On Aug. 1, The Denver Post exposed the names, locations, voter registrations, and employment of three private citizens who legally obtained public information and sent some to the popular social media account Do Better Denver. On Aug. 7, a Denver Post columnist defended the paper’s decision to dox the three women for sharing public information.
“People who claim to be citizen journalists must stand by their work with a byline and endure the negative comments and threats that come with the job,” wrote Denver Post columnist Krista Kafer.
The Post identified the three people it doxxed by doing a public records request for those women’s public records requests: “The Post filed open records requests to obtain copies of requests tied to DoBetterDNVR,” wrote The Post’s crime reporter Shelly Bradbury in her Aug. 1 article. On Aug. 5, the Denver Gazette confirmed the three doxxed women are not the account administrator. The public records they shared with the accountholder comprise less than 1 percent of Do Better Denver posts.
Bradbury also wrote that the Post targeted the women specifically for exercising their legal rights to view public information. The three, Bradbury wrote, “stand out because of their involvement in the account since its early days in 2023, their connections to each other, and because they did not just send a single video or photo to the account but pursued information through open records requests.”
Do Better Denver alleged the Post did this at the behest of local government officials angry about public disclosures of their activities. One public record one of the women discovered, for example, showed the city paid $2.1 million for vacant rooms for illegal immigrants. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s spokesman did not respond to Federalist requests for comment Monday.
“That particular post by DoBetterDNVR is emblematic of the type of misinformation they push,” wrote Denver Post Editor Lee Ann Colacioppo in an email response to a Federalist request for comment. “The mayor’s office played no role whatsoever in our decision to pursue the story and it was entirely the idea of the reporter to submit the CORAs. It was an obvious course of action given DoBetter has posted extensive information about their CORAs, including when they filed them, the exact words they used in their requests, the costs, the responsive records, etc.”
In Colorado, open records requests are often referred to as CORA requests, after the state’s open records law. Traditionally, journalists have fought to expand the public’s right to know what public officials do with public institutions and resources.
The anonymous Do Better Denver administrator said the account receives death threats for posting public records about people with criminal records that include kidnapping, battery, and work for terrorist gangs such as Tren de Aragua (TDA). The administrator uses a “burner phone,” stays anonymous, and takes other preventative measures because of those threats.
In March, a CBS investigation found Johnston’s staff stopped communicating in emails subject to open records requests after they received records requests from a conservative legal group about the city’s refusal to enforce immigration laws. Johnston’s staff switched to an encrypted app that automatically deletes messages, which could violate open records laws, attorneys told CBS and The Denver Gazette.
The Aug. 1 Post article says Denver police stopped responding to information requests in March from Do Better Denver on X at the direction of the mayor’s office. In defense of its decision to dox the three women, the Post quotes a woman whose arrest for assaulting a police officer was posted on Do Better Denver: “Don’t dish out what you can’t take,” Serena Palacios reportedly told the paper.
Citizens Sharing News of Public Interest
Since 2023, Do Better Denver’s rapidly growing Instagram and X accounts have posted videos of public indecency, vagrancy, and crime, plus pictures of criminal records and crime- and vagrancy-related open records requests. Together, the accounts currently have nearly 150,000 followers.
The accounts criticize public officials for sanctuary city policies inviting gang activity, releasing violent criminals on low bonds, and otherwise enabling public disorder. Denver has sued the Trump administration for opposing such policies.
“I really started to see things changing rapidly,” the administrator, a Denver resident, told conservative journalist and occasional Federalist contributor Jimmy Sengenberger, “citing rising crime, public drug use and the city’s mass housing strategy for the homeless, many with substance abuse issues,” Sengenberger wrote.
The Aug. 1 Denver Post article identified three people who occasionally volunteered information that Do Better Denver published: “Arizona resident Jill Osa, Denver resident Megan Anderson and New Mexico resident Alexandra Pacheco.” Osa and her husband own a Denver rental property, and Pacheco lived in Denver until recently.
Pacheco told local media she quit working for one of the state’s largest homelessness services providers over mismanagement. She witnessed a homeless encampment exploding in flames.
Osa told The Federalist in a Friday phone call that she asked Bradbury, Colacioppo, the Denver Post’s parent company, and their lawyers not to publish identifying information about her family. They did anyway. She said the doxxing prompted threatening comments, including since-removed social media posts giving details about her home.
“It’s a little unnerving when the doorbell rings and you’re wondering if it’s a crazy person who is upset or it’s a delivery person,” Osa said. A family member underwent a major surgery the same week the Post articles published, making it difficult for Osa to focus on her family when they needed her, she said.
