Picture Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Every day Beast / Anna Moneymaker / Getty
A key determine within the pro-Trump “Cease the Steal” marketing campaign has apologized after being accused of asking teenage boys for sexual footage.
Ali Alexander has turn out to be one of the crucial ubiquitous figures within the MAGA motion. Trump himself reportedly requested that Alexander converse at his rally earlier than the riot, together with his look solely quashed by a last-minute intervention from Trump’s aides. However this week, Alexander stands on the heart of a scandal that raises questions on how highly effective males within the far-right deal with their youthful acolytes.
“That is too homosexual,” Alexander stated in an announcement issued Friday night time that addressed the allegations in broad phrases.
Alexander, who has described himself as bisexual previously, added that he was “battling with same-sex attraction.”
The budding on-line scandal has additionally roiled the pro-Trump and white supremacist “America First” motion, simply months after it reached new ranges of notoriety after its chief, Nick Fuentes, dined with Donald Trump and rapper Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago. Now Fuentes is going through backlash from his personal supporters over whether or not he ignored warnings that Alexander, his pal and ally, was allegedly soliciting nude footage from younger males inside Fuentes’s motion.
On Friday night time, Alexander—who was questioned by the Home Jan. 6 Committee about his position organizing a canceled rally dubbed the “Wild Protest” exterior the Capitol, which drew crowds to the constructing proper earlier than the riot started—issued an announcement Friday providing a normal apology.
“I apologize for any inappropriate messages despatched through the years,” Alexander wrote, including later, “Once I’ve flirted or others have flirted with me, I’ve flexed my credentials or dropped corny choose up strains. Different instances, I’ve been careless and may’ve certified these coming as much as me’s (sic) identities throughout flirtatious banter in the beginning.”
Alexander didn’t reply to requests for remark from The Every day Beast. In his assertion, he claimed he had additionally been focused by false accusations and edited screenshots of his messages, however declined alternatives to level out which accusers or screenshots aren’t respectable.
Rumors about Alexander’s alleged sexual conduct in direction of youthful males have circulated in conservative on-line circles since not less than 2015. However they reached a brand new degree late final month after Milo Yiannopoulos —the controversial British provocateur and one-time Alexander ally—turned on Alexander after Alexander and Fuentes pushed him out of a doubtlessly profitable place in West’s nascent presidential marketing campaign.
Yiannopoulos began releasing video interviews and different proof meant to show that Alexander sexually propositioned each grownup males of their 20s and not less than two youngsters. Yiannopoulos, whose personal profession as a far-right pundit imploded in 2017 after remarks he had made downplaying the seriousness of pedophilia surfaced, claims he has extra damaging movies to launch about Alexander and Fuentes.
Yiannopoulos claims he’s releasing the video in opposition to Alexander as a result of Alexander dropped Yiannopoulos’ identify to entice younger males. One screenshot purports to indicate Alexander dangling the prospect of a gathering with Yiannopoulos to a teenage boy.
“The rationale I’m doing it's because he used my identify,” Yiannopoulos advised The Every day Beast.
In 2017, Aidan Duncan—a 15-year-old boy in Colorado excited by right-wing politics—despatched Alexander nude footage after the MAGA activist requested him for them, based on an account Duncan gave in a March 2023 podcast look.
Whereas Duncan was a high-school sophomore simply beginning out in politics, Alexander was a 32-year-old with a decade of political work for the Republican Social gathering behind him. And now he was keen to share the connections he had gained via that work with Duncan, so long as the teenager met sure preconditions, together with secrecy.
“You’ll have [me] sharing my complete community with you,” Alexander advised Duncan, based on Snapchat screenshots reviewed by The Every day Beast.
Initially from Dallas, Alexander pleaded responsible to felony property theft in 2007 and felony bank card abuse in 2008. However regardless of his felony background, Alexander—who was then utilizing his authorized identify, Ali Akbar—managed to rise within the GOP in the course of the on-line conservative backlash to the Obama administration. Leveraging his place writing for blogs with names like “Hip Hop Republican,” Alexander acquired funding from billionaire conservative mega-donor Robert Mercer, organized a nationwide membership for bloggers that later confronted questions on how Alexander spent the cash he raised, and hosted an annual occasion on the Conservative Political Motion Convention.
By 2017, Alexander had turn out to be an ardent Trump supporter with a ardour for social-media trash speak. He grew to become a protege of MAGA figures like Roger Stone and InfoWars chief Alex Jones, and ran with a bunch of different younger MAGA web provocateurs, together with anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer and blundering smear artist Jacob Wohl.
