Since returning to office, Trump has appointed to his cabinet a number of highly problematic individuals with Christian Nationalist and bigoted beliefs to his cabinet (see Global Project Against Hate and Extremism’s (GPAHE) profiles of Trump’s nominees here). Now, Trump is filling out his staff, and some of his appointees are openly tied to racism, conspiracists, and January 6 insurrectionists.
These new appointees include Darren Beattie, who spread January 6 conspiracy theories and attended conferences organized by white supremacists and supporters of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, appointed to serve as Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the State Department; Peter Marocco, a Christian Nationalist who allegedly participated in the January 6 insurrection, appointed to serve as the director of foreign assistance at the State Department; and Joe Kent, a former political candidate who courted the votes of white supremacists from organizations including the antisemitic Groypers, the far-right group Patriot Prayer, and the white supremacist Proud Boys, appointed to serve as director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
Additionally, Elon Musk’s staff in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) include young men with apparent racist and other extremist views.
This sample of known white supremacists and extremists signals the administration no longer considers white supremacy or racism disqualifying, and may only be the first of similar appointees with such beliefs. Here is more on each appointee:
Joe Kent: far-right failed congressional candidate with white supremacist ties to head the National Counterterrorism Center
On February 3, 2024, Trump nominated the former Washington state congressional candidate Joe Kent to be the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, which leads national counterterrorism efforts and coordinates with foreign intelligence agencies. Trump described Kent as a “former soldier, Green Beret, and CIA officer” who has “hunted down terrorists and criminals his whole life.”
What Trump did not say, however, was that Kent has a documented history of ties to extremists. As director, he will be responsible for an organization that exists as a partnership between the CIA, FBI, and Department of Defense on issues related to terrorism, and will also be in charge of maintaining the center’s database of known and suspected terrorists.
Kent previously ran for a seat in congress from Washington State in 2022 and 2024, losing both times. Throughout his campaigns, his strategy partly revolved around courting the vote of open white nationalists.
During his 2022 campaign, Kent paid $11,375 in “consulting” fees over four months to Graham Jorgensen, who was identified as a member of the violent white supremacist group, the Proud Boys. At the time, the Kent campaign described Jorgensen as a “low-level worker” who handed out literature and put up signs without any ties to “outside organizations.” Another pick for his campaign team that courted controversy was campaign spokesperson Matt Braynard, who spoke at the pro-Trump rally on January 6 prior to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and later sought to portray the participants as “political prisoners.”
According to AP, Kent was also charged with cyberstalking his ex-girlfriend in 2018, though the charges were later dropped and replaced with a restraining order.
Kent has ties to Joey Gibson, the leader of the Washington-based far-right street group Patriot Prayer, which has been involved in clashes with left-wing groups it opposes. Alongside the Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer organized a number of demonstrations primarily in the Portland area that turned violent and led to clashes with counterprotesters. Both Gibson and Jorgensen have been filmed alongside Jacob (Jake) Von Ott, the former leader of the white supremacist group Identity Evropa, known for expressing admiration for the American Nazi Party and posting racist and antisemitic views online. In 2022, Gibson frequently promoted Kent’s campaign to his followers and even spoke at a fundraising event for him in 2021, portraying him as a person who “defended” his community when it was “under assault from antifa.”
Then there are the Goypers, a white supremacist, and highly antisemitic online movement of mainly young people (see GPAHE’s earlier reporting on the Groypers here). Kent was photographed with Greyson Arnold in April 2022, who is a leader within the Groyper movement and owner of a pro-Nazi blog called “Pure Politics,” which features conspiracy theories about the January 6 insurrection, and support for far-right politicians, as well as readers who frequently leave racist and antisemitic comments. Arnold has shared memes online that refer to the Nazis as a “pure race” and once referred to Adolf Hitler as a “complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand.” While Kent himself did not respond to requests for comment on these ties, a Kent strategist claimed that Kent did not know Arnold and that the campaign “does not do background checks on the thousands of people who’ve asked to take selfies with Joe.” Despite this, footage of Kent being interviewed by Arnold was later unearthed by reporters at CNN.
For a time in March 2022, Nick Fuentes, the de facto leader of the Groyper movement publicly supported Kent’s candidacy before Kent publicly disowned him. Kent has noted that earlier in his campaign, a political consultant set up a call regarding the expansion of the campaign’s social media reach that Fuentes allegedly participated in. Kent also appeared on Groyper podcasts such as the American Populist Union (now rebranded as “American Virtue”) on several occasions, including to debate his disavowal of Fuentes. On one appearance on the podcast, Kent stated that he did not see anything wrong with their being a “white people special interest group.”
