51�Թ�

When her friend and tintype mentor came to town, the pair went to Mills’ old property to poke around.

His administration has gone on a firing spree, directing federal agencies to lay off the more than 200,000 probationary government workers, offering tens of thousands of federal employees a dubious buyout offer, and empowering an unelected billionaire to poke around in nearly every federal agency to find even more people to fire while also slashing congressionally approved budgets.

Then he had a poke around in his box.

The seeming source, a 2014 travel magazine article, describes “imposing houses with beautiful courtyards, simple on the outside, but flowery inside. To poke around this neighborhood is to discover high ivy-covered walls, lattice doors, miniature fountains and stony soils.”

Acland says she decided to “poke around” into Gino’s work in September 2023, after the researcher filed a $25 million lawsuit against HBS and the data sleuths who uncovered the misconduct.