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We know that readers love The Daily Beast because we deliver a steady stream of scoops—and 2021 was a gusher. From politics and entertainment to media and breaking news, our reporters brought you stories week after week you could not read anywhere else.
Here’s a rundown of the 10 most-read The Daily Beast exclusives in the last year:
1.
Many of our stories about Matt Gaetz’s sex scandal went viral, but none more than this one revealing that the congressman’s wingman, Joel Greenberg, had written a letter to Roger Stone in which he said Gaetz had paid to have sex with a string of women—and a 17-year-old girl. “My lawyers that I fired, know the whole story about MG’s involvement,” Greenberg wrote a year ago. “They know he paid me to pay the girls and that he and I both had sex with the girl who was underage.”
2.
Our media team is so good that reporters at other outlets often find out what’s happening in their shop from our stories. In this piece, we got to the bottom of why Juan Williams was suddenly ousted from the Fox News show The Five. Greg Gutfeld was annoyed that they were filming remotely and “blames Juan for not being back,” one network insider told us.
3.
Our politics team spent hours poring over records and working the phones to score this scoop: Venmo ledgers showed Matt Gaetz paid Joel Greenberg $900—and hours later Greenberg turned around and paid three young women that same amount. And for one of the transactions, Gaetz wrote the nickname of one of the women, who was just 18 at the time.
4.
Rachel Maddow is practically synonymous with MSNBC, but back in August, we broke the news that there was a good chance the host might leave the mothership. As negotiations dragged on, Maddow was seriously considering taking her brand elsewhere. In the end, she stayed—but only after MSNBC agreed to pay her $30 million a year and let her drop her nightly show next year.
5.
In October, Dave Chappelle came under ferocious criticism for his comments about trans people in his special, The Closer, including his invocation of Daphne Dorman, a transgender comedian who took her own life in 2019. Entertainment reporter Cheyenne Roundtree reached out to Dorman’s family to see what they thought about the Chappelle uproar. “Dave loved my sister and is an LGBTQ ally,” her sister responded.
6.
What a bummer. In March, The Daily Beast learned that dozens of young White House staffers who were told past marijuana use would not necessarily disqualify them found themselves suspended, pushed out, or transferred when they copped to it in a background check. “I was asked to resign,” one of them told us. The affected staffers even included those who toked up in places where it was legal.
7.
Yep, Matt Gaetz again! This time, the dynamic duo of Jose Pagliery and Roger Sollenberger delivered a story about Matt Gaetz using cocaine after a GOP fundraiser, where his date was Megan Zalonka, a paid escort with a no-show taxpayer-funded job. “Two witnesses present recalled friends reconvening at Gaetz’s hotel room for an after-party, where Zalonka prepared lines of cocaine on the bathroom counter,” they wrote. “One of those witnesses distinctly remembers Zalonka pulling the drugs out of her makeup bag, rolling a bill of cash, and joining Gaetz in snorting the cocaine.”
8.
When Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa was identified as the gunman who killed 10 people at a King Soopers in Boulder, Colorado, our breaking news squad hit the phones and reached the suspect’s brother, who disclosed that he had long been challenged by mental illness. “When he was having lunch with my sister in a restaurant, he said, ‘People are in the parking lot, they are looking for me.’ She went out, and there was no one. We didn’t know what was going on in his head,” the brother said. Earlier this month, Alissa was declared incompetent to stand trial.
9.
If you had Jeffrey Epstein as a player in the Bill Gates divorce saga on your 2021 bingo card, then we delivered for you. Our Power Trip crew reported exclusively that Melinda Gates warned Bill in 2013 about his new pedophile buddy Epstein—and she was haunted by their friendship for years. And as we reported a week later, Epstein even gave advice to Gates about ending his marriage after the Microsoft founder complained about Melinda during get-togethers.
10.
Settle in for the last one—a long read by contributor Tony Ortega about Jakub Stepniak, a self-styled international pop star performing under the name of Kuba Ka or the God of Pop. A Polish-born singer and dancer who chased fame in Hollywood, he flirted with and then had an abrupt falling-out with Scientology. Ortega, an expert on Scientology, follows that thread to a mysterious, disfiguring condition that Stepniak developed, and to his death last year.