A new Seattle progressive media outlet was founded in March 2025 at the headquarters of Washington's dominant Democratic consulting firm by the firm principal's wife. None of that has been disclosed to readers.
On May 13, Hannah Krieg defended Brandi Kruse.
Kruse is the conservative independent journalist whose promotional content for Let's Go Washington ballot initiatives had drawn a Public Disclosure Commission complaint over unreported in-kind contributions.1 Krieg runs her own independent progressive outlet on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. She jumped in on Kruse's side anyway. "Incredibly short sighted for progressives," she wrote in a quote-tweet of the Seattle Times coverage. "Hope you have fun getting bad faith PDC complaints when an influencer says something positive about your campaign or mentions your event and you forget to report an 'in-kind' contribution!" A follow-up tweet clarified she didn't support the initiatives Kruse was promoting. The point was procedural.2
Reasonable position. The PDC's in-kind reporting rules are blunt instruments, and the line between editorial advocacy and reportable campaign coordination is genuinely hard to draw. Treat advocacy media as covered campaign speech and you've built a one-way ratchet that hits independent outlets harder than the well-funded ones. Krieg isn't wrong to flag the risk to her own side.
Editor's note on prior reporting: A surface-level version of this finding circulated on Seattle social media in June 2025 via posts from We Heart Seattle, Jonathan Choe, and Ari Hoffman. Those posts did not propagate beyond a small audience and produced no disclosure correction at The Burner in the eleven months since. This article provides the full primary-source structural analysis the public record supports, applies a single industry-standard disclosure framework, and credits The Burner's adversarial coverage where it has been adversarial.
Editor's note on outreach: Sunshine Docket contacted Jessica Pisane on May 31, 2026 and Hannah Krieg on June 1, 2026, providing each with a complete summary of this article's factual claims and inviting a response. Neither party replied by the deadline. If a response is received after publication, this article will be updated to include it in full.
But the warning raises a quiet question. Who specifically should worry about the door swinging back?
The Burner LLC was filed with the Washington Secretary of State on March 12, 2025. Principal office on the Certificate of Formation: 19550 International Boulevard, Suite 103, SeaTac. Sole governor, registered agent, and executor: Jessica Ellen Pisane.3
Not a coincidence of geography. That same address shows up on thousands of campaign-finance disclosures filed with the Washington Public Disclosure Commission. It's the invoice address for WinPower Strategies, Inc., the Democratic political consulting firm.
Jessica Pisane is married to Jacob Dylan Simpson.4 Simpson is a partner at WinPower Strategies, the title he uses on his own annual financial-affairs disclosure to the state.18 He also served as Mayor of SeaTac from January 2022 to January 2024 and as SeaTac City Councilmember (Position 2) from 2021 through 2025.17
WinPower Strategies is the dominant Democratic campaign-services firm in Washington State. The PDC's expenditure dataset is open to any reader at data.wa.gov/resource/tijg-9zyp.json. Run the query and the firm comes back with $13.3M billed across 3,948 individual transactions to 388 unique candidates, political committees, and party organizations going back to the start of the dataset in 2007.5
Top of the client list: state senator Mark Mullet, who paid the firm $809k across his 2024 gubernatorial primary and prior cycles. Behind him, the sitting state Superintendent of Public Instruction, Chris Reykdal, at $397k across 41 transactions. Then the sitting Secretary of State, Steve Hobbs, at $368k. Below them come former state senator Nathan Schlicher ($466k), state representative Monica Stonier ($324k), state senator Lisa Wellman ($292k), and former Seattle Mayor Michael McGinn ($275k). And underneath all of them, the state Democratic Party together with the House Democratic Campaign Committee and the Senate Democratic Campaign, three entities that have collectively moved more than $3M through WinPower's invoices.
The flow runs in a closed loop. The state Democratic Party funds the caucus committees. The caucus committees fund the individual candidates. The candidates pay WinPower. After the election, the candidates' surplus funds flow back to the caucus committees. WinPower sits at the pass-through point where party money becomes campaign output.
Not one consultant among many. The operational backbone of the institutional Democratic apparatus in Washington State.
The household's reach runs past the consulting firm.
