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Scott Presler

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Scott Ryan Presler (born 1987 or 1988) is an American conservative activist. Briefly an organizer for the Republican Party of Virginia before the 2016 U.S. elections, Presler came to prominence as coordinator of the "March Against Sharia" events organized by anti-Muslim advocacy group ACT for America.[1][2]

Scott Presler
Presler in 2023
Born
Scott Ryan Presler

1987 or 1988 (age 36–37)
EducationGeorge Mason University
OccupationPolitical activist
Years active2015–present
Political partyRepublican

Presler was a participant, and sometimes a speaker or organizer, in the "Stop the Steal" protests promoting the false claim that widespread electoral fraud allowed former vice president Joe Biden to win the 2020 U.S. presidential election against incumbent Donald Trump.[3][4][5]

Biography

Scott Ryan Presler was born in 1987 or 1988.[2][6] The son of a United States Navy captain,[7] Presler was raised in Florida and Fairfax County, Virginia, and had lived in Virginia Beach for around a year by 2016.[8] Presler earned a degree in criminal justice from George Mason University.[8] When interviewed by The Virginian-Pilot in 2016, Presler said that he had come out as gay in June that year following the shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 people were killed.[8]

Career

2016 U.S. elections

Presler was employed as a regional field director for the Republican Party of Virginia for around a year in 2015 and 2016.[2] In 2016, Presler knocked on doors and registered voters in support of the Donald Trump presidential campaign.[8] With other Trump supporters, Presler constructed a small political display in Virginia Beach that was featured in The Virginian-Pilot.[9] He also attended Norfolk's PrideFest, an LGBT festival, later that year with Republican Party officials.[8] Politico Playbook reported in January 2023 that, according to three of the publication's sources, Presler's work with the Republican Party of Virginia in 2016 ended after he "engaged in sexual activity inside a Virginia Beach office the RNC shared with the state party — and posted explicit pictures of the encounter on Craigslist."[10][11]

Presler co-founded the LGBTQ coalition Gays for Trump,[7][12] and was reported to be its chairman in 2017.[13] In a Bloomberg News interview, Presler stated he partly used Twitter as an extension of his political organizing work;[14] during the race, he frequently tweeted messages supportive of Trump, using the hashtag "#gaysfortrump", and tweeted messages attacking Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.[8]

Presler was present at the Gays for Trump DeploraBall held in Maryland after the inauguration of Trump as president on January 20, 2017,[13] and led the Virginia branch of the nationwide March 4 Trump later that March.[12]

ACT for America, 2017–2018

In a 2017 Washington Post interview, Presler said he was motivated to become a volunteer for anti-Muslim advocacy group ACT for America that year after hearing its founder, Brigitte Gabriel, speak.[2] After volunteering for ACT for America for three months,[2] Presler was employed by the group until the following year, according to his Facebook page.[15] In June 2017, Presler was reported to be coordinator of the "March Against Sharia" events organized by ACT for America in various states,[1][16] as part of the counter-jihad movement.[17] According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization, the marches "attracted various factions of the radical right, including white nationalists, neo-Nazis and antigovernment extremists" that were all "united by anti-Muslim animus."[16]

Presler organized a local offshoot of the March Against Sharia in Portland, Oregon, on June 10, 2017.[6][18] Presler announced the event's cancellation a week earlier, citing Portland mayor Ted Wheeler's request for the General Services Administration (GSA) to not issue a permit for Presler's event to occur at a park across from the Portland City Hall, and Wheeler's call for the GSA to revoke its permit for a Trump rally organized by Joey Gibson, founder of the far-right group Patriot Prayer.[6][18] A march on the same date in Seattle, Washington, was organized by Presler soon after.[19][20]

Prior to the 2017 Virginia gubernatorial election, Republican Party candidate Ed Gillespie requested an endorsement from Presler, as Presler was at that time the vice chairman of the Virginia Beach Young Republicans and a volunteer for Gillespie's campaign.[2] A spokesperson of Gillespie told The Washington Post that he was not aware of Presler's involvement with ACT for America; Gillespie's campaign did not denounce Presler's endorsement.[2]

2020 U.S. elections

 
Presler in San Francisco in 2020

According to a 2021 report by Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media watchdog, Presler promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory and political movement by using hashtags in dozens of posts on Instagram in 2018 and 2019.[21][3][22] Media Matters for America found Instagram posts by Presler which used the QAnon-related hashtags "QAnon" and "wwg1wga".[23]

