Exclusive — Deloitte Consultant Behind Ethically Questionable Leak of JD Vance Communications to Washington Post

A Deloitte consultant was behind the leak of private communications with then-private citizen, now U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) from 2020 to the Washington Post, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.

The gist of the story from the Washington Post published on Friday morning is as follows: Vance, in communications in direct messages on the platform formerly known as Twitter, now known as X, said things in 2020 that were critical of his now running mate former President Donald Trump. While it’s not surprising or new that Vance was previously a Trump critic who argues Trump’s actions as president won him over—many of the things he said in these messages are things he also said publicly—the Post framed the story as interesting, arguing that these messages were well into Trump’s first term as president and just months before he faced off against now President Joe Biden, a Democrat, in November 2020.

But what the Post did not do is tell its audience who Vance was communicating with in these messages, or provide the full context of the conversation, since it only reported part of one side of it. The Post argued it granted the source who provided these messages anonymity “because of concerns about retaliation,” but Breitbart News can reveal the person’s identity here for the first time as a well-connected Deloitte consultant.

The Deloitte consultant, whose identity the Washington Post’s Peter Jamison hid from the newspaper’s readers, is named Kevin Gallagher. Deloitte’s website lists Gallagher as a “principal” with the firm, based in Connecticut. Breitbart News has seen a screenshot of messages that Vance sent to Gallagher—the other side of the conversation is not available, because Gallagher had deleted his account, thereby deleting the messages—confirming that Gallagher is in fact the recipient of these.

The Washington Post, interestingly, despite being a newspaper that claims to support transparency, did not provide either to Vance’s team earlier in the week when they were trying to respond to the newspaper’s inquiries or to its readers the full context of the conversations, including comments and questions that Gallagher made to Vance to prompt Vance’s comments in response that the Post deemed newsworthy. Vance’s team did not deny the authenticity of the messages – the senator’s advisers just asked the Post to be transparent about the full context of the conversations and with whom the messages were exchanged. The Post made clear in its story that it refused to do so.

“While Martin said Vance recalled the 2020 exchanges, he criticized The Post for not identifying the person who disclosed the messages and for not sharing with the campaign the entirety of the conversation, portions of which were withheld to protect the person’s anonymity,” Jamison wrote. “Martin said The Post was engaged in ‘nothing more than unethical journalism.’”

Interestingly, however, Jamison did not in his story reveal that he knew that Vance knew who leaked these messages as far back as earlier this week several days before the Post published its piece.

The Washington Post, Breitbart News can also exclusively reveal, knew before the publication of its story that Gallagher’s identity would become publicly known and decided to proceed anyway with withholding that information from its readers. On-record emails between Vance’s staff and the Washington Post reporter, Jamison, show that Jamison knew as early as Wednesday that he could not protect the identity of the leaker because Vance’s team told him on record in a quote that the Post refused to publish that Gallagher was the source.

On Wednesday evening, Martin told Jamison in an email that he subsequently provided to Breitbart News on record that Gallagher was his source.

“Senator Vance recalls these conversations with Kevin Gallagher, a principal at Deloitte, and we find it shocking that the Washington Post has refused to provide us with the full context of the conversation and is refusing to name their source in the story,” Vance’s spokesman, Martin, told Jamison. “They will likely cut this quote from publication because they clearly don’t believe in transparency for their readers. For a newspaper to run a story based on a leaked conversation while refusing to provide the subject of the story the entire exchange or even the name of the other party involved is nothing more than unethical journalism. Apparently, Democracy really does die in darkness at the Washington Post.”

Jamison, rather than being honest and transparent with the Washington Post’s readers, simply edited this full quote down, removing large chunks of it from the story and only using one part of one sentence from it.

Even more curiously, when the Washington Post had done a previous similar piece about Vance messages with Charles Johnson, the newspaper named Johnson and included the full context of the messages in its story. It’s unclear why the newspaper would shield Gallagher’s identity from publication, especially since he works for the world-renowned consulting firm Deloitte, but not Johnson.

