By Corn · · 11 min read
The Math Isn't Mathing in Indiana
The state's own auditor found 45 findings. A week later the governor said case closed. Then $15 million left for a fund with no other investors, and the report that explains it all got sealed... by choice. The statute has a door in it, and Governor Braun holds the key.
Yesterday I got my first response from the ten or so requests for comment we sent out for what we've published on . It came from the Indiana Office of Inspector General... well, technically it came from an outside PR firm speaking for the Inspector General, which tells you something all by itself.
And the non-response is itself a story worth investigating further.
how we got here
Governor Mike Braun came in hot when he took office in 2025... demanding transparency from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and Elevate Ventures. In April 2025 he froze Elevate's funding, ordered an independent forensic audit of the IEDC and its affiliates, signed an executive order on affiliate transparency, and said anything with the appearance of impropriety would be dealt with.
Like many Hoosiers, I was excited. We were finally going to get some answers.
Unfortunately Braun proved Charles de Gaulle right again: "Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word."
Or maybe he did believe it and got compromised along the way... but either way, the math isn't mathing.
what the audit found, and what happened next
The forensic review came back October 2, 2025 with 45 findings. Thirty entities where an IEDC insider had a potential conflict... one of them disclosed to anyone who mattered. Executives with hidden carried interest in the fund they were running. A partner that could not account for public money. All of that is in the state's own auditor's report, documented, page-numbered, on .
The findings went to the Inspector General.
A week later Governor Braun said he was satisfied with the results, that there were no criminal findings, and that it was up to the legislature if it believed more investigation was warranted. Case closed, everyone back to business as usual.
Then in April 2026, the same agency committed $15 million from the same 21st Century Fund to Iron Nation II... a venture fund run from Israel... as the state's share of a program called Iron Nation-Indiana. The first and, from what we have seen, only check into the fund. And when the program's first deal closed in September, it closed during a three-day Indiana-Israel summit that kicked off, in Elevate's own CEO's words, "with Iron Nation at Elevate Ventures." Read that carefully: the manager whose loan the state is still trying to collect hosted the fund the state moved its money to, the week the first deal closed.
We kept waiting for the OIG's report to be released, the way summaries of these things reach the public.
It never came.
what the OIG's PR firm told me
Here is what I got instead. The OIG's answer came not from the office but from an outside public-relations firm: Stephanie McFarland, of McFarland PR & Public Affairs, wrote on the office's behalf. She asked that we attribute her words to "OIG officials." We are not doing that, because she is not one.
Her words, verbatim:
"Complaints to the OIG, and any related investigations, are confidential to protect the integrity and independence of investigations as well as guard against reputational harm to any uncharged persons. For these reasons, the OIG has a long-standing policy that whether the OIG is investigating a matter or not, the OIG does not publicly acknowledge such."
And on the report itself:
"...the IG's office aligns closely to its statutory purpose and does not waive confidentiality for full reports."
What she's saying is correct as far as it goes. She cited IC 4-2-7-4(3), and the cite checks out: "The inspector general shall prepare a report summarizing the results of every investigation. The report is confidential in accordance with section 8 of this chapter."
But we went and read section 8, and here's what the PR answer leaves out... it's the part that matters.
IC 4-2-7-8(b): "The investigative records of the inspector general MAY be kept confidential in whole or in part." May. Not shall. The only thing that chapter actually REQUIRES them to keep confidential is the identity of the person who reported the violation. Everything else... the findings, the status, the report itself... is confidential because someone chooses for it to be.
And then there's IC 4-2-7-8(e): "A person may disclose confidential information or records... if the governor authorizes the disclosure of this information in the public interest."
So let's say it plainly. The confidentiality they're hiding behind is a choice the statute permits, not a duty it imposes. The same chapter hands Governor Braun a public-interest key. The office that says it cannot speak is an office that has decided not to... and the man who promised you transparency is the one who could change that with a signature.
So we have the state's own auditor documenting 45 findings and a governor who says "satisfied" a week later... then $15 million goes to a fund with no other investors we can see... then in July the new commerce secretary arrives... and the report that would let Hoosiers judge any of it stays sealed by choice.
This whole damn thing smells like a cover-up, and I will not stop until it is all in the open.
the new commerce secretary
In July 2026 the IEDC got a new boss: Chuck Goodrich. He took the job and kept his other one... president and CEO of Gaylor Electric, one of the largest electrical contractors in the country, which he has run since 2014. His line about it: Gaylor "will have to apply like everyone else."
Like he's at arm's length from it. The state's own records show Gaylor holds $1.5 million in that agency's tax credits and state contracts, including at the Statehouse. He acknowledged Gaylor took over $1 million in IEDC credits in 2024 and assumes it will "submit just like every other company" for more. Gaylor builds data centers. Indiana has roughly $14 billion of announced data center construction... incentivized by the agency Goodrich now runs.
That is a conflict of interest you can see from space, and the office that would referee it reports to the same structure that just decided you don't get to read its reports anymore.
what I think happened
I can't prove intent, and here's the part that should bother you: the people who could prove me wrong are the ones keeping the evidence sealed. I would love to be falsified. Release the report and falsify me. Until then, I'm left to formulate what I think happened from the evidence that IS public... and everything I'm about to say fits it.