However in his messages to Duncan, based on the screenshots, there was one identify Alexander dangled as a perk for the teenager if he saved up contact with Alexander: Milo Yiannopoulos. In a Sept. 4, 2017 change about an upcoming journey Alexander was planning, Alexander purportedly advised Duncan he would introduce the teenager to Yiannopoulos and speculated about whether or not the boy could be Alexander’s “arm sweet” and instructed the boy must be “entertaining.”
“Rolling with me?” Alexander wrote, based on the message. “Largely. I’ll have an Entourage. Relies upon. Ha. I imply, relies upon—if it’s me babysitting you in the course of the day, then no. I don’t have children. If it’s one thing extra entertaining, then possibly. All will depend on what we’re as much as. It doesn't matter what, I’ll allow you to meet Milo. There’s most likely 5 ppl I’ll introduce to him. However who shall be my arm sweet—the one with me all the time in VIP and in/out? Properly that's to be decided by the boy who performs his playing cards essentially the most right.”
“Arm sweet > child sitting,” Alexander added, based on the screenshot.
Different screenshots present Duncan sending Alexander an image, which was redacted within the model of the screenshot reviewed by The Every day Beast. Alexander responded with the “face with coronary heart eyes” emoji and asking the teenager which app Alexander ought to use to ship him cash.
An undated sequence of screenshots purport to indicate Alexander laying out guidelines for his contact with the teenager, a lot of them stressing secrecy and a form of quid professional quo relationship between sexual availability and profession alternatives.
“Every little thing is secret and personal,” one rule learn. “We’re household.”
One other stated that Duncan was “allowed to say no,” however that Alexander may “deprive” him of one thing unspecified in return.
“Boundaries are cool,” the message reads. “Allowed to say no. Nonetheless, the much less you deprive me of, the much less I deprive you of. I’m a giant sharing particular person except it’s not even.”
Lastly, based on the messages, Alexander requested Duncan to “be conscious of one another’s fame.”
In an look final month on a podcast hosted by white supremacist Richard Spencer, Duncan claimed that Alexander needed him to fly to Texas and “be his intern,” assuring the teenager that the boy may simply mislead his dad and mom and say that he was going to a swim meet.
However Alexander had grown annoyed by Could 2019, claiming that the still-underage Duncan wouldn’t ship him “good jack off materials,” based on the screenshots.
“You don’t even ship me movies anymore,” Alexander wrote, based on the message. “No good jack off materials. Don’t even wanna be my facet piece.”
A day later, based on the screenshots, he requested Duncan to return to Texas for per week for an “internship.”
Duncan, now 21, has since turn out to be a comparatively high-profile member of Fuentes’s racist “America First” motion, going by the identify “Smiley.” On Spencer’s podcast, Duncan stated he believed Fuentes knew concerning the rumors about Alexander’s alleged solicitation of nude images.
“I believe Nick is one hundred pc conscious,” Duncan stated on the podcast.
Final Thursday, Duncan posted an announcement on Twitter about his communications with Alexander.
“Once I was 15 I used to be naive and determined,” Duncan wrote. “I assumed I had no selection however to cooperate with inappropriate and humiliating requests if I needed to make it in politics. I figured that was simply the character of the sport.”
Alexander began messaging 17-year-old Lance Johnston in the summertime of 2019, based on Johnston. The floppy-haired teen was a rising star on conservative TikTok communities, amassing greater than 140,000 followers beneath the screenname “Lancevideos.”
Johnston and Alexander began exchanging messages about politics. Johnston claims that a pal warned him early into their communications that Alexander has a historical past of asking for sexually express footage.
“My pal on the time had advised me that he had heard some bizarre rumors about him,” Johnston advised The Every day Beast. “At first I used to be sort of like ‘I don’t know.’ I used to be 17, I had simply gotten into politics.”
Alexander moved “oddly rapidly” in direction of discussing intercourse with the teenager, based on Johnston. In July 2019, in what Johnston claims was the night time of the White Home “Social Media Summit” the place Trump feted Alexander and different conservatives as victims of on-line censorship, the 34-year-old Alexander used the eggplant emoji to ask the teenager for an image of his penis, based on a screenshot.
“Present me ur [eggplant emoji] ” Alexander wrote, based on the messages.
“What’s that?” Johnston stated.
“Omg dick,” Alexander wrote again, based on the image.
Johnston says he refused and rapidly blocked Alexander. Johnston took a screenshot of the change, however he was frightened of elevating the problem extra broadly on the far-right.
“I assumed in my thoughts that he would attempt his finest to attempt to discredit me and damage me politically and influentially with my time in politics,” Johnston stated.
Nonetheless, a pal of Johnston’s publicized the screenshot, which started circulating in conservative circles. Alexander took to a video livestreaming app to defend himself.
“You'll be able to have any dialog you need with somebody who’s 17,” Alexander stated.
