Jordan Green, Investigative Reporter

Sen. Lindsey Graham, an enthusiastic backer of President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, faces an anti-interventionist insurgency at home in South Carolina, where he’s fending off a challenge from businessman Mark Lynch in the state’s June 9 primary.

A self-styled “America First” candidate, Lynch has attacked Graham by calling him a “warmonger” who cares more about “a fancy ballroom than he does your sons and daughters dying in the Middle East.”

Differences over foreign policy aside, Lynch’s candidacy taps into the more extreme tradition of far-right politics, compared to Graham’s relative moderation.

Graham is running with the endorsement of Trump, who dismissed Lynch as a “lunatic” while expressing annoyance that Graham’s challenger supported Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), a critic of the war against Iran.

“Mark Lynch would be a DISASTER for the Republican Party, and Lindsey Graham just, GETS THE JOB DONE,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Lynch has racked up endorsements from retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor; former Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino; Joe Kent, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center; Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet; and Ivan Raiklin, the self-styled “secretary of retribution.”

Graham has become a target of anger for the restive MAGA faction, which sees the war with Iran as a betrayal of Trump’s promise to avoid getting the United States into new wars. Among Trump’s Republican allies in Congress, Graham distinguished himself by urging the U.S. to seize Iran’s Kharg Island and saying he would be willing to send South Carolina’s “sons and daughters” to the Middle East.

Speaking at an anti-war rally in Michigan last month, Raiklin dangled a red cap inscribed with the words “Dump Lindsey” from a mic stand.

“Do you want your president listening to Lindsey Graham?” Raiklin asked.

“No!” the crowd thundered in response.

“If you’re in South Carolina, primary this scumbag,” Raiklin said, “so he’s no longer golfing down at Mar-a-Lago promoting the war machine.”

The Graham campaign did not respond to questions concerning this story.

Lynch, who trails Graham by about 20 points in recent polls, has attempted to strike a delicate balance between supporting Trump and appealing to the MAGA dissidents.

“I believe that the job of a U.S. senator is to uphold their oath to the Constitution, represent the interests of the constituents, and promote America First principles,” Lynch told Raw Story. “And I would support everything President Trump does to those ends.”

At the same time, Lynch is staking positions markedly to the right of Graham by vocally supporting white Christian nationalism, while embracing a theocratic doctrine that critics view as anti-constitutional.

Lynch has used his X account to argue that “white replacement is real,” while expressing agreement with a call for religious exclusion by a violent Jan. 6 rioter who has faced multiple criminal charges since Trump pardoned him for his conduct at the Capitol.

During an angry tirade directed at a city council in the Dallas suburbs last month, Jake Lang accused the city of replacing “white people” with Muslims and Hindus, while declaring that the United States “is a Christian country” and suggesting that Muslims and Hindus can’t be Texans.

“Gotta say, I agree with Jake Lang here,” Lynch wrote on X.

Asked how he reconciles Lang’s views with the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion, Lynch told Raw Story, “Islam is not a religion; it is a theocratic construct that should be banned in the United States.”

Lynch’s friendliness with Lang and other Jan. 6 rioters who participated in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol lines up with his ultraconservative activism as founder of a group called United Patriots Alliance that has promoted the controversial “doctrine of lesser magistrates.”

Lynch introduced the Rev. Matthew Trewhella, a Wisconsin pastor who popularized the doctrine, during an event sponsored by United Patriots Alliance in Greer, S.C. in September 2024.

Trewhella, who advocates for the criminalization of abortion and homosexuality, described the doctrine in an interview with United Patriots Alliance tactical strategist Ethan Mulch as holding that “when the higher-ranking civil authority makes unjust or immoral law, policy, or court opinion, the God-given right of the lesser civil authority is not to obey.

“They’re to stand between the tyranny of the superior civil authority and the people they represent,” Trewhella continued. “It’s called interposition. You can do it verbally, or physically, or both. And it’s massively needed in our day.”

Trewhella published his book, The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates, in 2013 following more than two decades in the anti-abortion movement. Although Trewhella has claimed that he advocates for nonviolence, ProPublica has reported that after an activist killed an anti-abortion provider in 1993, Trewhella signed a document describing the murder as “justifiable.” The outlet also reported that Trewhella praised a man convicted of murdering another abortion provider by saying that future generations would view him “as the sanest and bravest man of our age.”

Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates who has tracked the Christian right for more than four decades, told Raw Story that Trewhella’s message is “a dangerous anti-constitutional and revolutionary doctrine.

“The people who follow this, they might have a tendency to vigilante action,” Clarkson said. “If you feel like you’ve got a handle on God’s law and the boss doesn’t, it’s your job to take him out, even if your boss is an elected official. We have a method of holding tyrants to account — they’re called elections.”

While introducing Trewhella at the event in Greer in 2024, Lynch said, “Tonight’s a lesson about the obligation of churches to control their local governments.”

Lynch said at the time that he hadn’t been familiar with the Wisconsin pastor, and that Mulch helped arrange Trewhella’s visit to South Carolina. Mulch was previously involved with the John Birch Society, an ultraconservative, anticommunist group founded in 1958.

After hearing Trewhella’s presentation, Lynch enthusiastically embraced his message, while promising to read The Doctrine of Lesser Magistrates.

“I’m going to renew my mind and study this, because that’s going to help me teach everybody I know everything I need to know out of God’s word that’s right here about these topics,” Lynch said. “That’s power in this knowledge.”

Lynch defended the “doctrine of lesser magistrates” in a written statement to Raw Story.

“America is a constitutional republic with democratic elections, but because our system is built on limited government, checks and balances, federalism, and individual rights, a lawful official resisting unconstitutional overreach is not anti-constitutional,” he said. “It is exactly what an oath to the Constitution requires."

Trewhella has forged relationships with elected officials, including former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin and an array of state lawmakers and county commissioners, according to ProPublica. But Lynch stands out, Clarkson said, as a candidate for federal office.

“I haven’t heard of a prominent U.S. Senate candidate embracing the ‘doctrine of the lesser magistrates,’” Clarkson told Raw Story. “I think it’s something that should be of concern to people of all parties and in all parts of the country that these ideas have gotten to this level in our national discourse — it’s a symptom.”

During Trewhella’s visit to South Carolina, Lynch asked the pastor to comment on DEI, a framework used by corporations, universities and governments to pursue “diversity, equity and inclusion.”

“It’s a pipeline for racism and homo-sex,” Trewhella told Lynch.

“Right,” Lynch said. “Evil, right?”

Lynch hasn’t backed away from that position.

In a statement to Raw Story, he characterized DEI as “anti-white discrimination,” while claiming that “in the last 70 years, white Americans have been the only group not allowed to advocate for their interests.”

Later in his remarks following Trewhella’s presentation, Lynch linked the “doctrine of the lesser magistrates” to militia activity.

“We all have a responsibility to carry this knowledge forward and create an army out there,” Lynch said, adding that Mulch had discussed “the militia” during a class on constitutional law offered to 110 employees of Lynch’s appliance store.

“The militia is us, we the people,” Lynch said. “When the tyrants come, are we ready? And if they ever get our weapons, then that’s the end of all of it. And so, I hope you all are ready in that arena, too. And we have gun training at my gun range.”

Lynch dismissed concerns about militia activity undermining the rule of law in a statement to Raw Story by citing a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, the third president and a signer of the Declaration of Independence: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Lynch has aligned himself with the Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump, not only by expressing agreement with Lang, but also by re-posting at least two others on X.

The Jan. 6 community has treated Graham, the sitting senator and incumbent, with distrust since he took to the Senate floor after Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, and said, “All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.” Graham ended that speech by saying, “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are lawfully elected, and will be the president and vice president of the United States on January 20^th.”

After Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced a controversial $1.8 billion weaponization fund meant to compensate January 6 insurrectionists, among others, had been scrapped, Graham made a gesture suggesting he’s trying to repair the relationship with them.

“To suggest nothing happened and that the Biden DOJ did not weaponize the law against Americans is inaccurate,” he posted on X on [Tuesday, June 2]. He went on to say he was proposing “a weaponization fund that will be available to those who can prove their claim against the federal government through the Federal Tort Claims Act.”

Lynch, meanwhile, has promoted the false claim that the Jan. 6 attack was orchestrated by federal law enforcement to discredit Trump.

“Congress must get to the bottom of the J6 fed-surrection to ensure a fair 50 state federal election,” he posted on X in February. He then accused a handful of “commie-run” states won by Biden in 2020 of blocking Trump electors “from being ratified lawfully.”

The conventional wisdom on Rep. Thomas Massie’s primary loss in Kentucky last month is that the election was a referendum that settled the question of who controls the Republican Party: It’s Donald Trump.

But for the anti-Israel and anti-interventionist flank of the MAGA movement that calls itself “America First,” Massie’s loss marks the emergence of a splinter group aiming to take over the GOP from within, and then outflank Trump or his chosen successor in 2028.

Tucker Carlson, one of the most prominent figures in the “America First” faction, declared on his podcast on the day after Massie’s defeat that “nothing will be the same after this.” He added that the win for Ed Gallrein, Trump’s handpicked replacement, is “likely a Pyrrhic victory,” because the election “confirmed how the system actually works” — supposedly in favor of a small group of people who put Israel’s interest before the United States.

Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust-denying admirer of Adolf Hitler whose views have been mainstreamed, in part, through a guest appearance on Carlson’s program, announced on his show that he would be “supporting the Democrats at this point out of pure vengeance.

“I will gladly take the L,” he continued. “I will gladly take a couple steps back while we wait for the demographics to change. And then it will be our party.”

Massie’s concession speech felt more like a victory party.

As his supporters chanted, “No more wars,” followed by “2028, 2028,” the candidate gleefully echoed a declaration from the crowd: “We’re just getting started — I like that!”

Massie dangled a hint last week that he’s considering a run for president while announcing that he had filed paperwork to keep his congressional campaign committee open.

Before that, he posted on X that “there’s a quiet all-out war for the future of our country,” while tamping down on his supporters’ baseless claims that the primary election had been rigged.

Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism and a longtime observer of the far right, told Raw Story that the “America First” faction mobilization behind Massie is “a big deal.” She added that the support of far-right luminaries such as Carlson and Fuentes and a lesser-known cohort of openly antisemitic internet influencers who volunteered for the Massie campaign is cause for concern.

