Vivek Ramaswamy has tried to stake out an outsized role in the 2024 presidential race, and to some extent he’s succeeded. Despite a minuscule level of actual support, the wealthy businessman has found himself headlining Sunday shows and taking viral shots at Ron DeSantis (because Ramaswamy refuses to really attack Donald Trump, the frontrunner, for some reason). He even managed to be part of an interview that helped get Don Lemon fired from CNN.

But while Ramaswamy has championed himself as an anti-woke trendsetter, he allegedly paid a Wikipedia editor to scrub embarrassing bio details involving George Soros and his involvement in Ohio’s COVID-19 response team (Mediaite).

Ramaswamy’s Wikipedia page includes the warning, “this article has multiple issues,” with a note that it “contains paid contributions” and “may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia’s content policies, particularly neutral point of view.”

The source of these concerns are changes made by an editor with the screen name “Jhofferman,” who has disclosed that he was paid by Ramaswamy to make alterations to the page.

According to the article’s version history, the editor removed lines about Ramaswamy’s receipt of a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans in 2011. Paul Soros was the older brother of billionaire funder of leftist causes George Soros, who was the biggest individual political donor in the United States during the 2022 election cycle. Also removed from the page on February 9, 2023 was Ramaswamy’s role on the state of Ohio’s Covid-19 Response Team. The editor recorded that Ramaswamy’s Covid-era work was removed from the article by the candidate’s own explicit request, while his Soros fellowship was deemed “extraneous material” by the editor.

The editor’s conflict of interest was debated by Wikipedia users and editors after the alterations were made; the reference to Ramaswamy’s fellowship was later added back to the page, although his tenure on the Ohio Covid Team remains absent.

Though I’m not a fan of Ramaswamy’s political campaign because I think it’s astroturfed and obviously mean to gain favor, not win the primaries, I did defend him from the attacks involving George Soros. As I wrote when the issue first arose in February, the scholarship Ramaswamy received from the Paul and Daisy Soros Foundation in 2011 was not political. Would you have turned down that money? I’d suspect most wouldn’t have.

With that said, Ramaswamy trying to hide that connection is suspect at best and appears to be a textbook example of the Streisand effect. Most would have never even heard about it had this alleged attempt to cover it up not been made.

Then there’s the involvement Ramaswamy had with Ohio’s COVID-19 response team. That’s relevant because Ohio, despite being a solidly red state, was one of the more restrictive during the coronavirus pandemic. Gov. Mike DeWine was criticized for his lockdown policies and extended mask mandates, and Ramaswamy was part of the team that is assumed to have formulated those policy decisions.

My problem with all of this is that it makes Ramaswamy look fake. He has spent the last month suggesting that all the other candidates (and probable candidates) are copying him when it comes to fighting woke policies, as if his mid-2021 book was a revelation. He also suggested that other Republicans stole his recently proclaimed idea of questioning the Federal Reserve (Ron Paul would like a word). Both are nonsense claims and are unnecessary.

Ramaswamy should just own his background. Does it contain some things that will give conservatives pause? Yes, it does, but people appreciate authenticity, and they can sense when they are being taken for a ride.

With that said, if this report about the Wikipedia editor isn’t the whole story, I’d encourage Ramaswamy to give his side. Let’s hear what went down here.