In April 2019, Presler held an activism workshop in the town of Kent, Connecticut, for the Connecticut Republican Party in preparation for the 2020 elections.[24][25] A protest of Presler's event was organized by the Kent Democratic Town Committee after it failed to have his event canceled.[25][26] After state house representative Cara Pavalock-D'Amato praised Presler on a social media webpage for the event, the Southern Poverty Law Center invoked the state's Freedom of Information Act to request some of Pavalock-D'Amato's email correspondences.[27]

Presler organized a small clean-up event in Baltimore, Maryland, through social media the month after President Trump's tweets in July 2019 which described the congressional district represented by Democratic Party congressman Elijah Cummings as a "rodent infested mess".[15] The event was attended by more than 100 volunteers and resulted in 29 tons of trash cleaned from streets.[28] Another event in Los Angeles, California, organized by Presler involved dozens of volunteers.[28][29] In December, Presler was advertised as appearing alongside activist Dylan Wheeler at an immigration-focused event in Bettendorf, Iowa, hosted by the Scott County Teenage Republicans which concluded with a speech by white supremacist political commentator Nick Fuentes.[30][31]

In 2020, Presler continued to be involved in events in support of President Trump's re-election campaign in cities such as San Francisco, California,[32][33] and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[34] During the nationwide protests surrounding the 2020 election, Presler was involved with demonstrations in the capital cities of Pennsylvania and Georgia, both battleground states, and Washington, D.C.[3][4][5] On November 5, 2020, two days after polls had closed but before the election's winner had been decided, Presler led a two-day "Stop the Steal" demonstration at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg attended by around 100 supporters of Trump.[3][35][36] Presler told Reuters about his intentions to fundraise for "an audit of the state's vote count".[35] A week after the victory of the Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden in the election, Presler was involved in a pro-Trump demonstration in downtown Washington, D.C.,[4] and later that month spoke at a "Stop the Steal" rally at the Georgia State Capitol.[5]

Presler attended the rally outside of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, that ended with an attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters, but he did not enter the Capitol in the attack, according to the Times Union and The Post-Star of New York.[37][38][21] According to Mother Jones magazine, Presler was able to obtain VIP seats for his parents at Trump's speech at The Ellipse that day.[39] Presler published at least two tweets about the rally in the previous week,[40] as well as a video of himself near the Capitol on January 6 in which he described the events that day as the "largest civil rights protest in American history."[39][41]

Voter registration efforts, 2021–2023

Presler was a speaker at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference held in Orlando, Florida, in February 2021.[42] According to 2023 reporting by Newsday, in May 2021, Presler became the brand ambassador for Rise NY PAC, a political action committee operated by the sister of New York congressional candidate George Santos following his unsuccessful run for Congress in 2020.[43][44]

Presler was scheduled to appear at a Republican Party voter registration event in the town of Wilton, in Upstate New York, on August 25, 2021.[37] The event was sponsored by the Saratoga County Republican Committee, and House Representative Elise Stefanik,[38][21] who promoted Presler's appearance on Twitter.[37] Stefanik and the county Republican Party were criticized by Democratic Party officials from her congressional district, who urged them to renounce Presler, but in response the Republican Party county chairman claimed the Democrats wanted to divert attention from their political failures.[38][21] Stefanik later deleted her tweet and Presler ultimately canceled his appearance due to a Rise NY staff member contracting COVID-19.[40][45] Presler announced the event would be held again on two later occasions but ultimately canceled both events.[40][46]

 
Presler speaking with the New York State Young Republicans in 2022

In December 2022, Presler was involved in get-out-the-vote efforts during the runoff election in the U.S. Senate election in Georgia.[47] Later in December, Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer and Republican National Committee (RNC) committee member, announced her candidacy in the 2023 RNC chairman election, challenging current chair Ronna McDaniel.[48][10] The day of her announcement, Dhillon said on Twitter that she would offer a job to Presler if she was elected.[10] During the race, Presler published the email addresses and Twitter account names of RNC committee members on a website called "hireharmeet.com", which Dhillon shared on Twitter.[48][10]

Prior to the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April 2023, Presler traveled through Wisconsin and appeared on conservative talk radio shows to promote candidate Daniel Kelly, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice.[41][49] After posting a video on Twitter of himself standing alongside Presler, Kelly was questioned by press on Presler's presence at the United States Capitol on the day of the Capitol attack, to which Kelly responded that he was not aware of Presler's previous activities and was appreciative of his recent work in Wisconsin.[41][49][50]

2024 U.S. elections

Presler runs a non-profit organization, Early Vote Action, intended to "organize & mobilize Republicans to vote early." Shortly after her installation as Republican National Committee co-chair, Lara Trump, Donald Trump's daughter-in-law, expressed her interest to hire Presler to lead the Republican Party's "legal ballot harvesting" efforts. The RNC later clarified it would not be hiring Presler.[51]