Kent agreed with another Groyper influencer, who once spoke at Fuentes’ America First Political Action Convention (AFPAC), who appeared at one of Kent’s town hall events in March 2022 and asked Kent whether he supports a “complete shutdown on all immigration for the next 20 years” due to the “demographic replacement that’s happening” in order to “give people time to assimilate.” Kent later threatened to sue The Chronicle, which published a story about the encounter, for defamation with the help of Harmeet Dhillon’s law firm Dhillon Law Group. Dhillon was recently nominated by Trump to lead the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division (see more of GPAHE’s reporting on Dhillon here).
In addition to his proximity to open white supremacists, Kent is an election denier. In 2020, he was an activist for the “Stop the Steal” movement that called for the 2020 presidential election results to be overturned. He also campaigned for the release of those imprisoned for their actions during the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. He has called for defunding the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), an institution he will now be in regular contact with.
Darren Beattie: racist appointed to second highest position in the State Department
Editor’s note: At the time of publishing, reports seemed to indicate that Trump planned to pull Beattie’s appointment, but that he may receive a different post than the one at State.
Following the confirmation of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, the Trump administration tapped Darren Jeffrey Beattie, an individual with racist views and ties to white nationalist groups, to join the department. Just weeks before the election, Beattie had tweeted that “competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” Beattie has also been an outspoken believer in conspiracy theories about the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
This is not the first time that Beattie has been in government. Beattie joined the first Trump administration as a speechwriter for Trump’s chief anti-immigrant advisor Stephen Miller, who is now Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. Beattie was forced out in August 2018 due to revelations that he had participated in a conference organized by white nationalists.
The event in question was a conference organized by the H.L. Mencken Club in 2016, a group which describes itself as a meeting for “independent-minded intellectuals and academics of the Right.” The Mencken Club is known for organizing events with some of the most influential white nationalist figures in the United States. At that event, Beattie participated in a panel discussion with Peter Brimelow, a longtime white nationalist who ran the anti-immigrant website Vdare. Another panelist was Paul Gottfried, who coined the term “alt-right” and has long attended white nationalist events, while the racist ‘alt-right’ leader Richard Spencer was also reported to have been present.
At that event, Beattie made references to “imported masses from the developing world,” a vague reference to the white nationalist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that claims that political elites are secretly organizing a “replacement” of the native white population (see GPAHE’s page on the Great Replacement conspiracy theory here). He also referred to “cultural Marxists” and “corporate Marxists” that “resent the bourgeois for preventing the natural progression toward a system like Brazil” where “a vanishingly small wealthy, gated insulated elite lords it over hordes of easily controlled helots.” These terms point to a conspiratorial belief that envisions advocates for a multicultural society being secret “Marxists” that seek to sow division and overthrow the government.
After being forced out in Trump’s first term, he then briefly served as an advisor to representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in 2019 before being nominated by Trump to join the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad on November 17, 2020. The commission is an independent agency set up by the U.S. Government that works to secure the preservation of historical sites in Europe associated with the heritage of U.S. citizens, including sites tied to the Holocaust. Given his past associations, Beattie’s appointment led to an outcry from civil rights groups. Beattie remained in the position, which involves a three-year term, until January 14, 2022, when then-President Joe Biden sent him a letter asking him to resign by the end of the day or be removed.
Beattie has stated, against all evidence, that nothing he said at the conference was racist or offensive. But he has made many similar racist comments over the years. On December 12, 2020, Beattie tweeted that “‘Shithole countries’ was the high-point of Trump’s presidency,” a reference to racist, degrading comments Trump made in January 2018 referring to Haiti and African countries. He has praised James Watson, the founder of modern genetics, who shamefully suggested at one point that Black people were less intelligent than white people. When Taylor Swift shared a tweet on June 12, 2020, opposing Confederate monuments in her state of Tennessee, Beattie responded by comparing her advocacy to performing sexual favors for music producers.
Around the time of the 2020 presidential election, Beattie pivoted to become an “America First” activist and editor at Revolver News, where he would be known for spreading conspiracy theories about the January 6 insurrection. On the day of the attack, Beattie cheered on the protesters, writing that the “FBI should take a knee to show respect to the MAGA protestors,” and that “this color revolution is red, white and blue,” a reference to the term used to refer to protest-led overthrows of the government in Eastern European countries.
After the insurrection was unsuccessful, however, he started calling January 6 a “Fedsurrection,” or a “false flag” orchestrated by the federal government, and obsessively wrote about the pipe bombs discovered by authorities on January 6, claiming that they belonged to the DNC and that there was a subsequent “cover-up” by Vice President Kamala Harris’ Secret Service detail hide the government’s alleged participation in it. He has also spread conspiracy theories about other instances, such as the assassination attempt on Trump at his Butler, Pa., rally, when Beattie claimed that it “curiously coincided with the interim period following Biden’s disastrous debate performance.”