Public records from the King County Recorder, instruments 20200416000821 and 20200416000822, document that Jessica Ellen Pisane and Jacob Dylan Simpson purchased the property at Unit 2, Building 19816, Valley View Estates, SeaTac on April 16, 2020 as "a married couple." They jointly executed a $239k mortgage with U.S. Bank, and the deed of trust's occupancy clause declares the property their principal residence.4
Four operational functions run inside that household.
Pisane's role at WinPower is documented in Simpson's same annual disclosure. The most recent filing, covering calendar year 2025, lists her as the firm's Compliance Manager, earning $30,000 to $59,999.18
That treasurer portfolio deserves a look on its own. Pisane is the registered C-1 treasurer for Chris Reykdal's 2028 Superintendent of Public Instruction reelection campaign, filed well in advance of the cycle. She has been the registered treasurer for the 33rd Legislative District Democrats continuously since 2009. She is the registered treasurer for Caesar Kalinowski, a sitting King County Superior Court judge. And as of May 14, 2026, she is the registered treasurer for Greg Miller, a 2026 candidate for Position 5 of the Washington Supreme Court.7
Position 5 is the seat currently held by Governor Ferguson's recent appointee Theo Angelis. The seat that will hear the constitutional challenge to SB 6346, the new 9.9 percent income tax on Washington earners above $1M.
Now the media outlet.
The Burner bills itself, in its own footer language, as "Hannah Krieg's independent, progressive media."8 Editorial focus: the Seattle and Washington progressive political ecosystem. The outlet runs critical coverage of mayors, council members, state senators, and members of Congress whose positions or actions diverge from progressive priorities.
Look at where the most pointed coverage lands. Former Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell. Seattle Council Members Bob Kettle, Sara Nelson, Maritza Rivera, and Rob Saka. U.S. Representative Adam Smith. The Democratic state senators who broke with the caucus position on SB 6346.
Run each of those critically-covered politicians against the PDC expenditure dataset for payments to WinPower Strategies across all available cycles, and you get the same number back each time. Zero. The Burner's targets are uniformly non-clients of the firm headquartered at the outlet's founding address.9
The cleanest single case sits on the other side.
Mayor Katie Wilson took office in January 2026 after defeating Bruce Harrell in the November 2025 mayoral election. The Burner covered her campaign closely. Wilson's C-1 campaign filing with the PDC names her registered treasurer of record: Jessica Pisane.10
Wilson's campaign also paid WinPower Strategies $26.8k across twenty-two transactions during the 2025 mayoral cycle, between March 25 and November 12. The same household that owns the consulting firm Wilson's campaign paid, and that maintains the campaign books Wilson's campaign filed, also founded the media outlet that covered Wilson's campaign.11
This isn't a finding about whether the coverage of Wilson is favorable. The disclosure question is structural, not editorial. The question is whether the relationship exists and is hidden from readers. Both are documented and verifiable. Wilson's payments to WinPower are in the PDC expenditure dataset under filer "Katie Wilson." The treasurer designation is in the PDC summary dataset under treasurer "Pisane." Neither relationship has ever been disclosed in any Burner article, on the outlet's About page, on its podcast, or anywhere on its website.
The publication has run sustained adversarial coverage of Mayor Wilson on specific policy fights. That doesn't change the calculus. Between December 8, 2025 and April 15, 2026, The Burner published at least eight articles pressuring Wilson to shut off the Seattle Police Department's Real Time Crime Center surveillance program, an Axon Fusus cloud-based hub with a $3.7M annual operating budget.12 Pointed coverage. Sustained. Substantively progressive. And operating inside a structural conflict of interest the readers of those articles have never been told about.
A reader scrolling through those eight Wilson-on-surveillance pieces can't evaluate them by reference to the journalism alone, because the journalism isn't the only thing in the room. Two other things are also in the room, both undisclosed. First, the household publishing the articles also serves as Wilson's registered campaign treasurer. Second, that same household has been paid more than $26k in campaign-vendor fees by the same mayor's campaign during the calendar period the coverage spans. The journalism may be excellent on its merits. The reader isn't in a position to judge.
The Wilson case is the most documented one. It's not the only one.