In the 2024 United States presidential election, Presler worked on encouraging voters to vote for Donald Trump in the swing state of Pennsylvania, including some Amish communities. He cited the local case of an Amish farmer whose dairy was raided by state authorities for selling unpasteurized milk without a permit; the raid preceded reports that two children had fallen sick due to E. coli poisoning connected to the farmer's milk.[52][53] He threaten to sue Luzerne County at a county meeting over claims of a voter registration and mail-in ballot application backlog, but did not ultimately file a lawsuit. He made similar accusations during appearances on right-wing media, notably the War Room podcast hosted by political operative Steve Bannon.[54]

Views

LGBT rights

In a 2016 interview by The Virginian-Pilot, Presler said he was not put off by the Republican Party's positions on gay rights despite being a gay man.[8] Presler further explained that he was supporting Trump's 2016 presidential campaign over Hillary Clinton partly because of the Second Amendment: "I 100 percent believe in the notion that armed gays don't get bashed. It is our right to feel safe."[8]

Presler said on Twitter that he supported President Trump's 2017 Presidential Memorandum on Military Service by Transgender Individuals, which prohibited open military service and enlistment of transgender Americans, although he did not agree with it.[55][56]

Presler voiced his support for the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, commonly referred to as the "Don't Say Gay" law, signed into law by state governor Ron DeSantis in 2022.[57][58]

Islam

In 2017, while employed by anti-Muslim advocacy group ACT for America, Presler said in an NPR interview that he felt inspired to oppose "Muslim extremism" after the 2016 shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando.[1] Because the shooter allegedly swore allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Presler said he felt the shooting exemplified homophobia in what he termed as "orthodox Islam".[1] Presler also told The Washington Post that he disagreed with the Southern Poverty Law Center's claims that ACT for America is an extremist group and the "largest grass-roots anti-Muslim group in America", insisting that ACT for America intends to help girls and women affected by Sharia (Islamic law).[2]

References

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  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Portnoy, Jenna (June 9, 2017). "Ed Gillespie declines to denounce endorsement from anti-Muslim activist". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 31, 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d Prose, J. D. (February 3, 2023). "Pa. GOP groups holding events with organizer of 'Stop the Steal' rallies in 2020". PennLive. Archived from the original on March 28, 2023. Retrieved March 28, 2023.
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  37. ^ a b c Gavin, Robert (August 20, 2021). "Stefanik touts appearance of ex-strategist for group called anti-Muslim". Times Union. Albany, New York. Archived from the original on March 29, 2023. Retrieved March 29, 2023.
  38. ^ a b c Liberatore, Wendy (August 23, 2021). "Saratoga Springs vigil to counter Presler's GOP voter registration drive". Times Union. Albany, New York. Archived from the original on March 29, 2023. Retrieved March 29, 2023.
  39. ^ a b Mencimer, Stephanie (January 6, 2023). "The rise and fall of Stop the Steal's favorite conference". Mother Jones. Archived from the original on April 7, 2023. Retrieved March 31, 2023.
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  41. ^ a b c Bauer, Scott (March 23, 2023). "Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate OK with Jan. 6 participant". Associated Press. Archived from the original on March 23, 2023. Retrieved April 13, 2023.
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  49. ^ a b Hess, Corrinne (March 23, 2023). "Supreme Court candidate Daniel Kelly says he's not bothered by association with 'stop the steal' activist, Jan. 6 participant Scott Presler". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Archived from the original on April 7, 2023. Retrieved March 31, 2023.
  50. ^ Astor, Maggie (April 6, 2023). "5 Lessons for Democrats From Victories in Wisconsin and Chicago". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 6, 2023. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
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  52. ^ Mendick, Robert (October 15, 2024). "For decades, the Amish have declined to vote – that could all change (and it's because of milk)". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved November 5, 2024.
  53. ^ Roth, Fallon (October 13, 2024). "MAGA influencer Scott Presler brought his GOP voter registration message to Bucks County during a Trump-Kennedy unity event". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved November 10, 2024.
  54. ^ Itkowitz, Colby (November 3, 2024). "A Pennsylvania county finds itself at the center of an election denial storm". The Washington Post. Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Retrieved November 10, 2024.
  55. ^ "Trump: Transgender people 'can't serve' in US military". BBC News. July 26, 2017. Archived from the original on July 26, 2017. Retrieved May 7, 2023.
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  57. ^ Reed, Erin (July 3, 2023). "Gay & Trans Republicans shocked DeSantis now targeting them". Los Angeles Blade. Retrieved July 21, 2023.
  58. ^ "'Don't Say Gay' bill signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis". Associated Press. March 28, 2022. Retrieved July 21, 2023.
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