Media Matters' Alex Kaplan explains the growing ties between the QAnon and election denial movements
Kaplan: A QAnon influencer's involvement with candidates coalition for election administration positions could potentially “connect QAnon to a constitutional crisis”
Published
Alex Kaplan Fever Dreams interview
Citation From the November 2, 2022, edition of The Daily Beast's Fever Dreams
ALEX KAPLAN (SENIOR RESEARCHER, MEDIA MATTERS): So I have been tracking QAnon for a while. I've been tracking it for the last few years, seeing it have extreme influence online and increasingly in society. And that included monitoring conferences by a QAnon influencer known online as QAnon John. I watched one conference that he had last year in Las Vegas, and I wasn't that familiar with Juan O. Savin at the time, I admit, but I knew he was attending and he — some people — so the conference was three days and the last day multiple political candidates spoke and one of them was a guy named Jim Marchant. Actually, it was controversial, his attendance to begin with. And it was kind of him — he hemmed and hawed about going, but when he wound up going and he went on stage and made this shocking admission, frankly, claiming that he had formed this coalition of secretary of state candidates and he's running for Nevada secretary of state, Republican candidates, election denier candidates, and claimed that this coalition and that his candidacy, frankly, was inspired by and it was heavily connected to a QAnon influencer who was attending the conference known as Juan O. Savin. And he said that Juan O. Savin basically helped form this coalition and encouraged him to run. And I remember talking to other QAnon researchers at the time who were watching the speech and we were all shocked. We couldn't believe that we heard what he just said. We were all like, "Did he say that correctly?" Because that was stunning admission. And when I heard that, I was like, "OK, this is something I need to dig into further and keep an eye on and see what they even start saying."
WILL SOMMER (CO-HOST): So you're saying this was a stunning admission?
KAPLAN: Yeah. So this was a stunning thing to say. And I recognized pretty much immediately how significant this was and felt that, OK, that there was more to dig into here, that I felt that there could be more that has been said in interviews online involving Savin. ... And I started from there looking into what he has said online and particularly since the conference.
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KELLY WEILL (CO-HOST): So at this conference, Jim Marchant sort of introduces this idea of a coalition that he's in with Juan O. Savin. Who are the other candidates in this coalition and how many of them are running in the general?
KAPLAN: So the number's changed over time. But Savin is like claimed now — like I think he's claimed like well over a dozen, maybe like 20. But I can say not all of them have like openly I would say identify with Savin in person. There have been some that have more explicitly identified. There were some besides Marchant that attended this QAnon conference. There was Kristina Karamo, running for secretary of state in Michigan. There is Mark Finchem, who was running — who's running for secretary of state in Arizona. There was a, at the time, Rachel Hamm, who was running for secretary of state in California. She lost her primary, although Savin has baselessly claimed that she was a victim of voter fraud in the primary. There have been other candidates involved in this coalition who were not at the conference, like Doug Mastriano, running for governor of Pennsylvania because the secretary of state is appointed by the governor there. Kari Lake has identified herself as part of this coalition, even though she's running for governor [of Arizona]. There are others. Those are some of the more high profile ones.
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SOMMER: All these people, it goes without saying, are election deniers. But what does their agenda look like? I mean, what do they want to do as secretary of state?
KAPLAN: Well, it's hard for me to say for sure exactly what they would do if elected, but they believe essentially that the 2020 election was fraudulent, that it was stolen, and this is baseless. But I think the concern is that if these people got elected, they could try to cast doubt on the election result or frankly, just try to flat out overturn it and refuse to certify it, which I have said that what this could do is essentially connect QAnon to a constitutional crisis, and that's what could play out here if that's what happens.
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SOMMER: What does it say about QAnon's role in the Republican Party that a guy like this can find himself in this position where he's sort of playing this kingmaker role or knitting together these coalitions?
KAPLAN: Yeah, I think it says how much the QAnon movement has burrowed itself in our political system and within the Republican Party. And particularly with the election denial movement, the QAnon movement has really gained legs in it. This was not the only example of QAnon burrowing itself in the election denial movement, particularly within the Republican Party. We've had recently, in recent months, particularly True the Vote, a major election denial organization that became big through the false film 2000 Mules, claiming mass voter fraud, has actively partnered with the QAnon community in order to supposedly feed claims of voter fraud to law enforcement that they partnered up with. They have partnered with another group that's been targeting ballot drop boxes, which was founded by a QAnon supporter, and she has in turn partnered with the same QAnon influencers, many of the same QAnon influencers. And it's hard to say exactly how specifically QAnon influential or is tied to this per se, but like we've seen some times, I would say in the last year, some language in Republican circles about grooming and pedophilia that if not directly influenced by QAnon I would say have been connected to it in a certain way. I think we've seen this connection grow, particularly over time, even with the mainstream media tech platform crackdowns.