Frank Parlato
This is part two of a series on Elliot McGinnis, the FBI Special Agent who led the OneTaste investigation.
Part One: FBI’s McGinnis: From NYPD Brutality to Rogue Agent?
Origins of the Investigation
Although the exact origin of the OneTaste investigation is unknown, the earliest documents and records of interviews reveal that the lead case agent, FBI Special Agent Elliot McGinnis, began his investigation about two months after a June 18, 2018 article about OneTaste, titled “The Dark Side of the Orgasmic Meditation Company,” was published in Bloomberg Business Week.
The article relied heavily on anonymous sources. The reporter Ellen Huet claimed she had 16 sources, of which 14 were anonymous. Eleven anonymous sources are not even quoted. Instead, Huet chose to simply bundle their opinions as if they spoke in chorus, sparing her the bother of getting down verbatim what anyone said.
Controversial Connections
Huet chose not to disclose her relationship with her primary source for her story – her intentional community roommate, Mike Safyan, possibly because her connection to him would have likely led to Bloomberg disqualifying her from writing the story.
In Bloomberg’s ethics manual, the Bloomberg Way, Huet’s relationship with her source is covered on page 96. “Journalists who develop a romantic or close relationship with a newsmaker, potential newsmaker or source should inform their team leaders and expect to be reassigned.”
Instead of being reassigned, her story launched an FBI investigation and secured a book contract with Farrar Strauss and Giroux, whose vetting shows that the esteemed publishers are more at home with fiction than nonfiction.
The Media’s Role
Huet, working closely with a few of her anonymous sources who worked with Agent McGinnis, broke the news of the FBI investigation in Bloomberg in November 2018, citing anonymous sources who claimed the FBI had interviewed them.
The FBI investigation was good enough for the book publishers and the media that Huet’s anonymous source-filled story was true, and it seems that for the FBI, Huet’s story was good enough for the agency to launch an investigation.
Intertwined Narratives
The FBI investigation led to numerous media appearances for Huet. In her Bloomberg stories and subsequent media appearances, Huet inextricably intertwined her editorial conclusions, putting them in the mouths of her anonymous sources, to portray OneTaste as a “sex cult.” Huet garnered the notice of Rolling Stone, BBC, Vice, and Netflix, who credited her with launching an FBI investigation regardless of whether her story failed on every level that might pass for journalism.
Questionable Motivations
Never was it questioned whether her story was true or slanted to harm the company to fulfill the grudge of a furious little man against OneTaste, her San Francisco communal roommate, personal friend, and scorned lover, Mike Safyan, and to fulfill her own ambitions regardless of right or who she hurt in the process.
It is a phenomenon of our day that media can drive the FBI, and the FBI can drive the media. In this case, it was based on anonymous sources, especially one whom the reporter kept hidden, a reporter with an agenda, and an uncritical media that doesn’t seem to know anything other than clickbait. Sex cults are clickbait supreme. Due process is boring.
The Investigation’s Foundations
For his part, FBI Special Agent McGinnis made it clear he relied on the Bloomberg story as his guide star to the investigation. In an asset forfeiture warrant signed March 31, 2023, Agent McGinnis referenced the Bloomberg article as evidence supporting the court ordering OneTaste co-founder Nicole Daedone’s assets to be seized before trial.
McGinnis wrote, “On June 18, 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek published an article on OneTaste containing various allegations about OneTaste and its leaders, including allegations that OneTaste push[ed] its sexual wellness education toward mainstream’ ‘it pushed [some former members] into sexual servitude and five-figure debts.”
Legal and Ethical Challenges
According to a defense court filing, when OneTaste attorneys “inquired about the factual basis surrounding this investigation back on or about November 29, 2022, AUSA Gillian Kassner directed (OneTaste attorney) Paul Pelletier to ‘look at the media on One Taste,’ specifically citing Bloomberg and the BBC.”
One month before the US Attorney for the Eastern District of NY unsealed an indictment charging OneTaste co-founder Nicole Daedone and former head of sales Rachel Cherwitz with forced labor conspiracy, AUSA Gillian Kassner wrote to OneTaste attorney Paul Pelletier, “the government is investigating OneTaste and its current and former leaders for potential sex trafficking, forced labor, money laundering, and other offenses.”
The Thin Case
The “other offenses” did not hold up. Neither did sex trafficking, forced labor, or money laundering. The only charge is conspiracy to commit forced labor – an alleged scheme of 12 years duration that did not result in actual forced labor charges, but only in the attempt to commit the substantive crime by conspiring to commit forced labor but without the charge of actually forcing anyone to labor.
The non-substantive charge alone is a first in legal history. After all the promise embodied in Huet’s Bloomberg story, FBI Special Agent Elliot McGinnis must have been rather blue about not turning up more. But let no one say he did not try.
Unethical Tactics
He tried and tried again, and as this series on McGinnis will show, what he could not do by ethical and honest methods, he did by abandoning Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity and used good old-fashioned cheating instead.
Some of it may be criminal. Presupposing that FBI special agents are not above the law, although it is generally supposed they are, we will explore in depth what crimes McGinnis may have committed, and urge that he be treated as he would treat others for the same crimes.
To be continued.
Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.
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McGinnis is called upon to get the job done no matter what that might entail. No questions asked – the prosecutors or cops know McGinnis has their backs –
whether he silences a man who stands up for his rights through physical brutality, or silences a man by manufacturing or illegally obtaining evidence, McGinnis is the on-call sociopath who delivers.
Even if McGinnis wanted to decline his “fixer” role he cannot – they own him because he’s already crossed the line many times and if he balks, the government can silence and discard him.