Andy Ngo Took Credit For Breaking Mikayla Miller Story After Months Of Communicating With Me, Refused To Cite Turtleboy As Source, Routinely Steals Content 

 

Editor’s Note: I first spoke about this story on the Live Show last night. Click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel and always get content first.

 

Andy Ngo is an independent conservative reporter and influencer on social media who has over 1 million followers on Twitter, largely due to his outstanding coverage exposing Antifa in his native Portland, OR. Ngo has become Antifa’s biggest target, and three years ago was viciously beaten while covering a Proud Boys march in Portland. His journalism often gets intentionally mislabeled by the left as fake news, largely because it’s biased towards the right, but more importantly because it makes the left look bad. I’ve always admired his work because he finds good stories that no one else has reported, but also because he has physically put himself on the line in defense of the First Amendment.

First skirmish I’ve seen. Didn’t see how this started, but @MrAndyNgo got roughed up. pic.twitter.com/hDkfQchRhG

— Jim Ryan (@Jimryan015) June 29, 2019

 

But Andy Ngo is also a content thief. I was not planning on writing this blog because of the ethics involved in posting private conversations, and I believed that it was better to stay silent and for the sake of my professional relationship with Ngo moving forward. However, the fact of the matter is that Andy has stolen my work on a number of occasions and I’m just not going to allow myself to be walked on anymore.

On Monday Andy tweeted out video from a brawl in Providence that I had blogged and tweeted about earlier in the day. I responded to it:

We know Andy, I blogged about it this morning https://t.co/WN4Nbn1K0Y

— AidanKearneyTB (@DoctorTurtleboy) September 13, 2022

 

Andy followed me on Twitter until I made this comment, and then he promptly unfollowed me. My reply elicited dozes of replies from Andy’s supporters who said that they had no idea who I was, which is understandable. Five years ago I had hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter and Facebook before losing both accounts. I’ve created dozens of accounts since then and often have to rebuild from scratch. Constantly getting deplatformed makes it hard to reach new readers and get your work noticed, which it’s why it’s frustrating when your work isn’t cited by other journalists. People simply don’t take you as seriously if they look at your account and only see a few thousand followers. That’s why it’s important for independent, non-corporate controlled media entities like Turtleboy to get credited by larger influencers like Andy Ngo when they use our work as a source.

It might not seem like a big deal to the vast majority of Americans who don’t use Twitter, but the fact of the matter is that Twitter has become the digital public square for journalists and media pundits. It’s essential to be on there because it’s where news gets reported first, and where politicians make policy announcements. Your account and influence grows when you get followed and retweeted by large accounts. When people like Andy Ngo don’t cite their sources it becomes more difficult to do that.

Two weeks ago we were the first media outlet to report about the BYU-Duke volleyball racial slur hoax. The story was linked and cited by people like Jason Whitlock and Amber Athey from The Spectator.

Thanks to @amber_athey for linking to Turtleboy in her excellent story on the Duke-BYU volleyball race hoax. https://t.co/UObe44QUBI

— AidanKearneyTB (@DoctorTurtleboy) September 2, 2022

 

Since I had a professional relationship with Andy I tagged him in a tweet about it, because I knew this story was something he would normally report on.

 

A few days later after the story became national news and Rachel Richardson’s lie began to unravel, I broke this story:

I researched Richardson’s politically connected Godmother and found out that she was previously reprimanded for falsely accusing a judge in Fort Worth of writing a racist email. This established a pattern with Lesa Pamplin and made her story less credible. No other media outlet had reported on it.

A week later Andy Ngo, who followed me on Twitter and saw this tweet, miraculously came upon the story on his own. He tagged a BYU alumni who I’d had conversations with, and credited him for his help.

So he is capable of citing sources when he wants to.

This was part of a long pattern of behavior from Andy though. Last May I extensively covered the Mikayla Miller fake hate crime hoax in Hopkinton. The 16 year old black girl committed suicide by walking into the woods and choking herself to death by tying a belt to a tree. Unfortunately her tragic death was falsely portrayed by Monica Cannon-Grant, Rachael Rollins, Elizabeth Warren, and countless others as a racist lynching perpetrated by 5 white teens, one of whom was Miller’s ex-girlfriend who had recently broken up with her. The children were accused of jumping Miller hours before murdering her, and were falsely labeled as children of cops by Monica. I reported several things that no other media outlet had:

• Miller’s mother Calvina Strothers had been arrested for abusing Miller, which forced her to live in a foster home
• The teens were already questioned and all had provable alibis the night of her death
• Strothers and Monica raised over $60K with a GoFundMe to “investigate” Miller’s death and do an independent autopsy that never happened
• I obtained emails from Miller’s ex-girlfriend Kaitlyn Anderson to Miller’s guidance counselor expressing concerns that Miller was suicidal after she choked herself during a Facetime call with the same belt that she would later use to commit suicide
• I was the only reporter Anderson’s mother would talk to, and I interviewed her on the Live Show, as well as being in communication with their attorney Greg Cataldo
• I reported that the Hopkinton Police Chief was well aware of the emails and other things exonerating Anderson, but was remaining silent while Monica organized a massive protest on the town green, accusing Hopkinton of covering up a lynching

My reporting was eventually vindicated when the ME’s report confirmed that Miller had died by suicide.

