Lara Trump Wants to Hire a QAnon-Pushing Election Denier to the RNC

Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican National Committee is going about as expected. In the week since Michael Whatley, an election denier, and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, were elected as chair and co-chair, the RNC has slashed 60 staffers while hiring Christina Bobb, a former Trump lawyer who literally wrote a book about the false idea that the 2020 election was rigged, as its new election integrity counsel.

There’s plenty more where that came from, apparently. Lara Trump said in an interview on Thursday that she wants to hire Scott Presler, a QAnon conspiracy theorist who was present at rally that preceded the Jan. 6 insurrection, to serve in the RNC’s “legal ballot harvesting division.” Lara Trump’s comments were first spotted by Media Matters.

“We have to start thinking about things like legal ballot harvesting,” Trump told right-wing commentator Benny Johnson. “Something we’ve never embraced as a party. We’re going to start doing it now. I’m going to have a call very soon with Scott Presler who is an amazing vote register, he has registered so many people in this country. I think he’s fantastic. I want him on our legal ballot harvesting division.”

Presler is a right-wing influencer, activist, and ardent election denier. He was present at the rally ahead of the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and wrote that the attack was the “largest civil rights protest in American history.” Media Matters points out that he has a rich history of promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory — which holds, essentially, that America is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles, and that Trump will ultimately bring them all to justice. He has also worked for the group Act for America, which the Southern Poverty Law Center categorizes as an anti-Muslim hate group.

Lara Trump’s comments on Thursday aren’t the first time Presler has been floated as an RNC staffer. Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally who tried to unseat then-RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel in Jan. 2023, said while campaigning for the job that Presler would be one of her first hires. Presler had published RNC members’ names and addresses as part of the effort to prevent McDaniel from winning another term.

McDaniel defeated Dhillon, but now that she’s gone and the MAGA movement has taken over the RNC, the runway is clear for Presler and other conspiracy theorists to take over the committee.

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