“I hope this faction of the Republican Party and the MAGA movement is not in ascendance,” Beirich said. “I hope they’re pushed out and sidelined, because it would be scary if they came to power.”

The Massie campaign attracted a grab bag of extremists that included a Jan. 6 seditionist, an alum of the 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally, and an influencer who routinely promotes violent antisemitism.

Massie shook hands with Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes during a campaign stop and reportedly expressed sympathy for his legal troubles after he was prosecuted for seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump commuted Rhodes’ sentence immediately following his January 2025 inauguration, and last week the Department of Justice moved to dismiss the case.

David J. Reilly, who attended a torch march on the eve of the Unite the Right rally, said he accepted an invitation to join a group of internet influencers who embedded with the campaign and produced content on the ground to promote Massie.

An episode of Reilly’s podcast recounting his experience campaigning for Massie included acknowledgements to sponsors marketing “pro-white coffee” and “soap and skincare products that won’t turn you gay.”

Ryan Matta, another influencer embedded with the Massie campaign, appeared to call for a genocide against Jews while at the same time denying the Holocaust in a video posted to X five days after the Kentucky primary.

“What if we were actually able to find documented proof that told us step by step of how evil and vindictive these people were,” Matta said. He went on to fantasize about an AI program that would tell school children that “there was never six million killed,” and it was a “gosh-damn lie” that “Mr. H. Adolf was a bad guy,” apparently referring to Hitler.

Massie acknowledged the influencers during his concession speech.

“I want to thank the influencers who came all this way, and produced all the videos and got out the young vote,” Massie said.

Massie was not available for comment, his press secretary told Raw Story.

In the past, antisemitism of the type exhibited by Matta “would have led to fierce denunciation by the candidate and the party,” Beirich told Raw Story. “Now, we’re living in a time that it happens, and it’s like it’s just another Tuesday.

“The big problem is the mainstreaming of antisemitism, and the potential violence directed at Jews that can come from that,” Beirich added. She pointed to the recent San Diego mosque shooting resulting in the deaths of three people as an example. Although the targets in that attack were Muslims, the manifesto of one of the shooters reportedly includes the repeated phrase, “It’s the Jews,” as an answer to the question of “who is to blame for all the wrong in the world.”

One of Matta’s videos, posted on X last week, referenced the mosque shooting. Matta shared a video by another influencer attacking the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy organization, for promoting legislation that would provide grants to houses of worship to enhance security.

“I don’t know if you guys have seen this video… about what the, you know, the ADL and these rat b-----ds are attempting to cram down your ... throat here in America,” Matta said. “But this is exactly why I’m screaming from the rooftops: Get the f out.”

In an interview with CBS last week, Massie denied that he is antisemitic.

But the lawmaker hasn’t hesitated to point out that donors who want to ensure that the United States continues to back Israel spent millions of dollars to unseat him. During the same interview, he mentioned that Miriam Adelson, a casino magnate who backed his opponent, is a dual citizen of Israel and the United States, while questioning her loyalty to America.

Some of Massie’s supporters have joined Fuentes in calling for the GOP to be punished in this year’s midterm elections, although none appear to have articulated a plan for Massie and his allies to carry out a hostile takeover of the party before 2028.

Matta suggested he might campaign for Melissa Strange, Gallrein’s Democratic opponent.

During the “Rage Against the War Machine” rally in Michigan on Sunday, Ivan Raiklin, a Massie supporter who has called himself Trump’s “secretary of retribution,” called on South Carolina voters to vote Libertarian in the general election to counter Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a proponent of the war against Iran.

Reilly, the white nationalist influencer, told his viewers they “need to punish the GOP,” while singling out Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, and Chris LaCivita, who served as co-campaign manager alongside Wiles in Trump’s 2024 campaign.

“They need to be out of a job,” Reilly said. “They need to go to Israel, where they can live out the rest of their days in peace among their people, because their people are not our people.”

A task force launched by U.S. intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard to "end weaponization" has fallen apart after "drama" triggered by a memo it circulated that spread false claims — made by a January 6 rioter — against a CIA employee and a former Capitol Police officer.

The group's collapse was detailed in testimony submitted to a U.S. Senate committee.

Written testimony submitted by James E. Erdman III, a CIA senior operations officer formerly assigned to the Director’s Initiatives Group, to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), contradicts a public statement made by Gabbard in February that the task force “was created as a temporary effort.”

“The memo and the ensuing drama that unfolded as a result helped spark a pause in DIG’s work in December 2025, and its ultimate dissolution in January 2026,” Erdman said. “The dissolution of the DIG has halted critical transparency work that the American people voted for when re-electing President Donald Trump.”

Olivia Coleman, Gabbard’s press secretary, declined to comment on the record in response to Erdman’s characterization of the wind-down of the Director’s Initiative Group, other than to repeat a statement issued to the media last November.

“ODNI followed its obligation to report information received concerning the alleged activities of a member of the Intelligence Community to that person’s employing agency,” the statement said.

But an ODNI official speaking on background told Raw Story that the agency has confirmed that the Intelligence Community Inspector General is aware of Erdman's allegations and is working alongside ODNI and interagency partners, to uncover the truth about potential wrongdoing.

Erdman did not include his characterization of the circumstances surrounding the dissolution of the Director's Initiatives Group in his testimony before the Senate committee, which was headlned, "Whistleblower Testimony on the COVID Coverup." His statements about the episode are buried in the final two pages of his written testimony.

Gabbard’s Director’s Initiatives Group was set up to carry out Trump’s Executive Order 14147 entitled “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” which directed her, as the director of national intelligence, to review the activities of the Intelligence Community during the previous administration. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi set up a parallel task force known as the Weaponization Working Group to similarly review the Department of Justice for purported “weaponization,” including actions by the Biden administration to “ruthlessly prosecute more than 1,500 individuals associated with January 6.”

The efforts inside the administration to investigate “weaponization” under the Biden administration — or root out perceived political enemies from the federal government, as critics have charged — ballooned into an Interagency Weaponization Working Group, revealed by Reuters in October 2025 and said to have been meeting on a biweekly basis since April of that year. Reuters reported that the Director’s Initiative Group and Interagency Weaponization Working Group shared at least one member, Paul McNamara, a Gabbard aide at ODNI.

Erdman’s written testimony to the Senate Homeland Security Committee sheds new light on how the involvement of Gabbard’s task force in circulating a smear against a federal employee wreaked havoc at the CIA and Department of Justice.

Steve Baker, who was convicted of misdemeanor parading in the Capitol on Jan. 6 — and subsequently pardoned by Trump — contacted ODNI last October with information for a story for Blaze Media in which he falsely accused Shauni Kerkhoff, a former Capitol police officer who is now at the CIA, of planting pipe bombs at the headquarters of Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee on the eve of the attack.

The story quickly unraveled, with Blaze Media ultimately retracting it and firing Baker.

Erdman testified that prior to publication of the story, Director’s Initiatives Group members consulted with senior ODNI leadership about how to pass along Baker’s information to agencies that could appropriately investigate.

“I remember several of my colleagues that were involved recalling that the DIG was directed to draft a memo with Baker’s information that could be circulated to other agencies,” Erdman wrote. Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Aaron Lukas wound up sharing the memo with his counterpart at the CIA, Michael Ellis, Erdman wrote.

On Nov. 4, 2025, Baker and a second Blaze Media reporter, Joseph Hanneman, published an article focused on Kerkhoff’s actions during the Jan. 6 riot. The following day, a subsequent article at Blaze Media described Baker as stating during a radio interview that the pipe bomber would “be named as soon as the relevant agencies have ‘battened down the hatches.’”

Two days later, Kerkhoff was called into work at the CIA, interviewed by two FBI agents about her activities on the night the pipe bombs were set, and placed on administrative leave, according to a lawsuit she filed against Baker and Blaze Media.

Later, after agreeing to meet the FBI at her house to allow a search, Kerkhoff’s lawsuit alleges a caravan of FBI agents “exited their vehicles with their guns drawn and in full tactical gear,” as a helicopter hovered overhead and a bomb-disposal truck parked nearby.

As a result of the torrent of personal attacks on social media, Kerkhoff said she spent money to scrub her private information from the internet and purchase security alarms and cameras for her home. She postponed a planned wedding to her boyfriend, struggled to fall asleep and suffered nightmares, and had to take time off from work for her mental health.

The false claims against Kerkhoff that were circulated by members of the Director’s Initiatives Group also jarred the Department of Justice, including its parallel “weaponization” task force.

The day before Baker's “bombshell” story was published, Ed Martin, the Pardon Attorney at the Department of Justice and at the time the director of the department’s Weaponization Working Group, publicly refuted the false claim against Kerkhoff on X, writing, “This is false.”

Martin’s post was a reply to a post that has since been taken down, but Snopes cited an archived screengrab from a pseudonymous user stating, “U.S. Pardon Attorney and Director of the Weaponization Working Group Administration has determined the identity of the J6 Pipe Bomber. Shauni Kerkhoff is a former Capitol Police Officer and current intelligence operative. Jan. 6^th was an FBI/CIA led coup.”

The pipe bomber conspiracy theory caused further headaches for the Department of Justice, along with the FBI, a month after publication of the Blaze Media stories when another man, Brian Cole Jr., was arrested and charged with placing the bombs.

Following Cole’s arrest, Carolyn Rocco, an ODNI employee, made an X post prodding former Attorney General Pam Bondi to scrutinize Jocelyn Ballantine, who was the lead prosecutor on the pipe bomber case. The post, which was previously reported by Raw Story, highlighted Ballantine’s past involvement in prosecuting leaders of the Proud Boys for their actions on Jan. 6.

Rocco was identified by Reuters as a member of the Interagency Weaponization Working Group; it is not known whether she was a part of the Director’s Initiatives Group.

Rocco, who has publicly praised Baker, also reshared a post by another X user that featured a video of Ivan Raiklin — the self-styled “secretary of retribution" — stalking Ballantine outside the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C.

Rocco and Raiklin were both seated behind Erdman during his testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee last week.

The sniping within the cohort of officials assigned to carry out Trump's crusade to address purported "weaponization" during the Biden era hasn't stopped the administration from carrying out the president's campaign of retribution. The Department of Justice unveiled a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" that will consider claims from Jan. 6 rioters, as part of a deal that shields Trump and his family from future prosecution, and is prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey, who earned the president's wrath for the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation into links between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign, for posting a photo of sea shells.

