A popular pro-Trump online sleuth turns out to be on the government payroll while posing as an independent watchdog, a bad look for both the Trump administration and the right's new media ecosystem.

• Jennica Pounds, known online as "Data Republican" to a million followers, works as a special government employee at the Pentagon — and never told her paying subscribers.
• She publicly accused the "deep state" of trying to entrap her after a State Department official offered her leaked documents about Cuba.
• The documents had already been cleared for public release under freedom-of-information rules — something any trained reporter would have recognized instantly.
• The Pentagon earlier threw out its regular press corps and replaced it with friendly influencers; Pounds was one of them before taking the government job.
• She had built her following partly by attacking hidden government funding of media, exactly what she was doing herself.

Outlook: Expect more embarrassments like this as the administration leans on untrained influencers instead of journalists to carry its message.