Jessica Reed Kraus (House InHabit) Unplugged
My second guest for the new vodcast series, Failing Up! (Sari, my former producer at Audible tells me that’s what this is called, rather than a podcast) is a woman who is no stranger to her hundreds of thousands of subscribers on Substack.
Jessica Reed Kraus, whose handle is House Inhabit , is the epitome of success in the new media landscape. She makes seven figures off her Substack and Instagram. Wired listed her as one of the key influencers in the 2024 election along with Tucker Carolson and Elon Musk. She has been profiled in publications like the Wall Street Journal, Elle and Mother Jones. Yet only a few years ago Jess was a mommy blogger in Orange County, California (where she lives with husband, Mike, and their four children).
For those who don’t know, during the pandemic, Jessica, 44, decided she wanted to cover things she thought weren’t getting enough attention – or the right sort of attention in the media. I met her in the winter of 2021 – on the steps of the Thurgood Marshall courthouse in downtown Manhattan, where each morning, before dawn, we lined up to gain admission to the tiny courtroom (made even more diminutive thanks to Covid restrictions) in which Ghislaine Maxwell was on trial for abusing and trafficking minors. Every lunchtime we ate the crappy food in the cafeteria together with a couple of other friends. We gossiped about what we’d seen and how we thought the trial was going (initially not well for the government) and then we went home and wrote it all up. Only to get up at 4am and repeat it all over again, day after day, week after week.
It was an endurance test. I know that by the end I was so exhausted I could barely see straight. Sheer adrenaline and uncertainty got us through. I remember right until closing arguments we wondered about the strength of the government’s case. But the closing argument for the prosecution, delivered by James Comey’s daughter, Maurene, was one of the most unforgettable and powerful performances in a courtroom I’ve ever seen. Apparently, the jury agreed. They convicted Maxwell on all counts of sexual abuse and trafficking. Adding to the stress was that it took place in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Neither of us saw much, if anything, of our families.
But the thing about covering trials is that once you start, you feel locked in – or you do if the proceedings are not being televised, and the responsibility on the shoulders of the conduits to the public hangs heavy. It’s like becoming an actor in a play, not simply a spectator. I started grading the lawyers for each of their performances in my Substack and suddenly I found that various of their parents were writing in my comments box.
Jess was unafraid to say exactly what she saw. Which was that the woman in front of us had a distinct magnetism when she turned to look at us, even when wearing her mask and standing silent. “I didn’t think the trial told the whole story,” she says in our interview below. Jess found Maxwell intriguing, possibly even sympathetic. That was not and is not the “narrative” around Maxwell. But Jess points out she “had nothing to lose.”
Read on at Vicky Ward Investigates