There's a version of my story going around in which I was secretly Thomas Schoenberger's friend all along, the public fights were theater, and the money trail proves it.
That version was built on my own computer—accessed without my authorization, read without context, and spread without ever asking me a single question.
Here is the context. Something broke inside me, like I am always angry. Relapsing into drug use.
The agreement
When Laura Dilley and I got together, it came with hours of recorded interviews she did with me for her research and "our" book. She knew the stakes better than almost anyone, because I was the one who explained them to her. We agreed on one thing explicitly: the mission was above us. Above the relationship, above fights, above ego. Whatever happened between us, the work — documenting who actually built the QAnon operation — came first.
I held that line. When the relationship ended and she began burning everything down publicly, I didn't fight back on the timeline. I deleted my account and left Twitter because watching her discredit herself was painful, and I wanted no part of a public breakup spectacle. My own DMs from that period say exactly that: "The only one fighting on Twitter over a relationship is not me; I find it low, something that should be private. It's tempting to release the things I got, but I won't... I actually feel bad watching her like that." (Screenshot 2 — December 9, 2023, 3:52 AM.)
I only came back when people started telling me it hadn't stopped—that ex-girlfriends of mine were getting calls.
The approach
That's when Thomas Schoenberger showed up wanting to be buddies.
I knew exactly what it was. I had watched him work for six years. He thought I was broken and depressed after the public blast from every direction, and broken people are what he collects. His pattern is documented across hundreds of videos and emails: find someone isolated, love-bomb them, put them to use.
So I made a decision, and — this is the part the rumor version always omits — I announced it in advance.
The declaration, timestamped
On December 9, 2023, at 1:22 AM, I wrote to a witness (the account known as Robot David Steele):
"to keep it short I am going to infiltrate Ts team again"
At 1:19–1:24 AM, same conversation:
"It's obvious that Thomas and friends are being nice because he thinks I'm emotionally not well or whatever... I would never fall for his fake love showers... I have tried many ways to take care of him, with so-so results, so I'm taking advantage of people's biases over me. I don't know what I can do from the inside but I will figure it out."
At 1:25 AM:
"I'm not asking for help or you to do anything, actually please keep talking bad about me, that helps. But I need a witness."
Read that again. "Please keep talking bad about me; that helps," I asked people to keep attacking me publicly because my credibility as a target was my cover. The only thing I asked for was silence—"The only thing I am asking is not to tell anyone... except when the stunt or play falls."
And at 3:50 AM, the ethics clause was in writing, before anything started.
"I will play along until I have strong irrefutable evidence, or if I am aware that something is up I will warn whoever is the target."
That's not what collaboration looks like. That's what a declared operation looks like. I told at least five people, including Laura Dilley herself. It was documented by Cullen Hoback. This wasn't a secret I got caught keeping. It was a plan I announced, with witnesses, with timestamps, with a stated exit condition and a stated protection rule for anyone Thomas targeted.
Five days later—December 14, 2023—Thomas was already performing the rescue act, emailing third parties with me CC'd about how Dilley was "terrorizing" me, playing protector. The love shower arrived exactly on schedule. I have the thread.
The cost
Here's what I didn't know: Laura never believed me. She thought I was controlled, compromised, and on his side. So when she accessed my computer, she found exactly what an infiltration produces—friendly conversations with Thomas, even PayPal transfers from him—and read it as betrayal instead of tradecraft.
She knew about the plan. I had told her directly. And she still ran with the story that I had always been his friend, that the years of public conflict were fake.
That rumor cost me, my friends. It cost me my reputation with people I had spent years feeding evidence to. People treated me worse than Thomas ever did — and many of them also knew about the operation. Some went further: they started publicly joking about me "infiltrating Thomas," mocking the operation while it was still live, burning what was left of my cover for a laugh.
I can't work in what I used to work in, or people don't want to engage with me, because Dilley went through all my contacts and friends, so...
Think about what that means. The people on my side outed an active operation. Thomas, the target, was the one sending me thumbs-up emojis.
What nobody counts
Here's what the tradecraft framing leaves out; pay attention because I'm almost certain you never even thought about it
I had to go back. To him. I had to submit—again—to a man who made videos calling me a pedophile and mocking the women in my life, my body, my family—and perform friendship. Every friendly reply I sent cost something. People talk about undercover work like it's a trick you play on the target. It isn't. It's a thing you do to yourself, every day, for years, and you do it alone—because the whole point is that nobody can know.
And when it was over—when I made my findings public, when the evidence was out—do you know how many of the people who spent those years calling me a traitor, a plant, or Thomas's boy said anything? Not "thank you." Not even "I was wrong."
Nobody. Not one.
I tried to manage it quietly. I hinted, and then I told them outright, that the attacks were too much—that I'm a person, that I'm not going to be equally stable every single day, and that their comments were grinding me down. I even took a vacation, hoping distance would burn off some of the fire I felt toward all of them. It didn't, because the problem was never my proximity. The problem was that I never did anything to any of them, and they treated me like I had.
And here's the one I can't get past. When my cat was dying — when I asked for help, plainly, as a human being and not as a source or a researcher or a character in anyone's story — they turned their backs. All of them. That's not politics or infosec drama or "the fog of the Q wars." That's just who people showed me they are when there was nothing to gain from me.
By then, I had been creating content for 6 years. I never asked my audience for anything; I didn't even have a donation link. This was not about making money.
So no. None of them got my friendship back. None of them get my attention back. Those were free for eight years, and the record shows what free got me.
The delivery
I kept going anyway. Not becaus[it's fe I'm stubborn—because stopping would have meant all of it was for nothing, and because I said I would.
It took almost three years of maintaining access. And I got what I went in for: Thomas Schoenberger's FBIAnon confession — from his own account, in his own words. Evidence that materially helps the same person who burned me. The record will also show that essentially everything Laura came back with later was material I told her or would have handed her freely.
I've said from the start that I won't be a willing witness in anyone's favor. I didn't do this for a side. I did it for the record—the same reason I forwarded evidence to journalists and filmmakers years before any of these people wrote papers or filed lawsuits.
What this was
I'm not asking anyone to like how I did it. Undercover work is ugly by definition: you say friendly things to a person you're documenting, you accept the dynamic he offers, and you let your own name take damage as cover.
But there is a difference between a secret and an operation, and the difference is disclosure. I disclosed it in advance, in writing, to five people, with a documentary filmmaker holding the record. Every person now retelling the "he was Thomas's friend all along" story is retelling it around those timestamps, because the timestamps end the story.
The mission was above us. I'm the only one who kept the agreement—and I kept it while the people it served mocked me, doubted me, and looked away when I was at my lowest.
Going forward, my research continues. My open door does not. If the work matters to you, it will be available—but the era of me bleeding for free, for people who wouldn't answer a message when my cat was dying, is over.
Visit: https://x.com/cheshire3301/status/2081532278816080004
— Lestat (@Tafoyovsky)