After city officials didn’t answer her questions about their plan to locate a homeless shelter adjacent to her Denver property, Osa began using public records requests to learn more. A small fraction of those she shared with Do Better Denver. She also did a handful of requests for the account after she’d gotten comfortable using this basic transparency tool.
“I’m just an average citizen who wanted answers and wasn’t getting them when she went to her elected officials,” Osa said.
Homelessness Doubles in Denver Despite Hundreds of Millions Spent
Johnston promised to “end homelessness in my first term.” This June, two years into his first term, Denver hit record homeless numbers, nearly doubling since 2019.
In November, Denver voters narrowly rejected a ballot initiative to raise the city’s sales tax by $100 million for more homeless housing. This fall, Denver voters will again vote on a Johnston proposal to increase their taxes by $1 billion for, among other items, homeless services euphemistically described as “affordable housing.” Do Better Denver has posted numerous critiques of such policies.
Johnston released a campaign plan to create an additional 1,000 or more taxpayer-provided homeless beds by buying up hotels and using city land for “microcommunities,” such as the one planned for next to Osa’s property. Enacted once he entered office, the initiative costs taxpayers an estimated $57 million per year, a figure the city council didn’t receive until a year after it started.
The city also has a forecasted budget deficit of $250 million over the next two years, prompting layoffs and furloughs of a city workforce that grew by 4,000 in the last decade of Democrat mayors. The city also spent $95 million on illegal alien subsidies from 2022 to 2024, and is suing the Trump administration to try to keep the federal portion of those funds after the president canceled federal dollars for sanctuary cities.
The city of Denver has a $44 million rental contract from 2024 through 2029 with the Denver Post’s parent company, DP Media Network LLC, and in 2024 approved an $89 million contract to go into debt to purchase the same former Denver Post building. The city plans to turn the building into courtrooms partly to meet the increase in cases sparked by the state shifting numerous felony offenses into misdemeanors in 2020 and 2021.
Addiction is a top cause of homelessness. Colorado legalized recreational marijuana in 2012. In 2019, Colorado shifted the penalty for possession of heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, and numerous other highly addictive drugs from a felony to a misdemeanor. Denver and Colorado also operate numerous “harm reduction” programs that subsidize drug usage by providing sterilized supplies. Johnston’s office has repeatedly publicly attacked Do Better Denver for documenting the consequences of such policies.
Before becoming Denver mayor, Johnston also served as the CEO of an endowment organization that is financially involved in homeless policies, Gary Community Ventures (Gary). As CEO, Johnston more than doubled the foundation’s spending on state politics and doubled its spending on Denver politics. In 2021, Gary was the largest spender on successfully opposing a Denver proposal to restrict homeless housing projects in single-family neighborhoods.
According to its public tax and other records, Gary spends millions pushing for low-expectations housing policies and investing in such projects once approved. Gary and Johnston advocated for Proposition 123, a 2023 state tax increase that included $54 million to pay rent for homeless people and prevent evictions. Developers salivated over the flow of taxpayer funds for their products.
Gary also funds numerous homeless housing initiatives in Denver, which typically operate on the controversial “housing first” model. That requires no contributions from recipients in exchange for taxpayer and charitable benefits, such as work, sobriety, or lack of criminal behavior. President Trump also targeted this approach in a July executive order, pulling federal funds from such models in favor of sobriety and a “work first” approach.
Johston, a former school principal and state senator, has also unsuccessfully run for Colorado governor and U.S. senator.
Media Cartels Target Scrappy Competitors
PolitiFact has a massive amount of financial resources and previously had a censorship contract with Facebook. The Post has between 5 and 6 million readers per month and between 500 and 1,000 employees, say company reports.
“The Post investigated the people behind the account because of its growing influence and the misinformation it spreads,” says Bradbury’s Aug. 1 article. “While the account claims to be a news provider, its anonymity, lack of transparency and absence of public ethical standards undermine its credibility, said Kelly McBride, chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit that aims to bolster ethical journalism.”
The Poynter Institute runs one of the most notorious mass censorship organizations, the egregiously politicized PolitiFact. PolitiFact is one of the top purveyors of misinformation in Western media. Examples include the Kyle Rittenhouse attack, Wuhan lab-leak allegations, teachers union demands for school lockdowns, Joe Biden’s tax plans, and hundreds more. Meanwhile, its parent institution runs around smearing people with social media accounts who could never erase their critics from the internet like PolitiFact.
