Near the end of October 2022, Michelle Malkin abruptly stood up and exited the big-name conservative columnist/pundit/celebrity/whatever-you-want-to-call-it arena in a flash. Malkin is now laying the groundwork for a comeback – but with a twist. She has announced a defined area of interest separate from the political circus. Along the way, she’s added more insight as to why she stepped out three years ago.

This is not meant as a pro- or anti-Michelle Malkin piece. It’s simply an update on a formerly highly influential person in the conservative media universe. That it touches on issues very much affecting that world at the moment makes it all the more interesting.

Malkin’s last nationally syndicated column ran October 25, 2022. It was a farewell piece after 30 years on a big platform. “Why now? The professional and personal reasons are myriad,” she wrote. “Suffice to say, the American media landscape has changed dramatically since I entered this industry as a 22-year-old idealist who truly believed the ‘pen is mightier than the sword.’”

Her critique was very much on the mark.

“It’s not just ‘fake news’ that plagues us. It’s sold-out, skewed ‘news’ that serves corporate and global special interests, not the truth. It’s lazy, soulless, dumbed-down opinion writing from hacks who care nothing about the craft. It’s shady influence operations masquerading as ‘journalism.’ It’s information-suppression disguised as ‘misinformation’ monitoring,” Malkin opined.

‘Tyranny of the Woke Tech Algorithms’

Fast forward to today. The world of attention-addicted “conservative” online celebrities has grown from tiresome annoyance to ubiquitous cancer, and Malkin still feels the same.

“The tyranny of the Woke tech algorithms was incredibly frustrating, especially for individuals like myself who refused to play the game of buying followers and buying viewers and chasing the almighty dollar for clicks. Not about that,” Malkin explained in a 31-minute December 20 Facebook video post.

It’s a trait she does not find in abundance.

“So not playing that game at the exact moment when so many mainstream, normie Conservative Inc. entities made a choice to lie in bed with the likes of… ahem… the founder of the platform that I’m talking to you on right now – yeah, I wasn’t gonna do that,” Malkin continued.

Malkin says she also saw her reach diminished in real time.

“And so, a fraction of the nearly two million people who voluntarily chose to follow me over the years were actually seeing my content. And so there you go. Whatever happened to Michelle Malkin? Squash. Suppression.”

Malkin referenced the controversy she got caught up in in 2019 when she was accused of uniting with the so-called “alt-right” and her vocal skepticism over the coronavirus pandemic establishment narrative, which included questioning the safety of rushed COVID vaccines.

The hate-right tag is still applied to her to this day. “An Asian woman with a deep golden-brown complexion had become a leader of a movement advocating for the drastic reduction of America’s nonwhite population,” is how The Washington Post’s Surya Gowda put it in a December 17 opinion piece. Malkin’s story remains “relevant insofar as it demonstrates both how and why the white identitarian movement is marked by significant nonwhite involvement at virtually every level,” Gowda exclaimed.

Is this the silliness Malkin turned her back on?

“Everything that’s happening now with all of the internal civil strife and civil war in the right, I was Patient Zero for that. I was Patient Zero for the tech suppression of conservative voices. I was Patient Zero for the internal deplatforming and disavowing of independent-minded people on the right by other supposed conservative brethren,” Malkin declares in her video.

Michelle Malkin ‘Act II’

It’s clear Michelle Malkin hasn’t entirely let all the discord go. In announcing her plans for a media return, she appears still keen to take on controversial subject matter.

What did Malkin do in her time away? Well, she played a lot of pickleball, she elaborated to great extent in the Facebook video. She also did something else.

“I went back to school,” Malkin says. “I enrolled in a paralegal studies program at Pikes Peak State College [a community college in Colorado Springs, Colorado]. And it has been an amazing experience.”

And now she wants to use that education in a new endeavor.

“Going back to school showed me my new act. Act II of my life. Which is now dedicated to pro bono work on wrongful conviction cases. Mostly in Oklahoma because of an ongoing documentary series I’ve done on former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw. Who over the nearly last 10 years that I embarked on the journey covering his case remains in prison, wrongfully convicted, and is currently in the post-conviction stage.”

Thank you! Your subscription has been successful. Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again. Holtzclaw was found guilty in December 2015 of multiple counts of rape and other sexual offenses against women while serving in uniform.

“Through the work that I’ve done on wrongful convictions, I have met the most extraordinary human beings from all parts of the political spectrum,” she states. “And it has enriched my life in a way that years and years and years of doing the so-called glamour work of being a national media personality did not give me.”

“But in wrongful conviction work, you get people who are lawyers, academics, advocates, researchers, family members, forensic experts,” she continued. “Just a wide swath of people who are committed to integrity in the massively corrupted criminal justice system.

“So I’ve forged alliances and ties with people way on the left and way on the right and all across the spectrum of the middle. And you’ll see in the podcast series Corruptahoma: Unlock the Truth, which is launching in January 2026, the depths of the legal and moral morass into which so many innocent people have been trapped.”

Malkin says she will focus on male defendants charged with sexual offenses.

“For the most part, in addition to Daniel’s case, I will be covering cases in which men have been falsely accused of sexual crimes – sexual assault and rape. I have, as you know, both a daughter and a son,” she related. “And it is terrifying to think of how little it takes to entrap and manufacture a case against an innocent man. Absolutely terrifying. And this is something that every parent, particularly of a son, needs to know about. Especially if they’re going to go into law enforcement.”

Michelle Malkin is back. It will be different, but it sounds like it won’t be lacking in hot-button material.