Death of male model Jeff Thomas 'involved in romantic relationship with Peter Thiel' is being invest

Publish date: 2024-05-09

The project wasn’t expensive, but Bury’s team and donors were willing to make small direct payments to people for their time or documents. One person who was approached told me that Christianson offered to help pay for the deposit on an apartment, for instance. (Though that has also been framed to me as an act of charity.) Of course, a Thomas tell-all would not fetch anywhere in the stratosphere of $3 million to $4 million, as Bury suggested; and, obviously, Grim is an influential reporter, not some stenographer. But Thomas, a political neophyte caught in a financial tug-of-war between Thiel and the Democrats, wouldn’t necessarily have known any of that.

Thomas was also in a vulnerable place in his life, according to many interviews with his friends and texts he exchanged that I saw over the last few months. He experimented with serious drugs, partied multiple nights a week all around the globe, and feasted on the vanity of social media. And he had complex emotions about Thiel—he seemed to enjoy living in a $13 million home and driving a fancy car, both of which Thiel provided, but he had also felt “kept” by him, as he would eventually tell Bury’s team in a recorded conversation. For Thomas, speaking to the researchers seemed to function as a form of therapy: it made him feel like he had control, according to people he told of the encounter, and in some ways he felt like he was speaking to Thiel, saying things aloud that he felt uncomfortable articulating to him directly.

Eventually, Thomas concluded that he would be willing to meet with Grim just before Election Day. Thomas had planned to sit down with him at the Ritz-Carlton in Key Biscayne for an in-person interview—Thomas wanted a massage and facial beforehand, which the researchers booked—but then Thomas flaked yet again at the last minute. Grim and Thomas would later chat by phone.

In the immediate aftermath of the interviews with researchers and Grim, according to people who talked with him, Thomas felt that he made a serious mistake in aiding what he described privately as a “shakedown.” At times, his apprehension veered into paranoia, with Thomas telling friends that he was having nightmares about his name appearing in the news. Several friends and his Republican family members, upon hearing about the operation and his worsening anxiety, encouraged him not to talk. By mid-November, Thomas was telling friends that Democratic operatives had tricked him and were bullying and targeting him and Thiel. Thomas even talked about how he might get revenge.

At a dinner with Thiel on November 15, he would later tell friends, Thomas confessed that he had spoken with the researchers and Grim. Thomas took responsibility for what happened, and said that Thiel encouraged him to look forward, not put so much blame on himself, and move out of the house. Thomas, attempting to move on with his life, relocated to Miami.

Over the following days and weeks, meanwhile, the momentum behind the Thiel exposé appeared to peter out. Grim’s article, which Bury was pressing to get published before the midterm elections, never materialized.

For months, I had heard murmurs about the Democratic operation on Thiel, but its details were closely guarded by those in Brock’s orbit. Then the saga took an unpredictable and tragic turn. Shortly after 4 p.m. on March 8, Thomas was found dead on the pool deck of a Brickell highrise. The Miami Police rendered his death a suicide, according to an official report that I obtained. Thomas and Thiel had spoken on the phone earlier that day, and Thomas had expressed a vague need for help, I’m told. “We have no comment and believe we have all data points from a very complex situation,” Jeff’s stepfather, Matt Thomas, told me last month.

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