Tafari Campbell and the Case of the Missing Investigation

Where is Columbo when we need him?

Tafari Campbell was a sous-chef in the White House during the Obama presidency. A sous-chef is the second-in-command in the kitchen, and this was a pretty prestigious gig for a 30-year-old aspiring chef to land. While in the White House kitchen, Campbell created the first White House craft-brew beer using honey from Michelle Obama’s apiary. When the Obamas left Washington, they offered Campbell as well as other sou-chefs jobs with their family. Obama arrived in Washington as an impoverished junior Senator but departed after eight years as a wealthy celebrity and he probably thought he deserved some personal chefs to go in his many personal mansions.

Campbell worked at their Martha’s Vineyard compound as head chef. This was not a nine to five gig; he worked when needed, commuting from his home in Virginia. Once Campbell signed on as the chef for the Obamas, he more or less disappeared from public view until his suspicious drowning in July 2023 made headlines.

According to the early reports, Campbell went paddleboarding at night on July 23, 2023 in Edgartown Pond. Edgartown Pond averages about 3 feet in depth, but when Campbell’s body was found by midday of July 24, 2023, reports said that the water was 8 feet deep. Reports also claim he drowned about 100 feet from shore and it had taken the Secret Service and local police and search and rescue people more than 14 hours to find the body. This is an absurdly long time for a witnessed drowning in a pond, but authorities say the search was hampered by the fact that it was night. Indeed, the body was not recovered until midmorning of July 24.

The reports say that Tafari Campbell had gone paddleboarding with another person and a Secret Service person was there (not sure if the “other person” and the “Secret Service person” were one and the same). He was not wearing a life jacket and he was not tethered to the paddleboard. His paddleboarding and subsequent accident were witnessed; it was reported that Campbell fell off the paddleboard and drowned before anyone could rescue him. The Secret Service person called 911 for help but that information was not made public at first. The local police recorded a 911 call but redacted it from the records they share with the public. All that was initially reported was that somebody called 911 but it was not known who or why.

Anytime a 911 call gets covered up, it makes me want to put on a tinfoil hat.

The drowning was explained by the fact that Campbell went paddleboarding for recreation, fell off the board, and drowned because he could not swim. Then the story unraveled. Campbell could swim. He recently had taken lessons and while he’s no Riley Gaines, he is a young, athletic man and a competent swimmer. This video link proves it.

Besides, the official story seems implausible. If a person truly cannot swim and wants to go paddleboarding—at night no less—why would that person not take two basic precautions, namely wearing a flotation device and using the tether so that no matter what happens, the person can grab the board? And if that person started paddleboarding under the watchful eye of the Secret Service, why did they not recommend these basic precautions?

According to some reports and never officially refuted, Tafari Campbell was found naked. I don’t know if naked paddleboarding is a thing or not, but there are un-debunked rumors he wore no clothes. There are also rumors on some social media platforms that he had evidence of blunt force head trauma, but those rumors have been officially countered by an undisclosed autopsy report that we are told says there are no traumatic injuries.

The Obamas—who initially reported they were not at home at the time, then they said they were at home—had very kind words to say about their personal chef, but Barack went out the next day to play golf and Michelle played tennis. Hardly deep mourning for somebody they claimed was “part of the family.”

Despite the fact that reports say there was at least one and possibly more people who noticed Campbell falling off the board and struggling in the water, not only did no one rescue him, it took over 14 hours despite the fact that Edgartown Pond is not the Bermuda Triangle. It’s a pond.

The story is that he drowned in 8 feet of water 100 feet from shore. If this pond is a normal pond, water gets progressively shallower as one nears the shore. Even if he were underwater and forgot how to swim, you would think a young man with decent lungs might be able to crawl along the bottom enough to get to the point where he could stand up (5 feet of water would do it). The average depth of the pond is 3 feet, that means there is a lot of the pond that is less than 3 feet deep. But that is the story.

Barack Obama owns the compound that is near the site where Campbell died. Obama is a known paddleboarder. Obama gave conflicting reports about his whereabouts the night of the death. That does not in any way implicate him as some sort of perpetrator, but any time a homeowner is not straightforward about where he was when a dead body turns up near his property, it makes me wonder.

The initial 911 call was redacted by the police but later released in October of 2023. Why it was covered up is a bit mysterious. The call does not sound like any sort of a smoking gun. It would seem to me that if a dead body is found at the compound of a former President, releasing any pertinent information that does not harm the case would be a good thing, no? But they tried to bury this. I base all of my knowledge of criminality on the behavior of toddlers and small children: generally, the only time a kid tries to cover things up is when he is guilty.

I’ve been told the Obamas are a private family and like to keep their personal life private. That’s fine if it comes to what movies they watch, which football team they root for, or their medical histories, but a dead body changes the equation. You don’t get privacy if your employee dies on your property under mysterious circumstances.

In an eerie parallel, Walter Scheib, the executive chef at the White House from 1994 to 2005, drowned under mysterious circumstances on June 21, 2015. Scheib had been on vacation, hiking alone in the mountains of New Mexico. When he failed to return as expected from his travels, his girlfriend reported him missing on June 14. It took a week to find him; he died by drowning in shallow water in a ravine. His death was ruled a tragic accident. You’re allowed to say bizarre. You’re just not supposed to say “suspicious.” It was never properly investigated.