Hannah Sabio-Howell, the lefty challenger The Burner has covered favorably in her challenge to state senator Jamie Pedersen, lists Abbot Taylor as her registered C-1 treasurer.13 Taylor is one of four people in Washington who collectively serve as the registered treasurer of record for the bulk of state Democratic campaigns this cycle. He handles 59 active 2026 client engagements, including seventeen state representatives, eleven district court judges, nine state senators, and ten political committees.
Alexis Mercedes Rinck, the Seattle City Council member whose Seattle Shield Initiative policy The Burner has amplified, also lists Abbot Taylor as her registered treasurer.
In a March 2026 article about Seattle School Board candidate Janis White, The Burner quoted Stephen Paolini as "White's consultant" providing analysis of the rival political action committee opposing her.14 Run Paolini against the PDC dataset as a recipient of campaign expenditures and you get $69.8k across 44 transactions. Top payers: People for a Balanced Tax Code (the ballot vehicle for SB 6346's predecessor income-tax initiative), De-Escalate Washington, Tammy Morales's council campaign, Dan Strauss's council campaign, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, and Jessyn Farrell's gubernatorial campaign. Paolini has a documented financial relationship with the same Democratic political infrastructure The Burner covers. He's not an arm's-length observer. The Burner didn't disclose the relationship.
This isn't Hannah Krieg's first situation involving undisclosed material relationships with subjects of her coverage.
In January 2025, The Stranger placed Krieg and her colleague Ashley Nerbovig on paid administrative leave pending an internal investigation. The investigation, as reported by Erica C. Barnett at PubliCola, concerned allegations that the two reporters had behaved unethically by failing to disclose, and in the alleged process actively concealing, information about an alleged ethical breach by the paper's then-editor, Rich Smith.15 Smith had been the news editor and chair of the endorsement board. PubliCola described the alleged breach as involving a sexual encounter between Smith and a then-candidate for Seattle City Council whom The Stranger subsequently endorsed. Citing sources familiar with the matter, PubliCola reported that Krieg and Nerbovig were aware of the incident shortly after it happened and were discussing it with people outside the paper while it remained undisclosed to their editors.
The investigation never reached formal findings. Krieg and Nerbovig resigned on January 31, 2025 via a separation agreement that resolved the allegations without adjudication.
Six weeks later, on March 12, 2025, The Burner LLC was filed with the Secretary of State at WinPower Strategies' SeaTac office, with Jessica Pisane named as sole governor.
Read the sequence again. The reporter who resigned from one publication amid allegations of failing to disclose a material conflict involving a then-candidate became, six weeks later, the named principal of a new publication founded at the headquarters of the consulting firm whose Pisane-treasured candidates that same official now votes alongside.
Whether Krieg had any operational role in the founding of The Burner LLC isn't visible in the corporate filings. What's visible is the sequence.
On July 21, 2025, four months after the LLC's founding, Pisane filed an amendment with the Secretary of State transferring The Burner LLC's governor and registered agent roles to Krieg. The principal office address moved from the WinPower SeaTac suite to a residential address in Capitol Hill.3
The Washington Secretary of State doesn't require LLC membership, that is, ownership, to be publicly disclosed. Whether Pisane retains a membership interest in The Burner LLC after July 2025 isn't visible in the corporate record.
The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics is direct on this category of situation: "Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Disclose unavoidable conflicts."16 Not a contested or fringe standard. The median expectation across mainstream, alt-weekly, independent, and digital-native journalism. The Stranger discloses staff conflicts. ProPublica does. PubliCola does. Most one-person Substacks include a "who funds this" note. The disclosure norm is universal because the reader's ability to discount for bias is the entire basis of journalistic credibility.
What The Burner discloses publicly: nothing. The website's footer reads "© 2025 by The Burner LLC." The About page identifies Krieg as the publication's author and links to her Ko-fi donation page. No masthead identifying the LLC's founding governor or governance history. No relationship-disclosure language on individual articles. No notice of recusal anywhere on the website or in the podcast feed.