Melania Trump’s hastily called press briefing last month to emphatically deny any relationship with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein elicited a flurry of speculation about who might be holding information that the First Lady doesn’t want to come out.

A statement provided to the FBI and federal prosecutors by a former model who worked for Epstein as a recruiter for his sex trafficking enterprise appears to shed some light on what Melania is trying to keep under wraps.

The entry in the Epstein files, mentioning Melania and Donald by name, focuses on a man at the center of the modeling industry that brought the Trumps together with Epstein in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Paolo Zampolli, the modeling agent who reportedly arranged a visa for then-Melania Knauss to come work in the United States, now serves as special envoy for the president for global partnerships under the auspices of the U.S. State Department.

The seamless connection between the models represented by Zampolli — many of them recruited from abroad to work in the U.S. on visas — and the women who became Epstein’s victims and enablers is glaringly illustrated by Adriana Mucinska, a Polish-born model who worked for both men.

Mucinska described meeting Epstein through Zampolli in a 2019 interview with the FBI and federal prosecutors in West Palm Beach, Florida, less than a week after Epstein’s July 2019 arrest on charges of sex trafficking of minors.

Mucinska, also known as Adriana Ross, was described in a 2020 New York Times investigation as one of four “recruiters” who worked under Ghislaine Maxwell to procure teenage girls for massage appointments, which often turned into sexual assaults. Mucinska was reportedly named as a “co-conspirator” and granted immunity from prosecution in Epstein’s widely criticized 2008 plea bargain.

According to interview notes reviewed by Raw Story, Mucinska told investigators that she removed computers from Epstein’s Palm Beach, Florida, mansion in 2005 at his request.

But before Mucinska knew Epstein, she knew Zampolli.

A typed report of Mucinska’s July 2019 interview in West Palm Beach with two unnamed federal prosecutors and an unnamed FBI agent, compiled in an official FBI document and released in the Epstein files, indicates that Mucinska was interviewed as part of a “proffer agreement,” which typically provides immunity or leniency to an individual with information about a crime in exchange for complete truthfulness.

That FBI report states that an individual whose name is redacted put Mucinska “in contact with an agent named Paolo Zempoli [sic] who worked with ‘ID Models,’" and that “it was organized for” Mucinska “to go to New York to model.” The report states that Mucinska “lived in a model’s apartment because she did not have the funds to pay for her own apartment. The apartment accommodated 10 people and was on the same street as the model agency on Varick Street.” It states that Mucinska “had an affair with the agent” and that “Zempoli [sic] was trying to buy Elite Models with Epstein.”

The next sentence in the typed FBI report of Mucinska’s interview based on her proffer agreement states: “Epstein introduced Melania Trump to Donald Trump.”

That sentence alone would be a bombshell revelation, except that separate handwritten notes from the same interview confuse by giving contradictory information, suggesting that Mucinska told investigators that it was Zampolli who introduced Donald and Melania, as Zampolli has always maintained.

Those notes only reference the person who made the introduction as “he." The notations preceding and immediately following it suggest that the “he” is Zampolli, considering that the document says, “he trying to buy Elite Models w/ JE” and “think he ambassador now.”

Melania has emphatically denied that Epstein played a matchmaking role, and during her April 9 press conference directly stated, “Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump.”

But another statement by Melania later in the press conference is clearly disproven by Mucinska’s FBI proffer interview.

“My name has never appeared in court documents, depositions, victim statements, or FBI interviews surrounding the Epstein matter,” the first lady said.

During the press conference, Melania brushed aside an email she sent to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s partner, on Oct. 23, 2002 — roughly around the same time that Mucinska arrived in the U.S. — as a “trivial note.”

Melania also described the email, which includes the header, “HI!” as a “polite reply.” But the documents released by the Department of Justice clearly show that it was Maxwell who made a “polite reply” to Melania, and that Melania initiated the exchange.

Emails to the Office of the First Lady seeking comment for this story went unreturned.

The FBI referred Raw Story’s questions about the discrepancy between the two documents to the Department of Justice. Emails to the Department of Justice went unreturned.

In the next passage of the typed interview and handwritten notes detailing how Mucinska met Epstein, leading to her eventual employment with the child sex trafficker, there is no contradiction.

The notes indicate that Mucinska told investigators that Epstein visited ID Models during casting auditions for models and flipped through a portfolio, where he saw a photo of Mucinska wearing only swim bottoms.

The next paragraph reflects that Mucinska reported that she was at a nightclub with Zampolli, Epstein and a second unidentified woman. The woman took down Mucinska’s phone number, and Mucinska recalled that either the woman or Epstein later called her with an invitation to have dinner with Epstein.

Zampolli could not be reached for comment for this story, but in a statement to The American Prospect last month, he said, “With regard to Jeffrey Epstein, it is a matter of public record that he had connections within the fashion and modeling sector. He did visit our headquarters; however, any implication of involvement, collaboration, or endorsement is categorically rejected. Any suggestion otherwise is false and will be addressed accordingly.”

Zampolli also told The American Prospect he wasn’t sure whether he remembered Mucinska, but it didn’t matter because “an owner of an agency does not need to know every single model of his agency.”

After accepting Epstein’s dinner invitation, Mucinska told investigators she took a tour of the residence and rebuffed sexual advance from Epstein. As a driver took her home, “she remembered being tearful in the car.”

For reasons unexplained in the interview, Mucinska accepted an employment offer from Epstein in late 2004. Mucinska’s duties included scheduling massage appointments for Epstein. One passage of the report reflects Mucinska telling investigators she “was not sure if the girls who massaged Epstein were underage, but it seemed consensual,” and she “knew it was a sexual massage.”

Mucinska’s time working for Zampolli in New York was sensitive enough that her lawyer advised her during a 2010 deposition for a civil lawsuit brought by one of Epstein’s victims that she should invoke the Fifth Amendment to preserve her right to avoid self-incrimination.

During the deposition, Mucinska disclosed that she worked for ID Models in New York, and that her ex-husband put her in touch with the agency.

When a lawyer for the plaintiffs asked how long she worked with ID Models, Mucinska’s lawyer interjected: “You should invoke with regard to the timeframe you’re talking about now.”

Mucinska has not spoken to the media in the past and could not be reached for this story. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-KY), is reportedly exploring the possibility of calling her to testify.

Mucinska is not the only former model who links Epstein to Trump’s current special envoy for global partnerships.

Another woman, whose name is redacted, described a work arrangement under Zampolli that was strikingly similar to Mucinska’s during an April 2020 interview with the FBI. After signing with ID Models at the age of 18, the woman said she lived in the model’s apartment on Varick Street, according to the document. According to the woman, “Zampolli was ‘sleazy’ and dated models.” She said she stayed at the apartment for about a year before Zampolli “let her go.”

Later, while she was working at the host stand at the Coffee Shop at Union Square in Manhattan, the woman told investigators that a woman with an Eastern European accent approached her and invited her to meet Epstein, whom she described as a “wealthy client.” The document describes a massage session in which Epstein “commanded” the woman to take off her clothes and pressured her into a nonconsensual sexual encounter. Later, the woman told investigators, she “had a mental breakdown, started drinking, and couldn’t function.”

The statement aligns on significant points with an account given by a survivor known as “Kiki Doe” during a 2019 interview for TV’s “Dr. Oz.” In that interview, the survivor described the Coffee Shop as a “hunting ground for recruiters” because most of the staff were models. The “Dr. Oz” interview appears to include no mention of Zampolli, and “Kiki Doe” has said in a separate interview that the model’s apartment where she stayed was on 42nd Street, as opposed to Varick Street.

Mehmet Oz, the host of “Dr. Oz,” now serves as administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the Trump administration.

Teri Gibbs, the attorney who represented the woman who described working for Zampolli at ID Models, declined a request to put Raw Story in touch with her client or discuss her statement to the FBI.

While Zampolli might plausibly claim he doesn’t remember Mucinska or the Epstein survivor recruited from the Coffee Shop, another former model linked to Epstein will be harder to ignore.

Amanda Ungaro, a Brazilian model who dated Zampolli for almost two decades and has a 15-year-old son with him, arrived in New York in 2002 on Epstein’s private jet. Her modeling agent in Paris, who arranged her flight, was Jean-Luc Brunel, a longtime Epstein associate who died of an apparent suicide in a Parisian prison cell in 2022 while awaiting trial for rape of minors and trafficking of minors for sexual exploitation.

Ungaro, who was deported by U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement following Zampolli’s reported intervention in her case, has said she is willing to testify before the House Oversight Committee looking into the Epstein affair.

One day before Melania Trump’s hastily called press conference, Ungaro wrote on X in a post that was subsequently deleted: “Something was clearly wrong, but I am not part of any evil mission involving children. So what did you do, Melania? You tried to involve me, but you failed — because I have character.”

Rep. Thomas Massie, the maverick Republican facing a primary challenge from Ed Gallrein in Tuesday’s Kentucky primary, has earned goodwill from progressives and Democrats for standing up to President Donald Trump on the Epstein files and opposing the Iran war.

Melissa Strange, one of the two candidates in the Democratic primary for the 4^th Congressional District, held by Massie, told Raw Story she’s seen Democrats and progressives in Kentucky rooting for Massie from the sidelines.

“I have seen plenty of them, when they post on social media, and I have heard plenty of them say in front of me: ‘People need to vote for Massie. We need him to survive the primary,’” Strange said.

Elsewhere in the country, Ryan Bussie, a Democratic congressional candidate in Montana, has praised Massie for being “courageous bucking his party on the Epstein thing,” while citing former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — a Republican who occupied a similar political space to Massie before her retirement — as a model because “she didn’t play by the rules.”

But Massie’s extremism and embrace of conspiracy theories is well known. He posted a photo of his family posing with military-style rifles in front of a Christmas tree only days after a deadly 2021 school shooting in Michigan, compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust, and aggressively spread the false “fedsurrection” conspiracy theory suggesting the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol was an inside job.

And Dakota Adams, a progressive Democrat whose father founded the far-right Oath Keepers that played a pivotal role in the Jan. 6 attack, warned that Democrats are playing a dangerous game by allowing themselves to be drawn in by Massie.

“It’s a delicious narcotic, and it’s incredibly dangerous for anyone in the Democratic Party to think Massie is an ally,” said Adams, who ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for a Montana state legislative district in 2024. “There is no bridge-building with the Republican Party.”

