In January 2026, residents of Clallam County began seeing links to a new publication calling itself The Olympic Herald. It had a newspaper-style name, a section menu, Investigations, Courts & Law, Government, Criminal Justice, and a donate page asking readers for contributions of up to $500.
What it did not have was a newsroom, a staff list, or more than one writer. A TROH review of the publication's own archive found 424 published articles since its January launch, its post sitemap lists 425, and every one carries the same byline: Anthony Tomashefsky.
The domain registration tells the same story. Verisign's RDAP record shows olympicherald.com was registered on December 26, 2025, through Squarespace Domains. That was two months and five days after a Clallam County Superior Court judge ruled against Tomashefsky in a stalking and harassment case, leaving a one-year protection order in place against him.
The publication's output, measured against that court record, is the story.
The court case that preceded the "newspaper"
Court records show that on August 7, 2025, Benjamin Mavy, a Sequim resident, petitioned for a stalking and anti-harassment protection order against Tomashefsky in Clallam County District Court. The matter was transferred to Superior Court the next day, assigned case No. 25-2-00595-05, with Judge Elizabeth A. Stanley presiding over the superior court proceeding, according to the public docket.
A temporary protection order issued August 12, 2025. The court's handwritten findings state that Tomashefsky did not deny his "excessive email communication" to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and "declined to state any purpose" for those emails beyond evidence of what the court described as long-standing rancor.
On August 26, 2025, the court held the full hearing. Mavy appeared. Tomashefsky did not. The court granted a one-year protection order, checking both the stalking and harassment boxes, effective through August 26, 2027.
Court Commissioner Brian Parker's August 27, 2025 memorandum opinion explains what the evidence showed. Parker wrote that he reviewed "some 55 pages of emails between Respondent and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, as well as other Lincoln County, Wyoming government officials," containing "extensive descriptions of Petitioner's activities, movements, location, and travel plans", information Mavy testified under oath he never provided to Tomashefsky.
"These exhibits reveal an extensive history of attempts at contacting, monitoring, tracking, surveillance, keeping under observation, disrupting activities in a harassing manner, or following of another person," the opinion states. Parker concluded that Tomashefsky's communications went "beyond merely reporting a suspected violation" and were "an attempt to recruit the agency into assisting him in harming his perceived rival", including lobbying for Mavy's arrest "at a family funeral where, presumably, Petitioner's children would be present."
"Respondent was invited to offer a lawful purpose for his extensive course of monitoring and reporting on Petitioner," Parker wrote. "Respondent declined to do so."
The opinion also notes "Petitioner's ongoing divorce action, in which Respondent has inserted himself." Tomashefsky is dating Mavy's ex-wife, a fact a Reddit commenter later flagged when the Olympic Herald covered Mavy without mentioning it.
Tomashefsky moved to revise Parker's order. On October 21, 2025, Judge W. Brent Basden denied the motion in a written memorandum opinion. "The record amply supports the conclusion that Respondent has engaged in this behavior," Basden wrote. Rejecting the argument that the reporting to law enforcement served a legitimate purpose that could not be restrained, the opinion states: "The protection order does not limit speech, it limits conduct. Under Respondent's theory of this case, an individual could engage in any stalking or harassing behavior, and then 'legitimize' or 'protect' that behavior if it happened to uncover wrongdoing by the individual harassed or stalked."
It was not Tomashefsky's first time before the court on the subject. Court records show that in 2023, Tomashefsky himself petitioned for an anti-harassment order against Mavy, case No. 23-2-00372-05, and after a full hearing at which both men appeared by video, the court denied it on July 28, 2023, checking the box: "Insufficient evidence. A preponderance of the evidence does not support issuing any type of protection order that this court has authority to issue."
Sixty-three days later, a domain
The documented timeline is short. August 26, 2025: protection order granted. October 21, 2025: Judge Basden denies revision. December 26, 2025: olympicherald.com registered. January 7, 2026: "Announcing The Olympic Herald" is published, with the subheading "Bringing Uncensored News to Washington State."
The launch post does not mention the court case. It opens instead with an essay on billionaire media ownership. Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post, Skydance and CBS. "Corporations and billionaires have taken over what were once hard-hitting news organizations," it begins.
The first articles about the people in Tomashefsky's court case followed within days. On January 12, 2026, the site published the first of what would become dozens of articles about Commissioner Parker, the judicial officer who granted the protection order. Coverage of Judge Basden, who denied the revision, and of Mavy, the petitioner, followed.
