THE VIEW FROM HERE - In the prior article about Rahil Prakash, suspicion grew whether there was a larger backstory for the fake poll that Bass was 11.8 points ahead of Raman in the Los Angeles mayoral race. As fake stories go, this one appeared small, especially in comparison to Trump’s eternal delusion that he won the 2020 Presidential election and the odious defamation that Jews are committing genocide in Gaza . So, let’s don on our sleuthing hats and have some fun asking questions about Rahil Prakash and Justin Choi.
FIRST: There is no verification that Rahil Prakash went to any UC school. We uncovered that our prior story lacked credibility when we were triple checking everything and the source had vanished from the Internet. In following up on that mysteriously missing info, we discovered that virtually nothing about Rahil Prakash is verified, including his existence.
Is Rahil Prakash a Real Person?
Using AI, the chronology of the faked poll about Bass being ahead by almost 12 point is as follows:
1) On Monday, August 17, 2026, Noah Goldberg at Los Angeles Times published that Median Strategies who created the story, admitted that it was a fake poll. The LA Times story wrote: “Median Strategies was created as a short-term social experiment to examine how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification,” the company said in an email to The Times.
The Times wrote that this response came after “repeated inquiries,” but we do not know the mode of its inquiries, e.g. telephone, text, email. Since the Times says that Median Strategies had emailed its response, we can temporarily assume that there was no voice-to-voice telephone conversation. It is interesting that The LA Times did not question the “social experiment” explanation and ask for more details to verify that Median Strategies was truthful.
2) On August 20, 2026, The Guardian reports that it had identified the creator of the fake poll as Rahil Prakash, a 21-year-old college student with whom it had spoken on the telephone after using addition public information to go from the Median Strategies’ website to a real human being who answered its phone call. Since it had traced the GibHub name of Rahil Prakash to a real live human being whom The Guardian had contacted, the name Rahil Prakash carried credibility. Upon further investigation, we realize that why Rahil may be real, there is no substantiation of anything he said. Yet, The Guardian reported it as if it were accurate.
3) On August 21, 2026, the LA Times published another story that it had texted Median Strategies and it received a text asserting that everything it had told The Guardian was “fully accurate.” There is no verification who sent the text or who had sent the prior email or who actually had spoken with The Guardian.
Rather than question who was responding on behalf of Median Strategies (MS) and rather than seek verification of MS’s story that it was a short-term social experiment, the media appears to be accepting everything from this unknown person.
Now, Everything Is Crumbling
Some may be true, some may be lies, all of it may be totally false. Maybe, some unknown person hired and is hiding behind a college student. Why won’t The Guardian release more data about the alleged Rahil Prakash? Accepting the Guardian’s representations about their tracing down Rahil Prakash seemed honest and at first they bore the mark of authenticity. The Guardian traced Median Strategies back to GitHub repository which used the name Rahil Prakash, and then the Guardian used local resources to find phone number(s) for Rahil Prakash’s and when called, the person who answered admitted that he was Rahil and that he had used AI to manufacture the fake study.
The Guardian’s Identification was Reliable
It is an international recognized media who had cold called a Rahil Prakash who immediately knew why the Guardian was calling and provided details that only the fake study’s author would know. He also admitted forming Median Strategies as the name under which he released his social experiment to see how fast a bogus article would be picked up by the main street media. There was no reason for The Guardian to dox Rahil in light of all the violent crazies. Without identifying the institution, The Guardian did report that Rahil was a 21-year-old graduate.
Suspicious Timing to Which Mainstream Media Is Closing its Eyes
Within a few hours of Rahil’s placing his fake poll on-line, it was published by Justin Choi of California Post on Thursday, August 13, 2026, at 7:53 PM PDT. Most media have a strict protocol before publishing new political news. That is why The Guardian went to the trouble to trace down the digital trail until it verified that Rahil was real, that he had created Median Strategies, and he had faked the poll to conduct an experiment in order to see “whether fake polls could penetrate the political information ecosystem.” The only media to publish the fake story on August 13 were the New York Post and California Post and Fox News at 10:00, and Choi was connected to Fox.