Adams’ father, whom he has disowned, posed for a photo at a campaign stop with Massie in Kentucky last week. Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, but Trump commuted his sentence almost immediately after returning to the White House in 2025.

Shaking the Oath Keeper leader’s hand during the campaign stop in LaGrange, Kentucky, on May 15, Massie reportedly told him, “Sorry for everything you’ve been through.”

Adams told Raw Story he views the handshake as a “transaction,” with each man seeking to maintain their credibility with the Republican Party’s far-right base as they look towards a future without Trump.

“Stewart is trying to put himself into a position where he can execute a post-Trump pivot,” Adams said. “Massie needs to shore himself up as someone who is down and cool with the far right, but without needing to rely on Trump’s endorsement to do that.”

The danger for the progressives in getting roped into Massie’s far-right repositioning, Adams said, is that they could inadvertently wind up lending support to an authoritarian takeover far more ruthless and effective than what Trump has been able to accomplish.

Adams said he views the decision by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to team up with Massie to force the release of the Epstein files as “a good, strategic move that did damage to Trump.”

But he added, “In the future, if, for example, there’s a second insurrection to keep [Vice President JD] Vance in the White House, they risk embracing somebody who could potentially be on the side of the insurrection for the much worse sequel in 2029.”

The Massie campaign did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Contrary to fellow Democrats who are rooting for Massie, Strange said she views a Gallrein win as both a higher risk and a higher potential reward for Democrats. She argued that Gallrein would face difficulty garnering general election votes from not only Democrats and independents, but also from many Republicans.

Strange told Raw Story many of the Kentucky Democrats and independents who have “softened” on Massie because of his defiance of Trump have been “blinded.” She said they’re overlooking his vote against the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill that included critical funding to replace an aging Interstate 75 bridge linking the 4^th District to Cincinnati.

Jesse Brewer, Strange’s opponent in the Democratic primary, told Raw Story he wants voters to focus on the needs of the people in the 4^th District, not the national politics surrounding Massie. In the case of Brewer, a cancer survivor, that means pursuing his goal of achieving single-payer healthcare.

“It’s easy to be seduced by a person with bad intentions who is a good politician,” Brewer said. “For example, look at MAGA and Trump: They were seduced by Trump, and it was all bad intentions, but he did it well.”

Miles Taylor, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security turned fierce anti-Trump critic, announced the rollout of a new app designed to alert people about plans to open immigration detention facilities in an appearance on “The Rachel Maddow Show” in late April.

Roughly 72 hours later, a former programmer linked to Elon Musk’s DOGE with a large X following publicly warned about data vulnerabilities on the app while predicting that Taylor would “learn this the hard way” the following day.

Users who signed up for the app then received email messages and phone texts stating that their emails, phone numbers, locations and other information had been “forwarded to the authorities,” including the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and ICE, according to Hagerstown Rapid Response, a Maryland-based group organizing against a proposed ICE detention facility 75 miles outside of Washington, DC.

The apparent breach was highlighted in a press release and blog post issued by Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible claiming that “nearly 18,000” users were affected. The anti-ICE groups cited a post by the pro-Trump Data Republican X account indicating that 17,662 people signed up for the app.

Raw Story could not independently verify the number of people affected by the breach. On May 4, the homepage for the app read, “Under construction,” and as of Monday the site remained down.

“This is a good thing to go cancel — these facilities,” Taylor told Maddow on April 28. “And it’s clear in the communities where it’s been successful that that crowd cancellation — that outpouring of frustration is enough to get municipalities and real estate developers and folks to take a beat, and say, ‘Is this really what we want to sign up for?’”

Taylor, who previously served as chief of staff under former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen under the first Trump administration, declined to respond to a detailed set of questions from Raw Story about the alleged data breach. Taylor was the author of 2018 New York Times “Anonymous” op-ed entitled, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration." After leaving the administration, he co-founded the pro-democracy nonprofit Defiance.org.

Laura Spivak, a member of Washington County Indivisible, told Raw Story she regrets signing up for the GTFO ICE app. And although she said she did not receive the message stating her data was forwarded to federal agencies, the reports that others did are upsetting to her.

“Having this information stolen and sent to these three-letter agencies is unfair, terrifying, and completely unacceptable,” Spivak told Raw Story.

The Data Republican account on X was the first to publicly raise concerns about the app’s alleged security vulnerabilities.

“Don’t trust any software outside of established Big Tech,” Data Republican posted on May 1. “GTFO ICE, launched by Miles Taylor… is going to learn this the hard way. Tomorrow.”

The owner of the Data Republican account was outed by Rolling Stone in February 2025 as Jennica Pound, a former programmer for Amazon whose X posts on alleged government waste caught the eye of Elon Musk as his Department of Government Efficiency was slashing the federal workforce and grants to nonprofits.

Pound’s May 2 thread on X packaged as a “breaking” news story announcing that users “sign-up data” was “exposed” includes screenshots purporting to show the profiles of two users, albeit with the names redacted.

Two other X accounts that interact with Data Republican posted screenshots with the names of eight other users. The Data Republican account operated by Pound replied to one of the posts, and separately recommended that her followers also follow the two accounts that posted users’ names.

Pound told Raw Story she “did not access user data,” but could not speak for the other two accounts.

One of the other two accounts, @bitchuneedsoap, told Raw Story: "I did not access any data. Have a great day!"

The other account did not respond.

Responding to another X user who asked if she ran across state or local officials in the data leak, Pound wrote on May 3: “I didn’t ‘see’ anything. I reported a leak, as journalists do. But the site itself was heavily promoted across major channels the entire week.”

In the May 2 thread announcing that the data was exposed, Pound wrote: “Everything has been turned over to FBI, HSI, ICE, and more agencies.”

Pound told Raw Story she doesn’t know who sent the messages to users telling them their personal data had been “forwarded to the authorities, including FBI, HSI and ICE.”

Under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, it is illegal to access computers without authorization, but prosecutors have wide discretion in determining what cases to take on.

Pound didn’t respond to a question about why she posted on X that information about the security vulnerability was “turned over” to Homeland Security Investigations and to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency under the Department of Homeland Security that is not known to have a role in protecting private citizens’ data.

President Donald Trump claimed during his recent “60 Minutes” interview, based on the federal indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center on fraud and money laundering charges, that the violent 2017 Unite the Right rally was “a total fake” funded by the extremist watchdog group “to make me look bad.”

The actual facts have stood in plain sight for years: An unwieldy coalition of violent neo-Nazis organized online and converged in Charlottesville, Va. in August 2017, first as a torch-wielding mob that kicked and punched student counterprotesters on the campus of the University of Virginia, and then engaged in hours of street brawls the following day, culminating in a car-ramming attack that killed Heather Heyer and injured 30 other peaceful protesters.

Trump’s false narrative about Unite the Right was amplified by his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt in an April 26 X post sharing an article headlined “Charlottesville: The Deceit Underlying the Hoax” that argues, “The Unite the Right rally was organized and financed by the highly partisan, left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center.”

As a measure of the widespread acceptance Trump’s claim got among rank-and-file GOP lawmakers, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) repeated it on a recent podcast, stating that the SPLC “funded and organized” Unite the Right.

The narrative promoted by Trump rests on a threadbare claim in the indictment alleging that the SPLC secretly made payments of more than $270,000 over the course of eight years to an informant identified as “F-37,” who “was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event.” The indictment goes on to say that the informant “made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.”

Following the indictment, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that “there’s no information we have that the money they were paying to these informants and these members of these organizations, they then turned around and shared what they learned with law enforcement.”

Lawyers for the SPLC filed a motion in federal court last week claiming that Blanche’s statement is false and demanding a retraction. The government responded on Tuesday, saying that no retraction is needed because Blanche said in another Fox News interview: “It is true that over the years they have selectively shared information with law enforcement. That’s well documented and there’s no dispute there. They aren’t charged with any of that conduct.”

The SPLC also rebuked Trump’s statement to “60 Minutes.”

“These repeated, false, and prejudicial remarks by the administration’s most senior officials not only violate Justice Department norms and long-held principles of federal prosecution, but they illustrate, among other things, the stunning and blatant irregularity, politicization, and manifest risk of prosecutorial misconduct in this case,” the lawyers said in a related motion.

Supporting its claim that Blanche spoke falsely when he said the watchdog group did not share information from its informant program with law enforcement, the SPLC cites a 45-page “Event Alert” that compiled information from its informant program to warn about “the risk of violence at Charlottesville.”

The SPLC said that prior to the indictment, its lawyers met with prosecutors in Montgomery, Alabama, and presented information showing that information gathered through the informant program was shared with law enforcement. The motion says the materials included “copies of federal court pleadings” related to the government’s prosecution of a neo-Nazi who attended Unite the Right “based on the conduct the SPLC reported.” The defendant, Fred C. Arena, ultimately pleaded guilty to lying to FBI when he was confronted about hiding his membership in the white supremacist group Vanguard America in his application for security clearance to work as a contractor at Philadelphia Navy Yard.

According to the government, Arena made a social media post with a photograph of himself brandishing an AR-15 rifle, with the comment, “Coming to a synagogue near you.”

The SPLC also contends that it passed along information from the informant program to law enforcement about Conor Climo, an Atomwaffen member, who discussed his interest in setting fire to a Las Vegas synagogue and admitted to conducting surveillance on an LGBTQ+ bar. Climo wound up admitting to possession of bomb-making components.

The “Event Alert” prepared by the SPLC "warned the FBI of the specific individuals” expected to attend Unite the Right “and foment violence, providing not only names and pictures, but specific details about associates, backgrounds, and criminal histories,” the organization said. The document also included “details about those individuals’ weapons of choice based on intelligence gathered through the informant program.”

SPLC did not respond to a request from Raw Story to review the “Event Alert,” but the reference to individuals’ favored weapons aligns with the content of posts in the planning chats for Unite the Right that were obtained by an anonymous antifascist infiltrator who is not known to have worked with the SPLC.

One Discord post slightly less than a month before Unite the Right by a Discord user later identified as Michael Chesny, an active-duty Marine, featured a photo of a combine harvester labeled as a “multi-lane protester digestor.” Chesny wrote that it “sure would be nice” to use the machine in Charlottesville.

The planning chats for Unite the Right were set up on the gaming platform Discord, with different dedicated servers for the various neo-Nazi groups that mobilized for the rally. Jason Kessler, the lead organizer for Unite the Right, publicly discounted the notion that the SPLC informant was a significant figure in the white supremacist movement.