In early May I saw Andy Ngo tweet about it, and I contacted him via DM to let him know I had more on the story. He immediately followed me and a conversation began. Normally I would not show private communications like this, but people should know that Andy Ngo steals other people’s labor and passes it off as his own.

Andy was intrigued with the story from the start, as I knew this was something he would normally report on.

 

I explained who I was, my history of reporting on Monica Cannon-Grant, and other details that you wouldn’t know unless you followed Turtleboy or Massachusetts politics. From there he began to ask more and more questions, and was clearly interested in the story. He asked if I could get Kaitlyn Anderson to speak with him, and because she was a minor I offered to get him in touch with her mother Megan instead. Andy said that he wanted to get the truth out about the hoax, so I acted as the liaison between him, Megan Anderson, and her attorney.

 

As you can see I specifically asked him to cite Turtleboy Daily News if he ended up writing a story on this, but I assumed the professional courtesy would’ve been extended without asking since I reported on it first and he couldn’t have written his story without me.

Being a resident of Massachusetts who has been on Main Street in Hopkinton many times gave me insight into the story that a west coast reporter like Andy would not have. Megan Anderson was also going through a horrible ordeal as her daughter was being accused of murder and couldn’t attend her friend’s funeral, so she was understandably untrusting of people she didn’t know like Andy. But she trusted me after our interview, and I convinced her to trust Andy.

Andy was obviously frustrated with Megan Anderson, but every time he sent me a message like this I would contact her and reinforce that Andy could be trusted.

I also had sources in law enforcement and administrative positions in Hopkinton that Andy didn’t have. He asked me to speak with them and the families of the other wrongly accused teens because he was going to publish a story about it in the New York Post.

 

Megan Anderson wasn’t easy to communicate with at the time because of everything that was happening so I had to stay on her when I reported. It was a lot of work but having her on record was a huge part of the story. Andy had similar experiences with her, but instead of being persistent he would complain to me about her and I would get her to speak with him.

 

 

I continued to help Andy by providing him with screenshots of text messages between Mikayla Miller, and Kaitlyn Anderson and pictures of them together. I assisted Andy by explaining what they all meant because he had a lot of questions.

 

 

I thought it was strange how Andy, who was allegedly an investigative journalist known for his research skills, was asking me to do basic things he could do by researching the story, like finding Monica Cannon-Grant’s posts accusing Kaitlyn Anderson of being a murderer.

 

I sent him screenshots of her post by going through her social media accounts. For some reason he also asked for URL’s, even though he could easily access this information on his own by going to her public page.

I made sure to emphasize Monica’s close relationship with and influence on Ayanna Pressley in particular, since she is more of a nationally known political figure who would catch Andy’s attention.

Andy continued to express his frustration with Megan Anderson to me and was confused how I knew everything I had reported.

The answer is that I have great sources. As a result of my hard earned reputation people trust me with information they wouldn’t give to any other media outlets. I went to Monica’s “vigil” in Hopkinton. I’ve shown up to protest her in person at her fraudulent nonprofit’s grand opening and was threatened by thugs with guns for doing so. You don’t have to like me, but my reputation precedes me, and it’s what enabled Turtleboy to break stories like the State Police Troopergate and countless others. When public servants and elected officials want stories to published, but they worry about maintaining their anonymity, they send it to me instead the Boston Globe because they trust Turtleboy. This is a reputation I’ve earned through years of quality reporting.

(Read some of the biggest stories we’ve published here.)

Andy and I had been talking for a week at that point and no story was written. I alerted him that liberal media outlets like Vox were controlling the narrative, which is why we needed him to write this story as soon as possible. I do not have the platform that Andy Ngo does because my audience is mostly in New England (and I was banned from Twitter for over 2 years), so it’s hard to counter misinformation from national publications like Vox without the help of major conservative reporters like Andy. He was still interested though and would message me all hours of the night with questions.

 

He whined to me about Megan Anderson all the time, complaining about the “countless hours” he invested in the story, despite the fact that I was doing the bulk of the legwork. I told him that he had enough to publish.

 

On May 18 the ME’s report was released confirming that it was a suicide. Andy asked me to send Monica’s response to him, which he could easily find on his own. I helped him anyway because I valued a long term professional relationship with him.

