Biography

David Sirota was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1975 and graduated from Northwestern University. He spent years as a congressional staffer, newspaper columnist, and radio host before founding the investigative outlet that became The Lever — a reader-supported newsroom built specifically to report on corporate corruption without advertiser or ownership pressure.

He served as a speechwriter and senior adviser to Bernie Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign, helping shape the language of a run that made oligarchy and legalized bribery central terms in American political debate.

Sirota also co-wrote the story for Adam McKay's Don't Look Up (2021), which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay — an unusual credit for an investigative journalist, and one that brought the film's climate allegory to an audience of hundreds of millions.

The Lever's investigative team published Master Plan: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America, which traces the deliberate, decades-long campaign beginning in the early 1970s to dismantle anti-corruption law in the United States. He is married to Emily Sirota, a Colorado state representative.

The Lever & Master Plan

Sirota's central argument is that America's crises are not separate problems but symptoms of one disease: corruption built structurally into the political system. Sky-high housing costs, crushing rent, and unpayable medical bills are, in his framing, downstream of legalized bribery — and campaign finance reform is the lever that moves all of them.

Master Plan documents that this was not drift but design: a deliberate plot originating in the early 1970s to code corruption into the machinery of American democracy. The reporting has become a common reference point for candidates running against corporate money.

The Lever operates on the same model as the campaigns it covers — funded by small-dollar readers rather than institutional advertisers, which is precisely what allows it to report on institutional advertisers.

Anti-corruption
Investigative reporting
Campaign finance reform
Housing costs
Healthcare pricing
Corporate accountability

In the press