“The leadership discussion is not full of all these big names that people are throwing around,” he said. “It was just, ‘Hey, who wants to help out with this?’ It was as organized as if you were organizing a keg party at a college fraternity.”

The antifascist infiltrator provided screenshots of the Discord chats to Emily Gorcenski, a data scientist and antifascist activist in Charlottesville, according to the 2026 book To Catch a Fascist by Christopher Mathias. Armed with the evidence of the white supremacists’ plans to commit violence, Gorcenski and other local activists pleaded with Charlottesville City Council to revoke the permit for Unite the Right. The city council refused, and Mayor Mike Signer eventually wound up apologizing to Gorcenski, according to Mathias’ book.

Assuming the SPLC informant had access to the same posts on the multiple Discord servers as the antifascist infiltrator and that the FBI received the “Event Alert” as claimed by the SPLC’s lawyers, the agency would have likely had access to much of the same information as the antifascist activists in Charlottesville.

The FBI declined to comment in response to an inquiry from Raw Story seeking confirmation that the agency received the “Event Alert” and seeking an explanation of what, if any, actions the agency took in response to the information.

A database of leaked chats organized and published by the news outlet Unicorn Riot later served as an evidentiary floor for a civil lawsuit that resulted in a jury verdict finding two dozen organizers, promoters and foot soldiers of Unite the Right liable for a conspiracy to commit violence and intimidation with multi-million damages awarded to the victims.

Amy Spitalnick, who led the nonprofit that organized the Charlottesville lawsuit, decried the government’s prosecution of the SPLC in a statement in response to the indictment.

“SPLC is a valued partner whose work has directly made our communities safer,” said Spitalnick, now CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “I saw this firsthand leading the successful lawsuit against the neo-Nazis responsible for violence in Charlottesville — which built on SPLC’s long legacy. SPLC’s work is even more essential now as this administration severely scales back or abandons the programs we rely on to stop violent white supremacists and other extremists.”

The evidence presented in the trial stands in stark contrast to Trump’s characterization on “60 Minutes” that Unite the Right was “a total fake” engineered by the SPLC in concert with Democrats and other adversaries to make him “look bad.”

Karen Dunn, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, confronted Kessler on Day 16 of the trial with statements he made in the Discord chats that he wanted Unite the Right to replicate a far-right rally in Berkeley, California, in April 2017 that devolved into violent clashes in the streets.

“I think we need to have a Battle of Berkeley situation in Charlottesville,” Kessler wrote. “Bring in the alt-right, Proud Boys, Stickman, Damigo, Spencer, and fight this s--- out.”

Four members of the white supremacist group Rise Above Movement who ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiracy to riot for their actions in Charlottesville had previously clashed with counter-protesters at the Berkeley rally, according to an affidavit filed by an FBI task force officer.

Dunn also pointed out a phone text Kessler sent in June 2017 to Richard Spencer, then one of the most renowned white supremacist celebrities who came to prominence on the coattails of Trump’s 2016 election, to offer him the headline speaker slot at Unite the Right.

“We’re raising an army, my liege, for free speech, but the cracking of skulls if it comes to it,” Kessler told Spencer.

Before that, in late May, following a torch rally at the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville that served as a kind of dress rehearsal for Unite the Right, Kessler admitted in court that he had reached out to Matthew Heimbach, leader of the Traditionalist Worker Party.

During closing arguments, Roberta Kaplan, another lawyer for the plaintiffs, told the jury that once Heimbach agreed to participate, he brought in three other groups that were part of a hardline neo-Nazi coalition: League of the South, National Socialist Movement and Vanguard America.

The White House responded to questions from Raw Story about how they square Trump and Leavitt's comments with the documented facts about how Unite the Right was organized by doubling down on their assertions.

"The SPLC is a left-wing organization whose entire career is to profit off of smearing their political opponents with lies like [they] did with the infamous 'Charlottesville Hoax' against President Trump," White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said. "It's not surprising that the failing 'Raw Story' would defend the SPLC after they were indicted for fraud related to their efforts to supposedly 'fight extremism,' but instead they were actively funding the very extremism they claim to oppose."

Traditionalist Worker Party, League of the South, National Socialist Movement, Vanguard America, the Spencer-aligned group Identity Evropa, an arm of the Proud Boys, Rise Above Movement and other groups mobilized members to attend Unite the Right.

Vanguard America’s contingent included Fred Arena, the military contractor later convicted for lying to the FBI about his involvement with the group.

Also marching with Vanguard America and carrying one of its shields was James Alex Fields Jr., who plowed his Dodge Challenger into a peaceful protest march, killing a young legal assistant named Heather Heyer and injuring 30 others.

Fields was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder on state charges, and later pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges.

When Fields was sentenced to life in prison in June 2019, Thomas T. Cullen, then the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia and now a federal judge, called his car attack “a hate-inspired act of domestic terrorism.”

In 2019, Kathy Zhu had her title of Miss Michigan beauty queen taken from her due to offensive tweets deemed by many to be racist and Islamophobic. Almost seven years later, she’s handling digital media for the Michigan House Republicans.

Zhu has been employed as digital strategist director for the Republican Central Staff at the Michigan House of Representatives under Speaker Matt Hall since August 2025. The fact that Zhu has held the job without any public outcry might be an indicator of how thoroughly the far right has infiltrated the Michigan GOP.

“It’s very feasible that she might not feel pressure to disavow the views that she had,” Ben Lorber, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, told Raw Story. “It might help her brand to be able to say to the Michigan GOP that she’s able to tap into edgy, young, right-wing culture.”

Zhu’s rehabilitation from disgraced beauty queen to Republican state legislative aide offers an example of a Generation Z conservative who responded to public censure by doubling down on extremism, while finding acceptance from the GOP establishment.

Then the president of the College Republicans at the University of Michigan, where she was studying political science, and an avid supporter of President Donald Trump, Zhu was forced to relinquish the title of Miss Michigan after the Miss World America organization deemed her anti-Black and anti-Muslim tweets to violate its rules on “good character.”

The tweets that Miss World America flagged as “offensive, insensitive and inappropriate” included one calling on Black Lives Matter activists to address crime within the Black community before protesting police violence, and another accusing Muslim students celebrating World Hijab Day of “trying to get women used to being oppressed under Islam.”

Other tweets from Zhu’s now-suspended account, which have been archived, are even more provocative.

Zhu described Adolf Hitler as “very smart and a good public speaker” in a 2017 tweet that appears to be framed as a rhetorical parry against criticism leveled at Trump for praising North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as a “tough cookie” and a “smart guy.”

In another tweet that appears to argue against equating white supremacist violence with Islamic extremism, Zhu posted: “KKK DOESN’T BLOW UP ARENAS AND SHOUT IN THE NAME OF JESUS.” The Ku Klux Klan’s history since its founding is replete with acts of terrorism, intimidation and murder, including the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, resulting in the deaths of four Black girls. Klan members have historically cloaked their violence in Christian rhetoric.

Rather than apologize in the aftermath of the Miss Michigan controversy, Zhu went on a media tour, telling CNN in one interview, “I stand behind every tweet that I post.”

Zhu’s appearance on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” got the attention of Trump, who singled her out at Turning Point USA’s Teen Student Action Summit in Washington, DC.

“What they did to this young lady was terrible,” Trump said, adding that it “was pretty cool” that she had worn a “Make America Great Again” hat on “Fox and Friends.”

With her newfound notoriety following the controversy, Zhu networked with an array of influencers to the right of the mainstream MAGA movement and Turning Point USA, the pro-Trump group led by the late Charlie Kirk.

Zhu reportedly attended a dinner in September 2019 with Nick Fuentes and other far-right luminaries described by People for the American Way as “white nationalist and anti-Semitic content creators.” Turning Point USA severed ties with one of its brand ambassadors who attended the dinner, while denouncing white nationalism as “abhorrent and un-American.”

At the time, Fuentes, a rising influencer with a history of questioning the Holocaust and praising Hitler, was dispatching his followers to Turning Point USA events to heckle speakers and pose questions intended to embarrass them over their support for Israel in a campaign known as the “Groyper wars.”

At the time of the September 2019 dinner with Zhu, Fuentes had recently attacked a conservative commentator for condemning a mass murder carried out by a white supremacist targeting Latinos at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Fuentes, during a livestream that was apparently cut from his podcast, reportedly called Matt Walsh a “shabbos goy race traitor” who worked for Jews. Walsh was employed by the Daily Caller, owned by Ben Shapiro.

Fuentes has said that he and Zhu were in contact during the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and that he later saw her in Orlando, Florida. Fuentes' comments don’t explain the circumstances of the meeting, but his group, America First Political Action Committee, hosted conferences in Orlando in February 2021 and February 2022.

It’s unclear whether Zhu and Fuentes have remained in contact.

While working as a scheduler and director of operations for Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) from 2022 to 2025, Zhu maintained a relatively low profile and stayed out of the headlines. In a 2025 LinkedIn post, Zhu said she had earned a master of arts in global security studies from Johns Hopkins University and was undergoing “spiritual transformation” as a convert to Catholicism.

Zhu could not be reached for this story. While she has not publicly renounced any of the views expressed in her past social media posts, it’s unclear whether she still holds them. It’s also unclear whether she views herself as being aligned with Fuentes and his Groyper movement.

Regardless, the views of someone like Fuentes, who dined with Trump in 2022, are no longer out of line in the Republican Party. By early 2024, Kirk, formerly the standard-bearer of youth conservatism in the Trump era and the one-time target of Fuentes’ attacks, had voiced white nationalist talking points. Conservative writer Rod Dreher reported last November that a D.C. insider estimated that "between 30 and 40 percent of of the Zoomers who work in official Washington are fans of Nick Fuentes."

“I can say since 2019 the spectrum of respectable, young, conservative opinion has gotten closer to Nick Fuentes,” Lorber said. “For someone like [Zhu], a past association with Nick Fuentes is really not much of a deal-breaker in the way it might have once been.”

The office of Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall did not respond to messages from Raw Story inquiring whether he was aware of Zhu’s history of losing her Miss Michigan title for her controversial social media posts at the time she was hired for the job of digital strategist director.

Hall, whose party took control of the Michigan House in January 2025, has not shied from controversy. In Trumpy fashion, he reportedly attacked a Democratic colleague by calling her “a very low IQ representative” and “probably one of the dumbest ones in the legislature” during a weekly press conference last year.

