Here’s the Rogue New York Post Employee Fired For Hijacking Its Website and Twitter

The New York Post employee who went rogue and published a series of offensive and sexist posts on the paper’s website and Twitter account as a prank is digital producer Miguel Gonzalez, Mediaite can confirm.

The Post fired Gonzalez on Thursday, after a brief investigation determined he was responsible for the posts.

The attacker not only had access to the tabloid’s Twitter account, but also the backend of its website, as one story was edited to falsely show Ben Shapiro authoring an article recommending the assassination of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

Other deleted tweets included a horrific made-up headline claiming New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin would violently rape incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), racist insults about New York City Mayor Eric Adams, as well as a fake column from Miranda Devine calling for President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden to be executed.

Hochul’s press secretary Jen Goodman blasted the Post for the “violent, sexist rhetoric” in a statement posted to Twitter, saying the paper “has long fostered an ugly, toxic conversation on their front pages and social accounts, but these posts are more disgusting and vile than usual.” The campaign was calling on the paper to “immediately explain how this reprehensible content was made public.”

Gonzalez’s LinkedIn page had already been updated by Thursday afternoon to indicate he was no longer employed at the Post and is now “Looking for job opportunities.”

His profile describes his experience at the Post as being employed full-time there from Nov. 2019 until Oct. 2022, and his job duties included adding stories to the website using WordPress and producing other “online content” — the exact kind of access that would allow someone to conduct the digital vandalism that occurred Thursday morning.

The Post initially said in a statement the attack was carried out by a hacker. Soon after, however, the Post announced that an investigation determined a rogue employee published the posts and had been fired.

“The New York Post’s investigation indicates that the unauthorized conduct was committed by an employee, and the employee has been terminated,” they said. “This morning, we immediately removed the vile and reprehensible content from our website and social media accounts.”

The Daily Beast’s Confider newsletter was the first to report Gonzalez’s identity Monday evening.

According to the Beast, Gonzalez described his digital vandalism in an interview as “an emotional tantrum,” telling the Beast’s Lachlan Cartwright that his job duties had given him access to the Post’s content management system, which allowed him to post the fake headlines.

“I let my own stupidity get the best of me,” Gonzalez told the Beast on Sunday.

The Post has not publicly confirmed Gonzalez’s identity and did not respond to Mediaite’s request for comment, but a source with knowledge of the situation identified him to this reporter as the culprit, saying that the “chatter” was that Gonzalez may have taken issue with the paper’s “editorial slant.” Owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the Post often adopts a right-leaning take on stories, including famously (or infamously, depending on the reader’s own personal views) publishing the Hunter Biden laptop story a few weeks before the 2020 election.

Gonzalez himself denied any such political motivation, however, claiming that it was what the Beast reported as “a reaction to troubles in his personal life.”

The Beast report notes this was Gonzalez’s first journalism job after college and describes his “grueling shifts” as “intense to the point where he was responding to Slack messages from editors while he was in the bathroom.”

He’s acknowledged he “deserved to get fired” for the “very volatile, irresponsible, and disgusting action and an utmost betrayal of the New York Post.”

Still, he’s apparently hoping to stay in the journalism profession and has applied for jobs at other media outlets, including the Gothamist and New York Public Radio, even though he admits he’s likely to be “blacklisted everywhere.”

“What I did was horrible,” said Gonzalez. “It was my mistake and I owe a lot of people apologies.”