Gallagher’s biography on the firm’s website states that Gallagher is “a principal in Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Casey Quirk practice, with more than 10 years of experience providing strategic advice to the investment management industry.” The biography continues by noting that Gallagher “works closely with leaders of asset and wealth management businesses to provide insights and advice about their most important strategic challenges” and has “worked with many of the world’s largest investment firms, with on-the-ground experience in the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia.” It’s unclear at this time exactly which companies Gallagher counts among his clients at Deloitte and whether they are okay with his decision to leak these messages with Vance to the Washington Post.

Neither Gallagher nor Jamison have responded to in-depth comment requests from Breitbart News for this story. Gallagher has not answered whether or not his decision to engage in this leak was done in conjunction with Deloitte management and the firm’s government affairs personnel, or if he did it on his own. But Gallagher’s actions could have potentially very serious consequences for Deloitte in the future should Trump and Vance win the election—or even if the Democrats win. Firms like Deloitte go to great lengths to appear nonpartisan. In fact, this organization has hired several top Republicans to engage in outreach to GOP officials in Congress and in a possible future GOP administration. But when principals at a firm like this engage in such behavior, it undercuts the ability of Deloitte to remain nonpartisan—and it essentially steers the company into the lane of supporting Democrats over Republicans, investing Deloitte in the outcome of the election.

A source close to Trump’s family told Breitbart News that the Trumps are watching this episode with horror. “The entire government affairs team at Deloitte should be fired,” the source close to Trump’s family said. “If they’re too dumb to understand how this is going to affect Deloitte’s access to a Trump administration then they have no business working in government affairs.”

It’s unclear at this time whether the organization supports Gallagher’s actions, or not, and some of his behavioral actions in the lead-up to the publication of the Washington Post story may suggest that Gallagher understands reprisal may be imminent. Gallagher deleted both his X account and his LinkedIn account this week, suggesting a desire by him to hide himself digitally. Even so, an old archived version of his LinkedIn account was captured a few years ago, demonstrating that he attended Yale University as an undergraduate from 2007 to 2011. Gallagher has not answered Breitbart News when asked why he deleted his social media accounts.

Jamison similarly has explicitly not answered whether the newspaper actually believes its branded slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” which his actions would suggest that he does not—or that he considers himself, his editors, and his newspaper a threat to democracy. That’s because Jamison and the Washington Post more generally decided to withhold this information from the newspaper’s readers, thereby affirmatively deciding to support “darkness” over transparency. Jamison, who like Gallagher attended Yale as an undergraduate but appears to have done so earlier, as newspaper clippings from Yale’s student newspaper show him writing a piece for it back in 2001, has similarly not answered whether or not he met Gallagher earlier in his career or just as he was reporting this story, for which Gallagher was his source.

Interestingly, Vance attended Yale Law School—not undergraduate—around the time that Gallagher was an undergraduate student, according to Gallagher’s now-deleted LinkedIn page. It’s unclear if that’s when Vance and Gallagher met, but Vance graduated from Yale Law School in 2013, two years after Gallagher graduated from the undergraduate school.

Martin, Vance’s spokesman, told Breitbart News that this whole charade from the Post and from Gallagher on Deloitte’s behalf reeks of dishonesty.

“The Washington Post has unethically and disgracefully covered this story, refusing to provide the full context of this exchange and intentionally leaving out proof that Senator Vance had made similar remarks publicly around this time,” Martin said. “It comes as no surprise that the propaganda arm of the Kamala Harris administration would behave this way, but the fact that senior officials at Deloitte Consulting are now actively working to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of the Democratic ticket is appalling. The counterparty to this conversation, Mr. Kevin Gallagher, has taken it upon himself as a principal at Deloitte to wade his employer in the fray of a presidential election by leaking private conversations to the press in order to boost the failing Kamala Harris campaign.”