Hall held on to his leadership position over the objections of at least one of his Republican colleagues after the Daily Beast reported that he was accused of domestic violence against his girlfriend and interfering with a 911 call in 2019, but was never charged.

Hall has also acknowledged sending an email threatening to kill a college student in 2001, although he told the police he did not actually have any intent to harm the recipient. Hall reportedly wrote in the email, “We are going to impose our Southern ways on you! I’ve got a shotgun rifle and I just put a bullet in it with your name on it!”

Since 2019, views once considered taboo, such as the idea that America should be a Christian nation and that white people are being replaced, have become widely accepted in the Republican Party.

“She may very well be encouraging Michigan politicians to adopt some of that edgy, right-wing culture to connect with young conservatives,” Lorber said. “It might even be a benefit for her to say that she’s been an influencer. It really doesn’t matter if she’s secretly a Groyper, or has no connection to those views. There’s such a wide acceptance of the views that used to be considered beyond the pale that she can fit comfortably in the young GOP.”

MORRISVILLE, N.C. — When the Department of Homeland Security surged federal agents into North Carolina last November, they pledged to “target criminal aliens” and go after “the worst of the worst — including murderers, rapists, and pedophiles.”

But in one case reviewed by Raw Story, federal immigration authorities received a tip about a 24-year-old Guatemalan national suspected of involvement in the kidnapping and rape of a 16-year-old girl — and they repeatedly missed the opportunity to detain him, despite him being in police custody.

Federal immigration authorities appear to have learned about Maynor Godinez-Mendez when a detective with the Fuquay-Varina Police Department contacted the FBI’s Human Trafficking Division. When Godinez-Mendez was interviewed following his arrest on suspicion of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a federal Homeland Security Investigations agent was present and translated.

Even after Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, received a notification from a detention officer that he was in a local jail, they still failed to take Godinez-Mendez into custody, and he was released on his own recognizance four hours later.

The day after Godinez-Mendez’s release from jail, the Department of Homeland Security announced “Operation Charlotte’s Web.” Border Patrol “stormed” North Carolina’s largest city “in unmarked SUVs and masks, sweeping up hundreds of people,” as described in the Charlotte Observer. In the midst of the five-day blitz, the operation briefly expanded into the booming area about 150 miles to the northeast surrounding the state capitol of Raleigh, which includes Fuquay-Varina.

Chafed by the agency’s fumbled response involving Godinez-Mendez, an ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations supervisor tasked a team with apprehending the suspect. But based on faulty intelligence, ICE staked out the wrong house.

During an arrest operation on Dec. 2, 2025, agents in unmarked SUVs converged on a different man and blocked him at the entrance of a shopping center in Morrisville. When the man tried to back up and drive away, an agent rammed his car through a hedgerow, spun the vehicle around, and pushed it into a parked car.

The driver was not Godinez-Mendez, but rather another Guatemalan. His name was Milton Roblero.

When the agents took Roblero into custody, they determined that he had an outstanding order for deportation. Federal prosecutors charged him with forcibly assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon and willfully damaging government property.

Roblero’s lawyer filed a motion to dismiss, while questioning whether the agent who rammed his vehicle “violated ICE’s own policy and regulations restricting offensive driving techniques.” The shopping center includes a daycare, and the motion contends that ICE policy prohibits using offensive driving techniques “in school zones where children are present or going to or from school or where the danger to the public outweighs the enforcement benefit.”

Surveillance video shows ICE ramming Milton Roblero's vehicle during his arrest in Morrisville, N.C. on Dec. 2, 2025. (federal courts) roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms

The government did not directly address the question of whether ICE violated its policies, only saying in a court filing that the agents’ use of a vehicle for an administrative arrest was “appropriate.” But a filing in federal court on Monday indicates the government agreed to plead down the charges to a misdemeanor for impeding federal immigration officers’ traffic interdiction efforts. The agreement notes that Roblero will be removed to Guatemala following resolution of federal charges.

Andreina Malki, the defense manager for the immigrant advocacy group Siembra NC, told Raw Story Roblero’s arrest fits a pattern of unsafe activity by ICE.

“They used unmarked vehicles that don’t have any indication that they might be ICE,” she said. “If you’re a person driving, and unmarked cars try to block you in, you would probably try to leave. The fact that he got rammed and then got a charge for using his vehicle as a weapon — the story doesn’t add up. It’s not clear to the people being stopped who’s stopping them.”

Lindsay Williams, an ICE spokesperson, told Raw Story he couldn’t speak to the specifics of Roblero’s arrest.

A missing person case leads to a call to the FBI’s Human Trafficking Division

The circumstances that led to Roblero’s arrest began three weeks earlier with a missing person case that developed into a kidnapping and rape investigation.

Police in Fuquay-Varina, a town on the southwestern fringe of Raleigh, received a frantic phone call from a woman who reported that her 16-year-old daughter was missing (Raw Story is withholding the girl’s name because she is a juvenile). According to the police investigative report obtained through federal court filings, the daughter had texted: “Mommy and Daddy, I’m sorry for doing this to you, and well, I’m not coming home. I love you all very much.” The mother’s calls went straight to voicemail.

After interviewing the girl’s younger cousins, the police were able to get the name of a former boyfriend, then a residential address, and ultimately a description of a vehicle registered to the address. Using a law enforcement database, the police determined that the vehicle, a 2012 Hyundai Accent, had been repeatedly observed at an apartment complex in Cary, a nearby city.

Two Fuquay-Varina police officers went to the apartment complex the day after the 16-year-old girl had disappeared. As the officers were speaking with two females, the 16-year-old girl walked out of the apartment. She told the officers that the owner of the Hyundai was “Maynor,” and that he was in the car with another man named “William” when they picked her up.

Initially, the 16-year-old girl told the police that she had run away because of problems at home, and that nothing happened to her at the apartment. She said she had only watched TV and slept.

But on Nov. 13, two days after the 16-year-old girl was returned to her family, she told Cpl. Cassaundra Sullivan that William Godinez-Ramirez had called her and told her to go to an Indian grocery store. When she got into the car, according to Sullivan’s notes, Godinez-Ramirez told the 16-year-old girl to throw her phone out the window. She refused, and Godinez-Ramirez reportedly got out of the car, opened her door, grabbed the phone and threw it away. The girl told the officer that another man, Maynor Godinez-Mendez, and his wife were also in the car. They drove to a car wash, switched cars, and drove on to the apartment in Cary.

Summarizing what Sullivan learned from her interview, Detective Salvatore Fundaro wrote that the 16-year-old girl “reported that Godinez-Ramirez raped her” and “also reported that Godinez-Ramirez told her that he was going to kill her family if she didn’t leave with him.”

Fundaro consulted with the Wake County District Attorney’s Office, and he said he was advised to keep investigating before charging with rape and kidnapping, but he swore out warrants for contributing to the delinquency of a minor for both Godinez-Ramirez and Godinez-Mendez.

The federal authorities appear to have learned about the investigation of the two men on Nov. 12. That day, Fundaro wrote, he contacted the FBI’s Human Trafficking Division for assistance with the case. What raised his suspicions was that the 16-year-old girl had told her parents that she was going to a job, but her employer told the detective she hadn’t shown up for work for the past three months.

On the same day, a federal immigration officer signed a Department of Homeland Security administrative arrest warrant for Godinez-Mendez.

Accompanied by the Homeland Security Investigations agent, Fundaro interviewed Godinez-Mendez at the Morrisville Police Department. Godinez-Mendez “could not offer a logical reason as to why they switched vehicles,” Fundaro wrote. The detective asked if the reason was “because they knew they had committed a crime and wanted to avoid apprehension,” but Godinez-Mendez denied that.

Susan Weis, a spokesperson for the town of Fuquay-Varina said she was unable to comment because the case remains under investigation. The town also cannot “comment on another agency’s procedures,” she said.

Godinez-Mendez wound up spending six hours in the Wake County Detention Center, but ICE did not respond to a detainer inquiry from the jail or take the opportunity to place him in custody.

“Immigration warrants take a back seat to criminal charges,” Williams, the ICE spokesman, told Raw Story. “If he was arrested for something serious, we would let that process play out.”

Williams’ statement appears to be at odds with the bellicose language in the DHS press release, issued the day after Godinez-Mendez’s release, that takes aim at “criminal aliens” and “sanctuary politicians.”

“Americans should be able to live without fear of violent criminal illegal aliens hurting them, their families, or their neighbors,” then-Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. “We are surging law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed. There have been too many victims of criminal illegal aliens. President Trump and [former] Secretary [Kristi] Noem will step up to protect Americans when sanctuary politicians won’t.”

Only slightly more than half the people detained by federal immigration agents during “Operation Charlotte’s Web” had a criminal record, according to data recently released by the Deportation Data Project.

Asked to reconcile the seeming contradiction between the administration’s rhetoric about targeting the most serious criminals and the imperative to let charges play out in state courts, Williams said: “We’re going to deport him, whether it’s now or seven years from now. We ideally want folks to be held accountable for their crimes. The deportation order doesn’t expire. The system will take effect.”

‘I want to get hands on him’

The morning of Godinez-Mendez’s release from the Wake County Detention Center, an immigration agent identified in emails obtained by Raw Story by the initials “CD” forwarded the detainer inquiry to an ICE supervisor.

“Here is the lead you forwarded to us but not in custody,” the agent wrote.

The supervisor, identified only by the initials “SC,” forwarded the message to another agent.

“Biometrics did not hit as expected,” the supervisor wrote. “I wish we had a heads up. Magistrate bonded him out last night. He was there for 6 hours. They only charged him with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

“I want to get hands on him,” the message continued. “What can you provide to assist? His booking record has an address in Morrisville. Work location? Vehicle info?”

An email shows an ICE supervisor expressing disappointment that they did not take Maynor Godinez-Mendez into custody before he was released from the Wake County Detention Center on Nov. 14, 2025.Federal courts

On Nov 29, an ICE agent conducted surveillance on the house in Morrisville, observing through binoculars from a distance of 200 yards away. The agent watched an individual identified as “Target 1” leave the house and drive away in a red Honda Civic, and also leave the house and get into a white truck. It’s unclear who the agent actually saw.

After the ICE agent witnessed a man leave the house and drive away in a red Honda Civic on Dec. 2, he radioed the arrest team — eight agents, including three on loan from Homeland Security Investigations. Given Godinez-Mendez’s “pattern of life,” the agents anticipated that he would drive to the nearby shopping center.