What isn't disclosed: the founding governance by Pisane, the WinPower Strategies office address as the LLC's original principal place of business, the marriage between Pisane and Simpson, Simpson's recent service as Mayor and Councilmember of SeaTac throughout the period the LLC was founded and operated, Pisane's portfolio of ninety-nine active C-1 treasurer filings, Pisane's specific role as Mayor Wilson's registered campaign treasurer, the $26.8k in WinPower vendor payments to Wilson's campaign during the 2025 cycle, the same household's treasurer-of-record relationships with Sabio-Howell and Rinck, the consultant-of-record relationship between The Burner and Paolini, the principal-office change from the consulting firm's office to the editor's apartment four months after founding, or any of the dozens of other smaller-scale relationships the corporate and PDC records expose.
Without disclosure, readers can't tell accountability journalism apart from network-aligned commentary on a network's rivals. The ambiguity is itself a brand asset for the outlet. Adversarial coverage of Mayor Wilson on surveillance reads as principled journalism. Adversarial coverage of Sara Nelson or Bruce Harrell on a related policy fight reads as principled journalism too. The reader can't weigh which is which, because the reader hasn't been told that one of those subjects has a campaign-vendor relationship with the firm headquartered at the publication's founding address and a treasurer-of-record relationship with the publication's founding household, while the other subjects have no such relationship to the publisher.
None of this proves editorial coordination. Hannah Krieg may write every word of The Burner without input from Jessica Pisane, Jake Simpson, WinPower Strategies, or any of the firm's clients. The corporate filings don't establish that anyone tells Krieg what to publish. They establish only that an undisclosed network of material relationships exists between the publication's founding household and the candidates the publication covers.
The claim the documents support is narrower than coordination, and it's twice-substantiated. Hannah Krieg has now run political coverage in Seattle from inside undisclosed material relationships with the candidates she was covering, in two separate publications, separated by six weeks of formal unemployment. The Stranger investigated whether she failed to disclose a personal relationship between an editor and a candidate. She resigned via separation agreement before formal findings issued. The publication she founded at WinPower's office six weeks later operates inside a structural set of relationships of comparable scale to the one alleged at the prior employer. Neither set has been disclosed to readers.
That's the disclosure failure. That's the pattern. Reachable on the public record in three datasets, four primary instruments, and roughly twenty minutes of cross-referencing.
Whether The Burner's coverage is right or wrong on any given story, the reader hasn't been given the relationships needed to weigh it. That's the failure this article is about. The publication's founder is talented, productive, and ideologically committed to the politics she covers. The work she does on policy questions has, on the merits, often been right. None of that is at issue here.
What's at issue is a basic journalistic standard the publication hasn't met, and a structural network whose existence the publication's readers were entitled to know about and weren't told.
We reached out to WinPower Strategies and to Hannah Krieg for comment prior to publication. Neither responded. We will update this article if they do.
Editor's note: This article is a work of opinion journalism, based on facts in the public record. It does not allege quid-pro-quo, contractual coordination, or any specific transaction between The Burner and the entities discussed. It argues only that the documented relationships between the publication's founding household and the candidates the publication covers should have been disclosed to readers.
upper(recipient_name) LIKE '%WINPOWER%'. Returns $13,294,465.87 across 3,948 transactions from 388 unique filer_names since the dataset begins in 2007. Data current as of May 27, 2026. Reader-friendly equivalent search: PDC Expenditures Search, Recipient Name "WinPower."upper(treasurer_name) LIKE '%PISANE%'. Returns 99 records across 69 unique filer_names. Office distribution: 28 State Representative, 20 City Council Member, 4 Mayor, 3 State Senator, 3 County Commissioner, 3 School Director, 2 Port Commissioner, 1 each Superintendent of Public Instruction, State Supreme Court Justice, Superior Court Judge, District Court Judge, Municipal Court Judge, City Attorney, County Council Member, County Assessor, Fire Commissioner, plus 26 political-committee filings.upper(treasurer_name) LIKE '%ABBOT TAYLOR%' AND election_year='2026' returns 59 active 2026 client engagements.upper(recipient_name) LIKE '%PAOLINI%', returns $69,802 total across 44 transactions. Top payers include "People for a Balanced Tax Code", "De-Escalate Washington", "Friends of Tammy Morales", "Friends of Dan Strauss", "Alliance for Gun Responsibility", and "Jessyn Farrell for Governor".