Beattie was present at the National Conservatism (NatCon) conference in Miami, Fla., in early September 2022, organized by groups close to Trump and Orbán. There, Beattie gave a speech titled “Can One be an American Nationalist” where he claimed that “every important institution in the United States is dictated, if not animated, by a vicious hostility toward precisely the type of American who might identify as a nationalist.” He cites as an example, wrongly, the tire company GoodYear’s decision to allow employees to wear attire that supported Black Lives Matter but not red MAGA hats, despite the company’s policy only banning attire tied to political campaigns. Other speakers on his panel at NatCon included Orbán’s chief advisor Balázs Orbán (no relation) and the rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ Austin Ruse, head of C-FAM. Mark Krikorian, head of the anti-immigrant group Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation who helped spearhead Project 2025, and John O’Sullivan, the president of the pro-Orbán Danube Institute, were present as speakers at the event as well.
Peter Marocco: the January 6 rioter dismantling USAID
On February 3, 2025, Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio tapped Trump loyalist Peter Marocco to be the director of foreign assistance at the State Department, tasking him with dismantling the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Marocco is a veteran of the first Trump administration, where he held several positions in USAID, the Defense Department, the Department of Commerce, and the State Department. While at USAID, Marocco worked as the assistant to the administrator, leading the Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Stabilization (CPS), and was USAID’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Coordinator.
NBC News reported that Marocco was identified as present during the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. According to multiple images and CCTV footage, Marocco, wearing a red facemask and MAGA hat, and his now-wife Merritt Corrigan Marocco were allegedly present among the crowd and entered the U.S. Capitol building by way of a broken window. Marocco was never charged by authorities for these actions.
Despite this career in public service and humanitarian affairs, Marocco is now in charge of dismantling many of the activities he was formerly a part of. Since joining the administration as the director of foreign assistance at the State Department, Marocco has been instrumental for the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize according to internal sources. USAID staffers have claimed that Marocco is “very good at turning things off and questioning things and making people feel uncomfortable,” and that he had “taken apart a lot of things,” while others claimed that they believed that Marocco had returned to USAID in order to take revenge on his former colleagues.
One of the initiatives to be cut includes programs to foster democracy abroad in places such as Hungary, which authoritarian leaders have referred to as “foreign meddling.” During the CPAC Hungary event in 2023, organized by allies of Orbán and the Hungarian Center for Fundamental Rights (CFR), Marocco claimed that federal foreign aid programs intended to promote democracy or gender equality were “family-undermining initiatives” being used to “indoctrinate” citizens of participant countries into “dangerous ideologies” that include support for “gay pride parades,” “illegal abortions,” “terrorism in the Middle East,” and “schools abroad exploiting and grooming children.”
Marocco appears to be promoting agency aims that coincide with a Christian Nationalist worldview. According to his biography, Marocco once led a “private rescue of U.S. citizens and persecuted religious minorities in Afghanistan” in 2021. And as a part of the Nazarene Fund, an organization led and founded by Christian Nationalist and conspiracist radio show host Glenn Beck, Marocco led “humanitarian operations,” that he claims “rescued, resettled and rehabilitated more than 4,000 ISIS [Daesh] survivors” in 2015 and 2016. It appears that Marocco intends to institutionalize these efforts In the U.S. to provide aid to Christians in the Middle East. Around the start of February 2025, Marocco met with Hungary’s State Secretary for the Aid of Persecuted Christians Tristan Azbej to partner with the “Hungary Helps” program, a government-organized non-governmental organization (GONGO) set-up by Orbán and the Hungarian Parliament on April 14, 2019, with the exclusive purpose of providing aid to persecuted Christians in the Middle East and Muslim-majority countries.
Members of DOGE Post Hateful Material Online
On February 2, 2025, Wired published the names of a few of the young men playing key roles in Elon Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has inserted itself into several executive departments. DOGE employees were reportedly given access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, classified information at USAID, as well as the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the General Services Administration (GSA). Many of these DOGE employees turned out to be very young men, between the ages of 19 and 24, many still in college and with no experience in government. Instead, most had previous working experience at various IT, social media, and AI companies, many connected to Musk.
While most of the individuals named by Wired share an affinity for technology with Musk, three staffers have a history of posting extremist materials. For example, 25-year-old Marko Elez was part of DOGE until he was fired (and then quickly rehired) after it was reported that he was the owner of a since-deleted Twitter account that advocated for racism and eugenics. In the past few months, the account owner tweeted that he was “racist before it was cool,” advocated to “normalize Indian hate” and shared his support for a “eugenic immigration policy.” The account at one point wrote that “you could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.”