 

On May 19 NBC stole my story about Kaitlynn Anderson’s emails to her guidance counselor, which no other media outlet had reported. Andy became upset with me because he believed that I had given this story to NBC, when in fact NBC had just read my blogs and passed it off as their own.

 

I once again asked Andy to cite me in his story when he published it. He never said he would, but I figured it was implied since you’d have to be a pretty big douchebag not to at this point. Unfortunately his story was delayed for a few weeks.

 

In early June Andy posted something about a medical issue he was dealing with due to the Antifa attacks. I reached out to him to express my support for him but he understandably didn’t respond. Then three weeks later he sent me a link to a story he had written for Newsweek about Mikayla Miller.

 

I was elated to see it in written, but disappointed and furious that I wasn’t mentioned. Andy privately said he couldn’t thank me enough for my role in writing the story, and asked me to continue to update him about Calvina Strothers’ court case. However, he didn’t mention me in his tweet or cite me in the Newsweek story.

 

Andy’s story also contained several inaccuracies, including this one:

Now, for the first time, Mikayla’s ex-girlfriend’s family is speaking out, offering details to Newsweek about Mikayla’s allegedly abusive home life and troubled state of mind in the days before her death.

This wasn’t the first time Megan Anderson spoke out. I had interviewed her at the 30 minute mark of this show over a month earlier:

 

Andy knew this since I sent him a link to the interview. The Newsweek story also contained pictures I had sent to Andy, after getting them from Megan Anderson:

His reporting included references to messages that Kaitlynn Anderson sent to Mikayla Miller’s aunt, which I had not only sent Andy but interpreted for him when he didn’t understand what they meant:

On April 11, the teen wrote to Mikayla’s aunt on Facebook Messenger: “Worried about Mikayla. Her mom isn’t home and she’s been crying all weekend and I don’t trust her alone with herself and I’m scared she might hurt herself. She tore up her room and she’s screaming and yelling.”

 

I politely asked Andy to include a link my reporting on TB Daily News in his Newsweek article, which I had requested of him from the beginning. This is my business and livelihood, and I’ve had countless stories like this stolen from me by the mainstream media before. Andy Ngo is an independent journalist and we were working for the same thing here. As a self made reporter he of all people should’ve known the importance of this and had the professional courtesy to link to TB.

 

But instead of helping me out Andy deflected and blamed it on his editor at Newsweek. An honorable and professional journalist would’ve insisted that the source be cited, and blaming it on the editor was a cop out. I highly doubt he even asked, and I’m sure he wasn’t persistent if he did, so I asked for the editor’s contact. He ignored me before asking if I was upset with him.

 

Instead of giving me the editor’s contact (who would probably have told me that Andy never asked for me to be cited) Andy threw me a bone by telling me that he would mention me in a tweet.

 

But this was even more insulting because:

1. The @Turtleboytweets account is a fan run account I didn’t control
2. He knew my real account handle @DoctorTurtleboy because he followed me on it and it was how we communicated
3. He linked to Turtleboysports.com, when all of the Mikayla Miller blogs were published on TBDailyNews.com
4. He didn’t even link to a particular story, just the front page of the website that has over 20,000 blogs published on it

 

It was frustrating to see so many people in his mentions interested in this story because it would’ve been a tremendous opportunity to gain followers and influence. My followers responded to Andy and accused him of stealing my work, which led to his followers accusing me of having no involvement. To prove that I was Andy’s primary source I posted a couple screenshots of our communications. Andy asked me to take them down:

 

He then ironically accused me of being inappropriate, despite publishing something that he knew wasn’t true and refusing to cite his sources. What truly made my blood boil was when he said that his claim that he was the first reporter to get Megan Anderson on the record wasn’t a lie because “she had not spoken on record to any news print publication.”

 

In other words, I didn’t work for a corporate controlled media entity, therefore it was permissible for him to steal my work without attribution. This from a guy who became who he is today by independently reporting stories without working for a mainstream media entity. Sometimes conservative influencers like this forget where they came from after they become everything they claim to be against.

Nevertheless I honored his request, despite the fact that my tweets with screenshots of our conversation made him look like the fraud that he is, because I valued a long term professional relationship with him moving forward.

But since then Andy has continued to post my work without any links or attribution.

Andy went on the Howie Carr Show on July 1, 2021, and was interviewed by Grace Curley. To make matters worse he told her at the 8:19 mark that he decided to take this story up on his own, despite the fact that I was the one who alerted him in the first place. Grace is a turtle rider, and she attempted to plug me, but Andy didn’t even respond when she did.

I decided to write this because at this point it’s clear that Andy Ngo is useless to me professionally. He views Turtleboy as an insignificant media outlet that he can use to steal stories from. It’s become almost comical to the people who follow me on Twitter every time he steals content from me and passes it off as his own, and he deserves to be called out for it.

It takes two seconds to cite your sources Andy and literally costs you nothing. Stop taking credit for other people’s work.

 

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