A discredited media company and its CEO with powerhouse progressive ruling establishment financial ties have been indicted on federal charges for conspiring to defraud investors and lenders. Ozy Media had its origins in and owed its entire existence to a well-oiled money machine involving renowned leftist “philanthropies,” Wall Street titans, and major Democrat political figures.
The company and its founder and Chief Executive Officer Carlos Watson are charged with conducting a “scheme to defraud Ozy’s investors and lenders by making material misrepresentations about Ozy’s financial and business assets,” a Feb. 23 Justice Department release stated. “Watson is also charged with aggravated identity theft for his role in the impersonation of multiple media company executives in communications with Ozy’s lenders and prospective investors in furtherance of the fraud schemes.”
“As alleged, Carlos Watson is a con man whose business strategy was based on outright deceit and fraud,” Breon Peace, US attorney for the eastern district of New York, said. “He ran Ozy as a criminal organization rather than as a reputable media company.”
Follow the Not-So-Winding Path
Watson has had an interesting career. The Harvard grad’s first job after earning a law degree at Stanford in 1995 was with uber-connected business consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Rajat Gupta, McKinsey’s global managing director from 1994 to 2003 and a close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, was later convicted of insider trading and spent two years in prison. Like Watson, Chelsea Clinton’s first job out of school was with McKinsey.
The Washington Free Beacon in 2015 reported that Gupta, a former Goldman Sachs executive, and his wife donated heavily to Democrat politicians and “also gave between $10,001 and $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation.”
“He was very proud of saying ‘I hired Chelsea Clinton – I hired Hillary Clinton’s daughter,’” a neighbor told Anita Raghavan, author of The Billionaire’s Apprentice, an in-depth look at the insider trading ring Gupta ran, the news site wrote.
Also worth noting: Beleaguered Biden administration Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg started his professional career at McKinsey.
After leaving McKinsey, Watson joined Wall Street investment banking goliath Goldman Sachs. Then, in the early 2000s, he suddenly enjoyed a successful rise in cable TV news. He served as a political analyst at CNN before moving on to become a daytime anchor at MSNBC in 2009. A January 2005 article in The Hill referred to him as “the new hotshot at CNN.”
Big-Ticket Media Venture
In 2013, Watson and a fellow Goldman Sachs alum founded Ozy Media. A 2021 New York Times report reveals the heavyweight backing behind the new venture:
“Mr. Watson raised the money to start Ozy from a list of blue-chip friends. Laurene Powell Jobs, who had co-founded a college prep nonprofit with Mr. Watson in 1997, invested and joined the Ozy board. The Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ron Conway also invested, as did David Drummond, who was then Google’s chief legal officer.
“In 2014, Axel Springer, the Berlin publishing giant, invested an undisclosed amount ... The Ford Foundation, seeking to support a minority-led company, also backed it with grants, its president, Darren Walker, said.”
The Ford Foundation is one of the most notoriously hard-left money-soaked “philanthropies” operating in the United States today. Jobs is the leftist multi-billionaire widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs.
Marc Lasry, “a hedge fund billionaire whose son ran as a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin,” was also a key supporter of the company, The Free Beacon observed. “Lasry organized a $35 million investment round in 2019 for Ozy.”
Credentialed progressive institutions let it be known that they believed in Ozy.
Carlos Watson (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images)
“We need new media companies to challenge the status quo, shake things up, and go deep on the issues that matter most,” Walker, head of the Ford Foundation, told The Times in an email. “In an increasingly diverse world, it’s no coincidence that a company with co-founders of Black and Indian descent would be so successful.”
In 2016, Watson was named to the board of directors at taxpayer-supported leftist media outlet NPR.
“Watson is an entrepreneur and Emmy-winning journalist based in Silicon Valley,” an NPR statement announcing the move gushed. “Carlos is the co-founder and CEO of OZY Media, Inc., which helps over 20 million readers catch up on the day's most important news with its Presidential Daily Brief, and vault ahead with eight original features dedicated to what's new and what's next.”
NPR highlighting that “over 20 million readers” figure is particularly embarrassing today, given that one of the main charges against Watson and Ozy is artificially inflating readership numbers to deceive investors. Watson resigned from the NPR board in 2021 “after the spectacular public meltdown of the digital media company that he leads and co-founded,” NPR glumly related.
Watson’s career arc -- beginning with his time at McKinsey, through his Goldman Sachs period, onto his CNN and MSNBC years, and finally culminating in his Ozy machinations -- makes one thing abundantly clear: The extent of his access to the hallways of progressive ruling establishment power was staggering.