On the war in the Middle East, Elez wrote that he would “not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth.” On the topic of Indian immigrants working in IT, he wrote “99% of Indian H1Bs will be replaced by slightly smarter LLMs, they’re going back don’t worry guys.”
After the allegations of Elez’s bigoted post history became public, Musk posted a poll to Twitter asking his followers if they should rehire him. Given the return of previously suspended far-right accounts to the platform and flight of non-far-right accounts to other social media platforms, Musk’s supporters overwhelmingly voted to rehire him, which Musk stated he would do in the following days. On February 7, 2025, Vice President J.D. Vance, whose wife Usha Vance happens to be of Indian heritage, agreed with Musk’s decision to rehire Elez, saying that he did not think that “stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.”
Another young DOGE employee, 19-year-old Edward Coristine, who goes by the names “Rivage,” “Big Balls,” and “JoeyCrafter” online, also had a social media history with racist and sexually-explicit content according to Musk Watch. In 2021, Coristine owned a handful of URLs, such as “child-porn.store” and “kkk-is-cool.club” that redirected to an image-sharing website for “shitposting,” or posting low-quality messages on social media in order to spark emotions or “troll” others, that Coristine operated at the time. Another site he operated around April 2021 was called “tesla.sexy,” a registered limited liability company (LLC) that catered to Discord users sharing images while hiding their identities online. A large number of hateful URLs were found to have redirected to the site, including “children-sex.party,” “child-porn.store,” “kkk-is-cool.club,” “n***a.rentals,” “n***a-sex.download,” “owns-a-slave.shop,” “r*ping-women.club,” “ketamine-r*pe.date,” “r*pe.business,” and “r*pes-wo.men.”
On Twitter, Coristine’s activity includes interactions with prominent eugenicist and white supremacist Joseph Bronski, including a since-deleted reply to a post in which Bronski wrote that “white 12 year olds have higher IQs than black adults… Where should the IQ cut off for rights be? The current legal standard is inconsistent.”
The online activity of Gavin Kliger, named by Wired as a special adviser to the director of the OPM and special advisor to the director for information technology, reveals his involvement in the hateful disinformation community cultivated on Twitter by Musk. Beyond Kliger’s support for Musk and accounts defending the activities of the DOGE employees, his social media history, among other things, includes retweets of the originator of the “pizzagate” conspiracy theory Jack Posobiec, the QAnon influencer Michael Flynn, the “ex-gay” Groyper Milo Yiannopoulos, the far-right account “End Wokeness,” the anti-LGBTQ+ account “Libs of TikTok,” and the misogynist “alt-right” influencer Mike Cernovich.
Kliger has also retweeted posts from Nick Fuentes, the leader of the white supremacist, and antisemitic Groypers, and the misogynist Andrew Tate, who is currently being investigated by Romanian authorities for human trafficking, trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor and money laundering. In a December 4, 2024, post retweeted from Fuentes by Kliger, which he has since unshared, Fuentes mocks a photo of a white couple with a dark-skinned child, and the idea of interracial adoption, while referring to women as “huzz,” a pejorative slang term equivalent to “hoes.” In a post from Tate shared by Kliger, he threatens foreigners to “respect British culture, standards of hygiene and social norms. You operate within our parameters … Problem? leave … Multiple complaints of the contrary? Visa revoked.”
In a repost of a tweet by Musk, Kliger reshared a post from the “ex-gay” Groyper Milo Yiannopoulos who claimed that “by closing USAID, Trump and Musk have toppled the most gigantic global terror organization in history.” In a tweet he reposted from Chaya Raichik, who runs the anti-LGBTQ+ account “Libs of TikTok,” Raichik implies that trans individuals are mentally ill by posting an image of a woman with blue and purple hair speaking at a townhall event and saying that “two of my children are receiving gender affirming care.” In another retweet, the white nationalist account “End Wokeness” posted a glowing video of a January 6 participant crying after learning about Trump’s pardons of them. The man in the post, Christopher Kuehne, was a member of the white supremacist Kansas City Proud Boys and had been sentenced to 75 days in prison after he pleaded guilty to one felony count of obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder. In one post from November 2024 regarding the possibility of New York Mayor Eric Adams shutting down a migrant shelter, Kliger himself wrote: “Just leave them be for a few more months. Will be much more convenient to deport them all if they are in one spot.”
On his Substack, Kliger wrote long-form posts in defense of Trump’s nominees for the incoming administration, such as Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth. In the conspiracist post on Gaetz titled “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz: How the Deep State Destroys Its Enemies,” Kliger claims that Gaetz, who has been under investigation for sex trafficking, was framed by “deep state” CIA agents, in order to take down the “firebrand congressman.”
Kliger lists on his Linkedin profile that his position is “Special Advisor to the Director” at the Office of Personnel Management, though Wired has reported that Kliger has an email associated with DOGE.