The target census
TROH archived the site's full output and counted the articles naming each of five individuals. The results:
- Judge W. Brent Basden. 109 articles. Basden denied Tomashefsky's motion for revision on October 21, 2025.
- Commissioner Brian Parker. 58 articles. Parker granted the protection order and wrote the August 27 memorandum.
- Benjamin Mavy. 17 articles. Mavy is the petitioner the court protected. Per his public professional profile, Mavy is a co-founder and former vice president of Advice Chaser, the same company Tomashefsky operated, and managing partner at Off Ball Services. He placed 10th in his division at the 2024 Elwha Bridge Run, reported by the Sequim Gazette.
- Dr. Steve Tutty. 6 articles. A psychologist.
- Dr. William Singer. 5 articles. A psychologist.
A county newspaper covers a county. This archive covers a case caption.
In October 2026, Tomashefsky described the operation in his own words, in a post titled "Nine Months of Independent Journalism, Built by Our Readers": "Those are some of the reasons I started The Olympic Herald nine months ago. More than 400 articles later, the work continues."
The money trail behind the publisher
Public records show the Olympic Herald is not Tomashefsky's first venture.
His previous company, Advice Chaser LLC, was a lead-generation business for financial advisors. The Better Business Bureau profile for Advice Chaser LLC, still online, listing a Sequim address, shows the business started October 19, 2020. The BBB notes its profiles cover a rolling three-year reporting period; older complaints have aged out of view. But a Reddit commenter in a February 2026 thread about the Olympic Herald wrote: "The Author of the Olympic Herald previously operated a business called Advice Chaser, which has dozens of reviews from people claiming they paid between $6,000–$14,000 upfront and never received the services promised," and linked the BBB profile.
The court record runs deeper. In September 2023, Revenued LLC sued Advice Chaser LLC and Tomashefsky personally in Nassau County, New York, for breach of contract and breach of guarantee, according to the case docket. A default judgment motion was granted November 24, 2023. A $42,128 civil judgment against both Tomashefsky and Advice Chaser was recorded February 13, 2024. One day earlier, February 12, 2024, Properties by Landmark Inc. filed an eviction action against Tomashefsky in Clallam County Superior Court. And a UCC financing statement filed in Washington on September 25, 2023, shows Tomashefsky and Advice Chaser pledging "all tangible and intangible personal property of debtor", including accounts, equipment, trademarks, and copyrights, to a secured party.
The Olympic Herald's donate page, archived October 25, 2026, asks readers for one-time gifts of $25 to $500 through Stripe, or memberships at $10 per month or $100 per year. "Contributions are not tax-deductible," the page states. "Your contribution helps us do that work."
The community caught on
In February 2026, a poster on the Reddit community r/PortAngeles2 published a thread titled "Monetizing defamation blogs - OH,OWD." It drew 45 upvotes and 11 comments.
"I was somewhat excited to see a new local paper being promoted in the other Port Angeles sub, but a bit of poking around and the ruse unravels rather quickly," the original poster wrote. "The domain was purchased two months ago, and redirects to a substack blog... OH appears to be a one-man op dedicated exclusively to re-tweeting defamation under only the thinnest pretense of passing for citizen journalism."
A second commenter named the author: "Its the Olympic Harald written by a guy named Anthony Tomashefsky."
The thread's posters documented what court and business records now confirm: the LLC collection, the storage-unit business address, the Advice Chaser complaint history, and an Olympic Herald article about Mavy that, a commenter wrote, omitted "that he was actually there (and charged) for stalking and harassing Ben Mavy…. who also happens to be his girlfriend's ex-husband."
When the thread began circulating, the original poster wrote, "the principal has joined us here in the thread, and is actively attempting to purge content outlining his LLC collection", linking a screenshot of an edited business-profile page. "That's okay though," the poster added, "a person can use shell corporations in an attempt to mask illicit activities, but it's hard to make them disappear entirely."
What the record shows
The Olympic Herald asks readers to fund "independent Washington journalism." The documented record shows a publication registered two months after its owner lost a court case; 425 posts with one byline; 184 of them aimed at the judge, the commissioner, and the petitioner from that case; a donate page collecting up to $500 per gift; and a publisher whose previous business left a $42,128 default judgment, an eviction filing, and an all-assets lien in its wake.
The documents are public. The archive is preserved. The math is the story.
This article relies on public court records and public complaints. TROH welcomes a response from Mr. Tomashefsky and will publish it in full.