But the man they arrested was not Godinez-Mendez.

ICE ageents rammed Milton Roblero's red Honda through a hedgerow and spun it around before arresting him in Morrisville, N.C. on Dec. 2, 2025.Federal courts

None of the federal court documents or local police investigative reports reviewed by Raw Story implicate Milton Roblero, the man arrested by ICE on Dec. 2, in the kidnapping and rape investigation

About three weeks later, the real suspect was arrested on state criminal charges of felony conspiracy and felonious restraint. On the same day he was booked, for the second time, in the Wake County Detention Center, a magistrate issued a 48-hour hold to allow ICE to take him into custody.

ICE did not respond. On Dec. 28, he was released on a $25,000 bond.

Following his indictment in February, Godinez-Mendez was finally deported by Homeland Security Investigations, Melanie Shekita, a Wake County prosecutor, told Raw Story.

Markwayne Mullin, the new head of Homeland Security, arranged for a group promoting a debunked claim about election software linked to Venezuela being used to manipulate U.S. votes to meet with the Trump campaign three weeks before the 2024 election, Raw Story has learned.

Martin Rodil, a Washington, D.C. area consultant, briefed Susie Wiles — then co-campaign manager and now chief of staff to President Donald Trump — at Mar-a-Lago in October 2024. Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock.com CEO, has said Mullin, then a U.S. senator, arranged that meeting.

Claims about election software supposedly controlled by Venezuelan leadership occupied a prominent place in failed lawsuits brought by lawyer Sidney Powell seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden. Now, in the wake of the U.S. military strike against Venezuela and Republicans facing political headwinds in the upcoming midterm elections, Trump allies with the ear of the administration have begun to revive the claims.

Byrne hailed the appointment of Mullin to lead DHS “as a fantastic decision by President Trump” in an X post earlier this month. He went on to say that Mullin “got my partner into” Mar-a-Lago in October 2024, and that his associate “spent three days briefing the team there on elections, Venezuela, and what had to be done November 5.”

Byrne confirmed to Raw Story that his “partner” was Rodil.

Byrne was out of the country at the time, and did not attend the meeting, but he described himself as part of a “three-man team,” along with Rodil and Gary Berntsen, a retired CIA senior operations officer, that assembled a package of information to present to the Trump campaign and Elon Musk. Berntsen, in turn, described Rodil in an interview with far-right podcaster Lara Logan as his “business partner,” adding that Byrne “bankrolled” a group of “Venezuelan whistleblowers” that he and Rodil assembled.

An email to the White House Press Office seeking comment from Wiles for this story went unreturned.

During his interview with Logan, which was published in November 2025 before the U.S. military attacked Venezuela and seized its president, Nicolás Maduro, Berntsen claimed that the electronic election systems company Smartmatic, through the sale of a subsidiary to rival Dominion Voting Systems, gained “control” of more than 20 percent of the U.S. market, “primarily the swing states for electing president of the United States.” He went on to claim that Smartmatic has “two missions: number one, steal elections, and, number two, defeat audit.”

The group claimed Smartmatic had originally been created in Venezuela to fix elections, and was controlled by Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

In a separate interview with Logan in January, Rodil claimed that Cuba, China, Russia and Iran have been manipulating U.S. elections through Venezuela-controlled election software.

"And they install their own software — the Venezuelan narco-software in that company," Rodil said. "So, for many years in the U.S., the American people have been voting on a software built on a cartel of drugs."

A judge in Delaware ruled in September 2024 that those claims are false, writing that “statements regarding Smartmatic software or voting machines altering the results” of the 2020 election “are factually false” in a defamation lawsuit brought by the election technology company against the far-right network Newsmax.

It is unclear whether Berntsen was present for the meeting with Wiles and Rodil, but in his interview with Logan, he described a presentation that matches the Mar-a-Lago meeting.

“A month before the election, we showed it to the Trump people,” he said. “We went to them and gave them the brief. They looked at it in horror. And they had real concerns.”

Berntsen and Byrne have said Trump himself is aware of their claims, and their assertion is backed up by a TruthSocial post in which the president amplified Logan’s interview with Berntsen.

“We must focus all our energy and might on ELECTION FRAUD!!” Trump wrote, while sharing a link to the video of Berntsen’s interview.

Mullin opened to the doors at Mar-a-Lago to election deniers

Both Byrne and Berntsen said Mullin helped open doors for them at Mar-a-Lago.

Byrne told Raw Story that prior to the Mar-a-Lago meeting, the team approached members of the House Freedom Caucus, including Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), before the 2024 election, but those members deemed the information to be “too radioactive.” In contrast, Byrne said, Mullin was willing to help.

“That guy saved America because he was the one that got my partners into Mar-a-Lago,” Byrne said.

Berntsen similarly praised Mullin as “one politician in America” who “was not afraid.”

Mullin could not be reached for comment for this story, and an email to the Department of Homeland Security went unreturned.

But in an interview with far-right podcaster Benny Johnson in December, Mullin signaled that he was open to considering unfounded claims that Venezuela could perpetrate fraud in American elections.

“Venezuela has been a hub for this,” Mullin told Johnson. “There’s a relationship between China and Russia that’s also involved in this. And we know they have been trying to get involved in our elections…. We also allowed those investors to be part of some of the stuff we thought was unpenetrable, which had been some of our election cycles and our election machines and the way we look at to it.” [sic]

Mullin has a history of election denial. As a House representative, Mullin voted against certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. When asked during his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this month who won the election, Mullin would only say, “We know that President Joe Biden was sworn into office.”

Concerns that Trump could deploy ICE to polling places

As secretary of Homeland Security, Mullin now oversees the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, which, among other roles, is responsible for working with state and local governments and the private sector “to manage risks to the nation’s election infrastructure.”

Homeland Security also includes Immigration & Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, two agencies that have undergone a transformation into paramilitary forces that have racially profiled immigrants while violently arresting and even killing immigrants and civilian bystanders during campaign in Democratic-governed cities that many residents have viewed as an “occupation.” During his confirmation hearing, Mullin said he would consider deploying federal officers to polling locations “if there was specific threat.”

Steve Bannon, former White House strategist and a close ally of the president, said on his podcast last week that the recent deployment of ICE agents to U.S. airports could serve as “a test run, a test case to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections.”

Meanwhile, Trump said during an appearance on the podcast of former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino last month that Republicans should “take over the voting” in at least 15 states and “nationalize” elections. Preceding his call to action, the president complained that “these people were brought to our country, and they vote illegally.” (There is no evidence of widespread systemic voter fraud by immigrants or anyone else.)

Election deniers have long embraced theories about foreign interference in U.S. elections as a trigger for justifying the president to issue emergency orders on national security grounds.

The 2024 meeting at Mar-a-Lago is not the first time Byrne has been involved in a group effort to bring extraordinary claims about election fraud to Trump’s inner circle — and call on the president to seize control of elections.

In December 2020, Byrne, Powell and retired Lt. General Michael Flynn showed up at the Oval Office and claimed that Venezuela had meddled in the 2020 election, while recommending that Trump seize voting machinery in key counties or deploy the National Guard to re-run the election.

Trump did not take the advice to seize voting machinery and re-run the election at that time. Instead, a couple hours later, the president sent out a tweet summoning his supporters to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, adding, "Be there, will be wild!"

Last week, speaking as a guest host of “InfoWars” — the show hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has been ordered to pay a $1.4 billion defamation judgment to the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims — Byrne again urged Trump to interfere in an election that will determine the balance of power in the country.

“He’s got to do it — he can’t do it through the legislature and the [Department of Justice],” Byrne said. “He’s got to use his war powers, national security powers, Department of War, or use the National Guard and run a simple, old-fashioned election like we teach Burma how to do it. At the end of the day, he can do everything — and he needs to — as a national emergency.”

Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex trafficker, attempted to arrange a meeting between Steve Bannon, the right-wing strategist who helped bring Donald Trump to power, and leaders of the MeToo-inspired group Time’s Up, Raw Story has learned.

Phone texts exchanged between Epstein and Bannon in March 2018 show Epstein telling Bannon that an intermediary, Joichi “Joi” Ito — then the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab — had agreed to set up the meeting.

“Joi will organize a meeting with the powers behind Time’s up,” Epstein told Bannon on March 26, 2018, according to the text, which was included in the massive trove of files released by the U.S. Justice Department in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Text from Jeffrey Epstein to Steve Bannon discussing plans for a meeting between Bannon and the leadership of Time's Up.U.S. Department of Justice

Time’s Up launched in January 2018 by 300 prominent women in the entertainment industry to raise awareness about sexual misconduct and push for gender parity in Hollywood, in the wake of revelations about movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s pattern of rape and harassment.

Bannon, who had served as chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign and as White House strategist, represented an opposing current in the shifting cultural tides of the first Trump administration.

Before joining the Trump campaign, Bannon had led Breitbart News. Under Bannon’s watch, the outlet promoted Gamergate, a digital mob that harassed women in the video-game industry while giving expression to a right-wing backlash against feminism and racial diversity that would become a potent political force. Known as the “alt-right” at the time, the movement helped propel Trump to power.

The effort to broker a meeting between Bannon and the Time’s Up leadership — two entities at seemingly opposing poles — has not been previously reported.

Epstein added in parentheses after the text to Bannon about the proposed meeting that “they prefer academic setting for cover,” suggesting that he had at least discussed the idea with someone at Time’s Up.

The texts do not identify Epstein’s contact at the organization. But two years earlier, Michelle Kydd, who would go on to become a founding member of Time’s Up, had recommended two public relations professionals to Epstein, as first reported by Page Six Hollywood.

At the time of Kydd’s 2016 email, Epstein had pleaded guilty to child prostitution and had served jail time.

Ito initially put Kydd, a member of his advisory council at MIT Media Lab, in touch with Epstein in 2014. Ito described Kydd, who is the chief innovation officer at Creative Artists Agency, to Epstein as “sort of the ‘mother’ of Hollywood,” who “famous people under the protection of CAA go to when they get in trouble.”

A request for comment left by Raw Story for Kydd at Creative Artists Agency went unreturned.

The texts exchanged between Epstein and Bannon in 2018 show that Bannon was interested in meeting with the Time’s Up leaders.

Three days after initially broaching the idea of a meeting, Epstein raised the topic again.