The eggplant-emoji screenshot gained new circulation in far-right circles in 2022, as Alexander and Fuentes achieved prominence as members of West’s entourage. That’s when, Johnston claims, Fuentes requested him to say in a textual content message to Alexander that the screenshot had been doctored and apologize. Presumably, that textual content message may then itself be screenshotted and used to discredit Johnston.
“Nick personally requested me to apologize to Ali for supposedly faking the messages,” Johnston stated.
However Johnston insists the eggplant screenshot is respectable. In change for disowning the eggplant change, based on Johnston, Fuentes and Alexander provided to get him a job in politics.
“Mainly they needed me to lie, apologize to Ali, after which they stated they'd attempt to get me a job,” Johnston stated.
Fuentes denied Johnston’s claims about him in an electronic mail to The Every day Beast.
“I by no means provided Lance Johnston a job nor did I urge him to disavow that screenshot,” Fuentes wrote.
In a put up on the social media app Telegram, Fuentes claimed Johnston was utilizing the screenshot to “extort” Alexander into giving him a job on West’s marketing campaign.
4 years later, Johnston thinks Alexander used his prominence within the MAGA motion for “very creepy” ends.
“No particular person like Ali ought to be even close to politics,” he stated.
Alexander, who has described his ethnicity as half-Black and half-Arab and says he’s bisexual, may appear to be an uncommon ally for the avowedly racist and homophobic “America First” motion led by Fuentes.
However Fuentes, a 24-year-old who marched on the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville with a protracted historical past of racist, antisemitic, and sexist remarks, has appeared continuously with Alexander at occasions like a “Cease the Steal” rally in Georgia in 2020.
The pair would later turn out to be arguably essentially the most outstanding far-right figures in West’s short-lived, virulently antisemitic presidential marketing campaign after Yiannopoulos’s ouster.
In textual content messages reviewed by The Every day Beast, Yiannopoulos warned Fuentes in broad phrases about his ally’s fame.
“Alexander desires to return to your occasions to have intercourse with underage boys,” Yiannopoulos wrote in a January 2022 textual content to Fuentes. “Snap out of it. “
Because the allegations mounted in opposition to Alexander over the weekend, Fuentes stated he “disavowed” Alexander’s actions and known as them “gross,” however accused Yiannopoulos of sitting on the claims till he may use them to get revenge on his rivals from the West marketing campaign. In a Telegram put up, Fuentes additionally blamed Duncan and Johnston for “flirting” with Alexander to advance their careers.
“[Duncan] and Lance have been keen to go alongside flirting with Ali (to various levels) with none protest as a result of they thought it could advance their political careers,” Fuentes wrote. “In case you are flirting with grownup homosexual males since you assume it’s going to land you a job, full effectively what you’re doing and it’s gross. Sorry however even at 15, I'd have by no means despatched nudes to an grownup homosexual man. There’s one thing incorrect there.”
Fuentes added that “the actual sufferer on this complete saga is me.” In a self-pitying put up, he referred to himself as an “incel”—web slang for “involuntarily celibate.”
“Seems like all people concerned bought what they needed,” Fuentes wrote. “Besides me, the incel, who's now one way or the other being blamed for issues I had nothing to do with.”
This isn’t the primary time Fuentes’s racist group has been dogged by accusations of inappropriate sexual conduct concerning youngsters. In August, Fuentes affiliate Alejandro Richard Velasquez Gomez was arrested and charged with possessing little one pornography. Velasquez, who glided by “LatinoZoomer” on-line and has been photographed with Fuentes, additionally faces expenses over allegedly threatening a convention held by a rival conservative group.
The accusations in opposition to Alexander and his apology have already alienated a number of far-right figures. Anthime Gionet, the far-right provocateur generally known as “Baked Alaska” who was just lately launched from a jail time period for his position within the Capitol riot, posted an announcement Sunday saying he wouldn't “working with Ali in any capability transferring ahead.”
“So Ali admitted to sending inappropriate messages and flirting with younger boys?” pro-Trump rapper Bryson Grey tweeted. “Disgusting.”
Regardless of his Friday night time apology, Alexander struck a extra defiant tone hours later in a weird, late-night Telegram audio livestream from what seemed to be a karaoke bar. As an newbie efficiency of Billy Joel’s “You Could Be Proper” performed within the background, Alexander advised an acquaintance that his life had turn out to be a “actuality present” revolving round one query: “Implode or not implode.”
Requested by somebody on the stream whether or not he needed to carry out karaoke, Alexander demurred.
“I’m in the midst of a scandal,” Alexander stated at one level. “I can’t do karaoke. I’m in the midst of a scandal that I’m going to outlive.”