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke once belonged to a notorious hacker collective "until after his Senate race against Ted Cruz in November 2018."

On Friday morning, the day after O'Rourke announced his bid for the White House in 2020, Reuters' Joseph Menn finally dropped his scoop revealing that O'Rourke belonged to the "Cult of the Dead Cow" (CDC) hacker group as a teenager, where it was revealed that he went under the handle "Psychedelic Warlord."

In a "backstory" article late Friday, Menn explained that he struck a deal with the CDC to withhold O'Rourke's involvement in the group "until after the November election" in 2018 - after which the group would confirm O'Rourke's involvement, a secret they had kept for decades.

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