A QAnon influencer who claims to be from the future is trying to rebrand himself as a mainstream Republican after his release from prison.
Austin Steinbart served 225 days in prison after pleading guilty to extortion, which dispersed his collective of followers living in cult-like conditions at a Phoenix-area home called The Ranch, but new excerpts from a book on his movement published by Vanity Fair shows he's still involved in the right-wing conspiracy movement that has been absorbed into the GOP.
"Steinbart’s compound had failed, but in a way, he had found something even better," wrote author and Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer. "Thanks to Republican leaders’ willingness to accommodate QAnon and treat it as a legitimate faction of the party, Steinbart, an obvious grifter and charlatan who specialized in sucking vulnerable people dry to support his own delusions, would be treated like a credible political figure. He had even managed to insinuate himself into the team handling the Arizona ballot recount, becoming one of the audit’s staffers shortly after his release from jail.
Sommer, who had been investigating Steinbart and his movements after the sister of one of his followers contacted him with grave concerns, went to the premiere of an election fraud documentary and caught up with the influencer who went by "Baby Q," to distinguish himself from his supposed future self sending prophetic messages back to the past about satanic pedophiles.
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"Months earlier, Steinbart had been eating prison food and trying to red-pill other inmates," Sommer wrote. "Now he was hobnobbing at a film premiere backstage with Republican Party officials. And while his speech at the premiere turned out to be unremarkable — he told me later that the event’s organizers told him not to mention QAnon — the fact that he was even able to make it onstage at all was unbelievable."
