Former top lieutenant to Ku Klux Klan chief is now looking at prison time for running pill mills

Kenny Knight managed to stay out of trouble while working as a "lieutenant" and campaign manager for former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, but his role in a Louisiana "pill mill" scheme is likely to get him prison time.

According to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Knight faces up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to selling opioids illegally at Axcess Medical Clinics in the New Orleans area, a chain he owned.

In his plea, he admitted to running the operation where patients at the cash-only clinic were prescribed opiates like oxycodone without seeing doctors, but also to "telling out of state patients to park away from the clinics so their cars wouldn’t draw suspicion."

Knight, the report notes, managed Duke's state office campaign in 1990 and 1991, and also ran the former KKK leader's European-American Unity and Rights Organization, a white nationalist group.

Though it's unclear how close Duke, who has in recent years railed against the opioid addiction epidemic, is to Knight now, the SPLC notes the infamous white supremacist still references Knight on his website and sells EURO shirts there as well.

Knight and EURO also made news in 2015 after it was revealed that U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) spoke at a EURO event in 2002. Though Scalise denied knowledge of the group's white supremacist leanings, Knight confirmed to the Washington Post that the congressman was at the meeting and was the event's first speaker.