New York State Assemblymember Alex Bores told the world he walked away from Palantir — and millions of dollars — because he couldn't stomach the company's work with ICE.
A Bloomberg News report tells a different story: Bores resigned in February 2019, just five days after Palantir's legal department notified him of potential disciplinary action over sexually explicit comments allegedly made to a colleague.
Five days. Not a principled stand. A hasty exit.
The New York Post reported that Bores, 35, is now running to replace retiring Rep. Jerrold Nadler in Manhattan's heavily Democratic 12th Congressional District — a race where his origin story as a tech worker who chose conscience over cash is central to his pitch. That pitch now has a credibility problem.
On January 23, Bores posted on X with the kind of moral clarity candidates love to project:
"I quit Palantir over its ICE contract, choosing principle over my career and millions of dollars."
He followed that with a second post framing himself as the target of corporate retaliation:
"They profited off of it, and are now using those funds to lie to New Yorkers and attack me."
It's a tidy narrative. A young software engineer stares down a powerful defense contractor, sacrifices a lucrative career, and emerges on the other side as a public servant. The kind of story Democratic primary voters in Manhattan devour.
Except Bloomberg's reporting — based on people familiar with the matter — suggests the timeline doesn't hold up.
According to the report, Bores worked at Palantir from 2014 to 2019. During his first year, he attended a client offsite meeting with Kimberly-Clark where an employee reportedly referenced tissue usage data and made what was described as an implicit reference to masturbation — noting that the top three reported tissue uses accounted for less than half of total usage, with the implication being obvious.
Years later, Bores allegedly recounted that anecdote to a colleague. A complaint was filed. Palantir's legal department sent Bores a notification of potential disciplinary action. Five days after that notification, he was gone.
Bloomberg's sources also reported that in his exit interview, Bores cited burnout and excessive travel — not ICE contracts — as his reasons for leaving.
Bores' spokeswoman, Alyssa Cass, pushed back aggressively. She called the Bloomberg report:
"A wildly overblown characterization from 'sources' within a company that has named Alex Bores public enemy #1."
Cass acknowledged the basics — that a complaint was filed and HR spoke to Bores about it — but disputed everything else. She told The Post:
"A complaint was filed, and HR asked Alex about it."
She added that:
"The matter was dropped."
As for the five-day timeline between the warning letter and his departure, Cass called it:
"Made up and the timeline proves it."
She said Bores had already secured another job offer before leaving Palantir. After his departure, he joined an AI-focused startup and later worked at fintech firm Promise Pay before launching a political career that landed him in the New York State Assembly in 2022.
Let's stipulate that retelling an off-color story from a client meeting may not be the scandal of the century. Workplace complaints exist on a spectrum, and the underlying incident — repeating a crude joke about tissue usage data — is hardly Harvey Weinstein territory.
But that's not the issue. The issue is that Bores built a campaign narrative around a noble resignation that appears, at minimum, to have been significantly more complicated than he let on. He didn't just omit context.
He actively constructed a heroic version of events and used it to fundraise, campaign, and position himself as a man of principle in a crowded Democratic primary.
If the Bloomberg timeline is accurate, Bores didn't quit Palantir to fight ICE. He quit Palantir because the walls were closing in — and then retrofitted the story into a political asset years later.
That's not a misjudgment. That's a fabrication strategy.
This is a familiar playbook on the progressive left: claim moral authority not from what you've actually done, but from the story you tell about what you've done. The résumé becomes mythology. The mythology becomes the campaign. And anyone who questions it is accused of acting in bad faith — in this case, supposedly on behalf of a vengeful corporation.
Bores has made artificial intelligence regulation and opposition to the ICE centerpieces of his congressional campaign. Both positions play well in a Manhattan district where the primary is the only election that matters.
But if the foundation of his candidacy — the reason voters should trust his judgment and his character — is a story that doesn't survive contact with a Bloomberg FOIA request, what exactly is he selling?
Financial disclosures show Bores and his wife hold between $2 million and $3.7 million in combined assets. He's not the scrappy idealist who gave it all up. He's a multimillionaire former tech worker who left one lucrative gig, moved through two more, and then decided to run for office with a convenient origin story.
The Post sought comment from both Palantir and Kimberly-Clark. Neither responded by publication time. Bloomberg's sources remain anonymous. The colleague who filed the complaint has not been identified.
That leaves voters in the 12th District with a straightforward question: Do you trust the man who told you one story, or the reporting that suggests it was another?
In a district that will almost certainly send a Democrat to Congress, the primary is everything. And in a primary, character is supposed to matter. Bores asked voters to believe he sacrificed millions for principle. Now they'll have to decide whether that sacrifice ever actually happened — or whether it was just another line on a carefully curated campaign page.
Manhattan Democrats deserve better than a candidate whose founding myth crumbles under basic reporting. Then again, they keep electing the ones whose myths crumble slowest.