It took Noah Goldberg from August 14 to August 17 the get Median Strategies to admit the poll was fake. Yet, Justin Choi allegedly vetted the article and received permission to print it within a few hours. It took The Guardian a full week after the Justin Choi’s August 13th article before it published that Rahil Prakash was the human being behind the fake poll and that he asserted he had worked alone. The Guardian’s article was Thursday, August 20, 2026 at 4:33 PM Eastern / 1:33 PM Pacific.
Attention Shifted to California Post’s Justin Choi
Justin Choi published in California Post on August 13, 2026, at 7:53 PM PDT and Fox News Channel 11 published the same story a few hours later on its Fox Night News. Justin Choi was an economics major from UCLA in 2026 and he had worked for Fox News, the other outlet that ran the story as true with no time to verify anything. While we know that Choi went to Cypress High School in northern Orange County and in 2026 he had graduated from UCLA and he had started and published Westside Review with a staff of 13 while still at UCLA, we still are blind as to whether Rahil is real, his exact motivation, whether he worked alone. What Rahil allegedly told The Guardian is unverified. Yet. The media is treating it as verified. Has it not occurred that someone who would manufacture fake polls might also lie about his motive and whether he had accomplices?
How Did Choi Get the By-line on the August 13th California Post Story
Choi is what one would call a cub reporter, kind of like Jimmy Olson in Superman. California Post has a senior political editor, Josh Koehn. While we do not know what actually happened behind the scenes that a newbie got the By-Line, the custom and practice is that when a cub reporter brings a story to the paper, he can get full by-line credit. The California Post is keeping mum.
There Are Other Serious Unanswered Questions
All stories, especially scoops, are vetted, but it is obvious that California Post’s higher ups did nothing. Median Strategies had been created three days before. As Noah Goldberg discovered, they were easy to contact, but clearly no one at California Post did. The excuse that California Post got lazy has zero verification. It is rank speculation. A reasonable line of inquiry is that somehow Choi convinced his superiors that the story was credible and/or that he had fully vetted it.
We know more about Justin Choi. Choi was involved with the UCLA chapter of Turning Point USA. The fake poll about Bass benefits conservatives and was slanted to catch the eye of conservatives. The faked poll even mentions Spencer Pratt and argues that Raman, a DS member, is so extreme that GOP voters are being drawn to the more moderate Karen Bass. The GOP is fighting its cultural war against woke DEI, e.g. DSA, while the Democrat Party is saying it has a big tent large enough for DSA anti-Semites. (Since August 13th, however, some Democrats are coming to their senses and are also fighting the DSA and its candidates.)
Since Choi is somewhat of an anomaly for his age group and ethnicity, his conservative reputation is known with the Los Angeles media community. Thus, the issue seems to have become:
(1) Did Rahil Prakash collaborate with Justin Choi so that the fake poll about Bass’s leading Raman by 11.8 points would be published in Los Angeles?
(2) Did Rahil Prakash somehow dupe Justin Choi?
The latter possibility seems unlikely. How could Rahil know that Choi would break the standard protocol and not vet the article? Because Choi was low man on the totem poll at California Post, Rahil would have no rational expectation that Choi would jeopardize his whole career and deceive his editors to get this weird story published.
Now we circle back to the failure (refusal?) of The Guardian or any other major media to provide more data about Rahil Prakash. When in elementary school, we learned that news stories are suppose to answer Who, What, Why and When, but we are faced with a news black out, making it impossible to answer the question whether Prakash and Choi are punking us.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a former Los Angeles-based attorney, an author, and political commentator. A long-time contributor to CityWatchLA, he is known for his incisive critiques of City Hall and judicial corruption, as well as his analysis of political and constitutional issues. Abrams blends legal insight with historical and philosophical depth to challenge conventional narratives. A passionate defender of civic integrity and transparency, he aims to expose misuse of power and advocate for systemic reform in local government. You may email him at [email protected])
