Before the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville back in 2017, then-talk radio host Dave Reilly adopted the screen name "Davey Crockett" and dispensed advice to those who were to attend, according to a report from Investigate West.
Reilly was part of a private online group tasked with planning and promoting the white nationalist rally, according to a subsequent investigation. He warned others to avoid posting Nazi imagery to social media and called for attendees to march straight through the “commons with torches for the night rally,” because it would “give us the opportunity to take photos and videos and lots of good propaganda.”
Now, Reilly has landed a job in Idaho as a communications strategist for the conservative Idaho Freedom Foundation, which is described by Investigate West as "the most powerful political activist group in the state."
"But while few on the hard right in Idaho have been willing to publicly defend Reilly, few have been willing to explicitly condemn him either. Investigate West reached out to the 10 Idaho legislators most supported by the Freedom Foundation, and only one, Sen. Scott Herndon, responded — though he declined to comment on Reilly directly," Investigate West's report stated.
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Investigate West's investigation found that Reilly's influence spans far beyond the Freedom Foundation, offering his services to political advertising campaigns and digital media. But it's his affiliation with the libertarian-leaning free-market think tank that's causing concern.
“You’d think they could find someone who doesn’t have a trail of breadcrumbs that lead in the direction that Mr. Reilly’s do,” said Coeur d’Alene City Councilmember Dan Gookin, a prickly conservative critic of the Freedom Foundation. “It’s going to give a lot of ammo to the liberals who say, ‘They’re all racists anyway.’”
The Freedom Foundation's sizable influence is well known.
From Investigate West: "The Freedom Foundation’s so-called Freedom Index, which scores each legislator based on their voting record, is frequently held up as the arbiter of true conservatism in the redder parts of Idaho. In Idaho Falls, the Post Register reports that a local GOP legislative district committee had even been including failures to vote the way the Freedom Foundation recommends as grounds for triggering an investigation."
Freedom Foundation vice president Alli Megal told Investigate West that Reilly had been hired to do “some work for us for comms,” but she added that he was “just a contractor.” But as Investigate West points out, contractors have "often performed significant roles for the Freedom Foundation, including grading how bills score on the Freedom Index."
Read the full report at Investigate West.
