Who is Yashar Ali?
For those who have never heard of Ali, he is a 41-year-old American journalist who grew up in Oak Park, Illinois in an Iranian family. He later moved from Illinois to Los Angeles, where his career took off.
Interestingly, Ali is not Yashar s last name but his middle name, while Hedayat is his surname. He adopted Yashar Ali as his pen name because he comes from a rich and politically connected family, who faced persecution in Iran. According to a profile on him done by Buzzfeed in 2017, the adoption of the pen name was also in the effort to obscure his previous career, which included being a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign and an aide to former San Francisco mayor and current California lieutenant governor Gavin Newsom.
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There is a bit of the Talented Mr Ripley in him : Twitter influencer Yashar Ali is accused of failing to pay back $179K to a Getty heiress and overstaying his welcome at Kathy Griffin s house in scathing new profile
The profile, published by the Los Angeles Magazine on Wednesday, delves into Yashar Ali s troubled past relationships with high profile figures and celebrities
The 41-year-old is well-connected and has roughly 800,000 followers on Twitter
Heiress Ariadne Getty filed a civil lawsuit against Ali in 2017 after he allegedly failed to repay $179,000 she gave him in loans
He reportedly befriended comedian Kathy Griffin after her career tanked when she posted an obscene image of Trump s severed head
In just a few years, Yashar Ali has become one of the most fearsome media figures in the country mobilizing his vast Twitter following to promote his famous friends and punish foes. Can his own past survive similar scrutiny? https://t.co/SVGHPW7mgg Los Angeles Magazine (@LAmag) June 9, 2021…