“We should probably figure out your first meeting with the Time’s Up powers,” Epstein texted. “Academic setting to give them cover. Probably MIT.”

“Yes,” Bannon replied.

“Joi agreed,” Epstein said.

“Wow,” Bannon responded.

Texts exchanged between Jeffrey Epstein and Steve Bannon discussing plans for a meeting with Time's Up.U.S. Department of Justice

It is unclear whether the meeting between Bannon and Time’s Up ever took place, but emails show that Epstein and Ito had planned to meet in Cambridge, Mass. on March 25 — the day before Epstein suggested the idea to Bannon — and that Epstein and Ito had attempted to schedule a phone call two days before that.

Bannon also spent the day with Epstein in Cambridge on March 25, although it’s unclear whether Bannon and Ito met directly.

“I have all day Sunday. Harvard MIT, [former Harvard President] Larry Summers etc.,” Epstein texted Bannon on March 23. “You are always welcome to join.”

“Pulling up,” Bannon wrote to Epstein on March 25 at 12:09 p.m.

The next day Bannon texted Epstein: “Thanks for yesterday — really terrific day.”

Ito could not be reached for comment.

Ito resigned from his position at MIT following Epstein’s 2019 arrest. He later received appointment as president of the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan.

Following the latest round of revelations about Ito’s association with Epstein following the recent release of files by the U.S. Justice Department, Ito announced he was stepping away from a Japanese government technology initiative known as the Global Startup Campus Initiative.

A statement from the Chiba Institute of Technology said Ito “reaffirmed he was never aware of the existence of any illegal or improper conduct” with regard to Epstein, “and has never been involved in any illegal or improper conduct.”

Raw Story was not able to reach Bannon for comment. But the right-wing nationalist avatar’s interest in Time’s Up has been well-publicized.

At the time of the proposed meeting, Bannon had become estranged from Trump, having been fired from his position as White House strategist six months earlier. Shortly after leaving the Trump administration, Bannon backed Republican Roy Moore in the special election to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat in Alabama in the fall of 2017, even after accusations by several women that Moore had sexually assaulted them when they were girls caused his candidacy to implode.

In 2018 and 2019, Bannon embarked on a global campaign to promote a right-wing populist movement and far-right nationalist candidates, including Marine LePen in France, Mario Salvini in Italy and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.

In February 2018, Bannon publicly expressed admiration for Time’s Up, telling GQ that he had “never seen such potential power in something,” adding that he considered Time’s Up “a reaction to this populist movement, this nationalist movement.”

During an event in Zurich, Switzerland about a week later, Bannon reportedly praised Time’s Up as representing “an empowered grassroots on the left” that “focused on power dynamics in society and asks deep and searching questions that are going to have to be answered.”

Bannon contrasted Time’s Up with the nationalist movement that he had helped build in the United States and abroad, while predicting “these two forces are going to collide, and we’re going to see who wins and who loses.”

While Bannon characterized Time’s Up as “anti-patriarchy,” he had previously recognized the latent power of teenage gamers, whom he typified as “rootless white males” to biographer Joshua Green. Bannon described his appreciation for Milo Yiannopoulos, an editor who was forced to resign from Breitbart in 2017 following the revelation of comments that appeared to condone pedophilia.

“I realized Milo could connect with these [gamers] right away,” Bannon told Green. “You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump.”

Texts exchanged between Epstein and Bannon during the Senate Judiciary hearings to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in September 2018 reveal that while the two men may have publicly praised Time’s Up, their private views were far less favorable.

“Your Times Up movement strength,” Epstein texted to Bannon. “Prophetic in Kavanaugh.”

“Scary,” Bannon responded.

“Every guy can visualize himself sitting in that chair, being harangued by [Sen. Kamala] Harris, [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein] etc.,” Epstein continued. “Did you grab, grope. How many drinks. How often. Can you categorically deny it didn’t happen. Yikes.”

“The victim must be heard and must believed,” Bannon said.

A couple days later, Epstein told Bannon he believed Time’s Up was behind the scrutiny of Kavanaugh for alleged sexual misconduct, adding that “they want a woman on the court.”

Whatever benefit Bannon and Epstein may have seen in forging a relationship with Time’s Up, a scandal involving leaders of the organization maneuvering behind the scenes to protect one powerful man led to its eventual downfall.

Following revelations that Time’s Up CEO Tina Tchen discouraged public comments about sexual harassment allegations against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, and that Tchen and board chair Roberta Kaplan offered advice to Cuomo, the organization ceased operations in 2023.

A neo-Nazi who embraces terrorism has been ordered held in pre-trial detention as a danger to the community by a federal magistrate judge following his arrest for illegally possessing a firearm.

Mathew David Bair, a leader of the neo-Nazi accelerationist group Injekt Division, was arrested in Pennsylvania by the FBI last week.

A former Marine who was court-martialed out of the service for larceny and sale of classified materials, Bair joined the riot at the U.S. Capitol as a member of First Capitol Proud Boys, as Trump supporters attempted to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6.

From his time as a Proud Boy, Bair increasingly gravitated to a violent brand of white supremacist extremism. He told Raw Story in 2024 that “the fascist pipeline is very real,” and that he had been “in a direct pipeline chapter.”

Bair’s radicalization led him to Injekt Division, a neo-Nazi accelerationist group whose former leader was arrested in May 2021 for allegedly plotting to carry out a mass shooting at a Texas Walmart.

“I would say they’re very much in line with the Terrorgram milieu,” Hannah Gais, a senior researcher and journalist at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Raw Story. “I think obviously given their origin, they have clear ties to violence.”

Terrorgram Collective is a global network that has encouraged mass shootings, political assassinations and infrastructure attacks through online propaganda, which inspired a deadly school shooting spree in Brazil, a fatal mass shooting at an LGBTQ+ bar in Slovakia and a mass stabbing in Turkey, as well as assassination attempts and thwarted attacks on electrical substations. Dallas Humber, one of the group’s leaders, is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to soliciting hate crimes and murder.

In 2023, Bair posted a video depicting a flyer reading, “Shoot your local judge.” Asked about the flyer by Raw Story, Bair brought up an incident in which an extremist went to the home of U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas and fatally shot her son. Salas has frequently spoken out against threats directed at judges who cross President Trump over the past year.

Extremist researchers and antifascist activists have closely monitored Bair due, in part, to his provocative online presence. They include a Telegram message showing members posing in tactical gear and skull masks outside what appears to be a power plant while displaying firearms and their group flag.

Another Telegram message linked to Bair shows a ballistic vest, flags and pistols draped over a car seat accompanied by text indicating the author was traveling to Washington, DC on Jan. 24, 2025, a date that coincides with the March for Life. The annual event typically draws both far-right extremists and left-wing counterprotesters. Carrying firearms is prohibited in Washington, D.C., with a few exceptions that include law enforcement.

An indictment returned on March 4 alleges that Bair possessed an Aero Precision rifle and Ruger pistol while knowing that he had been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for more than a year. Bair pleaded not guilty following his arrest on March 11.

A magistrate judge in Harrisburg, Pa. ordered Bair to be held in pre-trial detention, partly on the basis that his release poses serious danger to a person or the community. The magistrate also cited Bair’s prior criminal history, prior parole violations, prior failures to appear in court, and the strength of evidence supporting the gun charge.

Dawn Clark, a public affairs officer with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, declined to comment in response to questions about why the government argued that Bair is a danger to a person or the community, or whether the government is concerned that Bair has attempted to intimidate judges.

Beatrice Diehl, an assistant federal public defender assigned to represent Bair, also declined to comment.

An undated photo of Mathew Bair from an Injekt Division Telegram chatVia Telegram

While becoming increasingly immersed in violent neo-Nazi activity, Bair remained committed to Trump. In July 2024, shortly after Trump accepted the nomination at the Republican National Convention, an Injekt Division Telegram channel linked to Bair posted video of a rally in Michigan in which neo-Nazis chanted, “We love Hitler, we love Trump.”

In late 2023, Bair joined 2119, a teenage neo-Nazi gang, after four of its members, ages 15 to 18, were arrested in Pensacola, Fla. for a hate-fueled vandalism spree that included brick attacks on two synagogues. 2-1-19 is an alphanumeric code that stands for Blood and Soil, with 2 representing B for “Blood,” 1 representing A for “And” and 19 representing “S.” for “Soil.” Blood and Soil is the English translation for Blut und Boden, a popular phrase during the Third Reich that suggests a mystical bond between a racialized ideal and the land of Germany.

The group previously went by the moniker Revolutionary White Brotherhood, or RWB.

Then 34, Bair was by far the oldest member of 2119, which was the focus of a February 2024 investigation by Raw Story. Bair posted a photo on the social media platform Telegram that showed his 4-year-old son posing next to 2119 graffiti.

In March 2024, the [2119] Sons of Pennsylvania Telegram channel, likely operated by Bair, posted a video of two men driving a pickup truck to the Pennsylvania State Police barracks in York, and depositing a brick inscribed with the letters R-W-B at the front door, declaring as they departed: “White f------ power.”

2119 went into decline following the Raw Story investigation. By mid-2014, the group had disbanded as its leader lowered his profile and members found themselves caught in the middle of intra-movement rivalries between larger white nationalist organizations. Injekt Division likely contributed to 2119’s demise by doxxing a leader of 2119’s California chapter after he admitted to “snitch[ing] on” another member.

Bair is not the only associate of 2119 who has faced arrest in recent months.

Aiden Cuevas, an Alabama neo-Nazi who enthusiastically promoted 2119, was indicted alongside Andrew Nary for conspiracy to traffic firearms after allegedly buying machine guns from an undercover FBI employee while planning to start a paramilitary and requesting training to “take out” so-called “high-value targets.

Cuevas and Nary both entered not guilty pleas before a federal magistrate judge in Huntsville, Ala. last week.

Last month, David William Fair, a probationary member of the racist skinhead group Vinlanders Social Club, was indicted in North Carolina for felony soliciting gang activity and contributing the delinquency of a minor.

Fair had administered a Telegram chat that Bair joined in 2023. That same year, following the Pensacola arrests, Fair counseled Cuevas in another Telegram chat that 2119 should exercise more discretion to avoid criminal prosecution.

The story previously stated that Bair and a second man deposited a brick outside the York Police Department. The story has been corrected to reflect that they deposited the brick outside a Pennsylvania State Police barracks in York.