I think Elevate was operating a corrupt organization under Christopher "Toph" Day and misusing public funds out the ass. I think the investigation started and Toph got a call from someone who wanted to be his friend.
I know what that call sounds like, because I once got one from Toph myself. He called me about the Rally competition... the one giving away $5 million where, by my count, only 2 of the 25 companies in the running were from Indiana. I understood the purpose of that call to be buying my silence about the absurdity of it. That is my firsthand account, that is expressly my interpretation of the call, and I'll repeat it under oath. Toph may remember the call differently... if he does, I will publish his account of it, in full.
I think at some point a deal was made between Toph, the IEDC, and folks from Tel Aviv: make this go away, and in return they get access to Indiana's tax incentives and more for their companies. The state writes a $15 million check that papers over the past. The governor says everything is on the up and up, investigation closed. And once the deal was in motion, they needed someone to make sure the datacenter build-out and all the "economic growth" talk delivered for the circle... so they hired a commerce secretary who owns the electrical contractor.
And to make sure no one ever traces the paper, the report that connects it all stays sealed... "long-standing policy."
That's my read. Every fact in the timeline above is documented or reported and graded at , where you can check each one against its source. The connections between them are mine. If the innocent version is true... the audit really found nothing criminal, Iron Nation is just a savvy investment, Goodrich's screens really work... then releasing the report costs the state nothing and ends this conversation. The fact that it stays sealed is itself information.
so here's where I stand
I am not afraid of anything and I won't stop.
Unless everyone in the federal and state governments is corrupt, SOMEONE WILL BE GOING TO JAIL.
So y'all need to start finding your scapegoats and serving them to the public ASAP... that won't end it, but at least it'll buy you some time.
And if anyone named in this piece believes I've got it wrong: I welcome the conversation, on the record, and I'll publish your response in full. That offer went out by email last week. One of you answered through a PR firm.
Governor Braun: you froze the funding. You ordered the audit. You have the statutory authority to release the outcome. You campaigned on exactly this.
Release the report.
update, september 9: we cross-referenced everything
Since this piece went up, the team pulled every claim in the fuller timeline to primary sources... the state's own audited financials, the IRS filing, the press record. Here's what survived. Every date links to a graded claim at .
April 2025 — Braun freezes Elevate's funding, orders the forensic audit.
August 2, 2025 — a $15,023,131 convertible note from the IEDC to the Indiana Angel Network Fund matures, fully drawn. Elevate repays about $12.9 million on August 4. August 5 — the IEDC issues written notice of default on the rest. That's not a leak... it's Note 4 of the IEDC's own audited financial statements.
October 2, 2025 — the audit lands: 45 findings. A week later — Braun says he's satisfied, no criminal findings.
November 17, 2025 — Elevate e-files its Form 990 for 2024, showing a $15,445,645 "prior period adjustment" to its net assets. The form has a place to explain adjustments like that. The explanation line for this one is empty.
April 13, 2026 — the state commits $15,000,000 to Iron Nation.
June 18, 2026 — Braun announces Goodrich. July 13 — Goodrich takes office, keeping Gaylor. July 28 — fifteen days later, the OIG stops publishing investigative reports, ending a practice as old as the office itself: nine reports published in 2025, zero in 2026. No news outlet has connected those two dates. We're the ones putting them side by side, and we're telling you that's what we're doing. For fairness: Inspector General Prentice was Braun's appointee back in January 2025, long before Goodrich.
August 28, 2026 — Goodrich, on WIBC: "We've not had a conflict yet." Per WIBC's account of the interview, his screening process was blessed by the governor's office and the inspector general... the same office that had stopped publishing its findings a month earlier.
September 2, 2026 — IBI Ag becomes Iron Nation-Indiana's first company, with up to $500,000 in state incentives.
Now look at three numbers: $15,023,131 defaulted. $15,445,645 adjusted, unexplained. $15,000,000 committed. Three different figures, three different instruments... we are not telling you they're the same dollars, because no public document says so. Here's what I think, and it is expressly what I think: the November adjustment was Elevate being made whole from the Iron Nation side of the table, and April's $15 million was that money going back. Nothing in the filing says where the $15.4 million came from. That is exactly the problem... the explanation line is blank and the report that would answer it is sealed. If I'm wrong, one released report and one explained line item end this conversation today.
On Goodrich: every public account we can find describes him as the owner of Gaylor Electric... the founder's own words are "when I sold the company to Chuck." Ask Google and its AI overview will tell you he bought a 49% stake and then purchased the remaining 51%. We could not verify that anywhere... not in Gaylor's own pages, not in a news story, not in a filing. Sit with that for a second: the exact stake a sitting commerce secretary holds in one of the country's largest electrical contractors, while his agency incentivizes the data centers it wires, cannot be established from the public record. Even Google's AI is guessing. So we filed a records request with the OIG for his Financial Disclosure Statement, which their own policy says is public on request. When it comes back, we'll print what it says... whatever it says.
sign the petition
The governor holds the key, and the statute says he can turn it. So we started a petition asking him to do exactly that: exercise his authority under IC 4-2-7-8(e) and release the report.
If everything is on the up and up, releasing the report costs Indiana nothing... and a few thousand Hoosiers asking is a lot harder to ignore than one publisher asking.