This isn’t the first mysterious death to taint the legacy of Barack Obama. One of the deaths of a person in the Obama orbit (and I say one because there are more than one) was Donald Young. Young was the choir director of Trinity United Church of Christ, pastored by firebrand (“God damn America!”) Jeremiah Wright. Trinity was where Barack and Michelle got married. Barack Obama, at the time a mere “Presidential hopeful,” was a church member. In 2007, Young was discovered unresponsive at the Chicago home he shared with a roommate, shot multiple times by an unknown assailant. There were no signs of forced entry. Young is thought to have been alone when he was shot and although a few items were stolen (it was Christmastime and some Christmas gifts went missing), police did not consider robbery as the motive. Young died, and the case was never really investigated. Rumors have tried to link Barack Obama and Donald Young and they succeeded: the two men definitely knew each other. Of course, knowing a guy who is murdered does not make you the murderer. (Donald Young below in his choir robes.)

But even the liberal-loving mainstream media outlet MSN said the killing of Donald Young was “mysterious.” But that’s another story for another day. Let’s just say there is enough out there about Donald Young’s murder to at least make Barack Obama a person of interest. But there was never any investigation.

That means that the death of Tafari Campbell surely deserves more of an investigation than just an official declaration that it was all an accident. I mean how many “mysterious” murders can happen around you before somebody decides to at least do a little investigation? Where is Columbo when we need him? I am not saying there is any proof of anything, just that some very sketchy cases are being swept under the rug.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Massachusetts (the people who brought you the Mary Jo Kopechne autopsy) stated that Campbell died due to “submersion in a body of water” and the manner of death was accidental. The state requires autopsies to be made public, but Tafari Campbell’s autopsy is still under wraps. I think Massachusetts is the original home of the two-tiered legal system: no laws for the elites, laws for everyone else. But rest assured, the Chief Medical Examiner of Massachusetts said the death was not suspicious.

However, when a naked guy who can swim goes under the water and fails to re-appear, that seems more congruent with either some sort of injury (like blunt force trauma to the head) or emergency (like a heart attack or stroke). Traumatic injury could cause Campbell to become unresponsive and he would simply drop like a stone to the bottom of the pond. That traumatic injury could be accidental (perhaps he fell off the board and hit his head) or criminal. But the autopsy said there were no injuries and no other ailments. He was a healthy young man who could swim who drowned in a pond.

Another angle might have been intoxication of some kind, but Massachusetts does not consider a toxicology report to be a public record, so we cannot find out if Campbell was high or drunk at the time. I guess having a lot of hard-drinking politically powerful Kennedys in the state has made toxicology reports into a literal state secret. But intoxication might explain the event—but we are not allowed to find out what happened. And just to be clear, there is no evidence at all that Tafari Campbell had any sort of substance use disorders—but people without alcohol use disorder can still get drunk or otherwise intoxicated.

Conspiracy theories occur mostly when the official narrative does not make sense, contradicts itself, or just strains belief. Conspiracy theories gain momentum when the official Pretorian Guard of the mainstream media debunks claims instantly and with little to no evidence (or with “secret” evidence that the mainstream media controls). The Tafari Campbell stories started to come out and those points that were most quickly labeled misinformation (or disinformation, I can never tell the difference):

• Campbell was writing a tell-all book about the Obamas

• He had blunt force wounds on his body, particularly around his head

• Obama summoned his personal physician do the autopsy

• The 911 call was delayed

To be fair, there is no evidence that I can find to put any meat on the bones of these conspiracy theories. There is an official Massachusetts autopsy, although we are not allowed to see it (so does it exist?) We now have the 911 call audio, so it appears it was not delayed and it seems to be a reasonable call. The tell-all book has been ruled “false” by everyone from Snopes to the mainstream media, but I don’t know how you can be sure somebody was “not writing” a book. There is just no evidence of a book in the works, at least no evidence that we are allowed to see. At any rate, I am not endorsing any of these theories, but it shows how conspiracies bloom when the truth gets hidden.

One question no one has asked is why a Secret Service agent was with Tafari Campbell at the time of his death. Presidents and their spouses get a Secret Service detail for life, even after they leave office. Their children are entitled to Secret Service protection even after their Presidential parent leaves office only until age 18. So at the Obama household, only Barack and Michelle would have a Secret Service person assigned to them. Tafari Campbell as a chef would not be entitled to a security detail while he went paddleboarding. On the other hand—and no one has ever confirmed this—the Secret Service agent might have been off-duty and accompanying Campbell socially. But if Barack or Michelle had been out paddleboarding with them, it is likely that the Secret Service would have been there. So does the Secret Service presence indicate Barack or Michelle was there?

Jesse Watters pursued the story for a while. In particular, Jesse is trying like the rest of us interested in this case to figure out where Obama was when.

This is not to say there is evidence of foul play, but there is not much evidence of a natural death, either. At the very least, this death should be rigorously investigated. A grown man who can swim could drown in a pond, theoretically, but such an event is so outlandish that it deserves greater scrutiny. Was he drunk? Suffering some kind of physical attack like a myocardial infarction? Did he have a stroke? Was he injured? Why couldn’t the person or persons who saw him go under water not rescue him?

No matter what the truth is, Tafari Campbell died too young.

He began his career in Dumfries, Virginia, which he always called home. He left behind a beautiful young wife Sherise and twin boys. Sherise Campbell runs an award-winning bakery called Sweet Sage LLC. Tafari Campbell won awards, too, including a gold medal at a cooking contest in Chevy Chase, Maryland in 2007. His prize-winning dish was Rockfish Rollup with Lump Crab Ragout and King Crab Terrine. His wife has asked for prayers for her family but has not pushed for investigation into his death.

I’m praying for a serious investigation.