While real figures and actual events are referenced in this podcast and provide backstory, the specific characters, situations, and incidents presented are fiction, products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to real people is coincidental.

My first contact with Cole Tyler was in May of 2025. I was at home, in my office working on a piece, not coincidentally, about a white supremacist group west of Richmond. My phone buzzed. A new text, number unknown. Normally, I wouldn’t allow it to distract me, but I happened to catch my name in the text so I stopped and read it:

I’m a freelance investigative journalist who writes about white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and other hate groups. I can’t ignore a text like that, so I paused a moment…well, a few moments….and then liked it.

I already had the encryption app, Signal, on my phone, along with Wire, Telegram, Discord, and all the other apps hate groups use to keep anyone from listening in on conversations. So, I waited. My heart started beating a little faster. I had this strange feeling it had to do with the piece I’d written a few months earlier for the Washington Post. That article turned my life upside down.

The newly inaugurated Klein administration, not two weeks into his term, quietly made cuts to the FBI’s DT, or domestic terrorism, budget. The same budget that funds undercover work on all hate groups. It was important, because President Klein, who, when he was candidate Klein, refused to disavow hate groups and had a way of cozying up to to anything he could find that was racist, sexist, anti-LGBTQ, or xenophobic.

The piece blew up. More than I’d wanted. Then Klein was forced to answer a question about it in a press conference, which made it go viral. I got death threats. I did interviews. I slogged through all of it, but it comes with the territory.

It wasn’t long before I got the call from this mysterious person who needed to talk, and when I answered it, my life changed.

This is where the podcast picks up. I’ll let you listen (links below or find anywhere), but, just so you know, I’m going to use this Substack as a way to fill in the gaps, so feel free to follow along here:

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This gripping episode will end with an interesting twist. A detail that will make an already unsettling situation for Cole even more dangerous.

In May of 2025, Ethan Fox, a freelance investigative journalist, was contacted by FBI undercover agent, Cole Tyler, who had recently infiltrated the most dangerous hate group in America. The group was operating in Virginia at The Preserve, a 100,000-acre big-game hunting facility filled with over 1,000 wild Russian boar. But why did Cole need Ethan? By contacting a journalist while operating undercover in a case, Cole would most certainly mark the end of his stellar career in the Bureau, however, given what he had just learned, it was the only option he had remaining. Unfortunately for Cole, his problems were just beginning.

Faction is a fiction serial podcast, written and produced by Ethan Fox in an investigative journalism style. The first season is titled The Preserve. You can find the show wherever you get your podcasts, and you can learn more at www.factionreport.com or on social at @factionreport.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Through their conversation we learn why Cole needs to talk to Ethan, and why it must be from a burner phone while on a hike in the woods. As Ethan digs, his own past investigating hate groups brings the severity of the situation into focus, until Cole reveals a detail that changes everything.

In May of 2025, Ethan Fox, a freelance investigative journalist, was contacted by FBI undercover agent, Cole Tyler, who had recently infiltrated the most dangerous hate group in America. The group was operating in Virginia at The Preserve, a 100,000-acre big-game hunting facility filled with over 1,000 wild Russian boar. But why did Cole need Ethan? By contacting a journalist while operating undercover in a case, Cole would most certainly mark the end of his stellar career in the Bureau, however, given what he had just learned, it was the only option he had remaining. Unfortunately for Cole, his problems were just beginning.

Faction is a fiction serial podcast, written and produced by Ethan Fox in an investigative journalism style. The first season is titled The Preserve. You can find the show wherever you get your podcasts, and you can learn more at www.factionreport.com or on social at @factionreport.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.