Mike Collins, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Georgia, walked into his first debate with Sen. Jon Ossoff on Thursday carrying a new problem. The day before, FOX 5 Atlanta reported, building on reporting by The Daily Beast, that two of his campaign's local leaders had come out of a white nationalist group.

The group is American Patriots USA. It was founded by Chester Doles, a former leader in both the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazi National Alliance. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies it as a white nationalist hate group.

Here are the two men:

• Joshua Mote was the group's vice president. He later served as a Hall County "convoy captain" for the Collins campaign, starting in February. He told reporters he stepped away in April after his 2-year-old son died.
• Michael Boggus was the group's state director. According to the report, he represented Banks County for the Collins campaign.

Collins already knew what this group was

This is the part that makes it hard to call bad luck. FOX 5 reports that Collins himself denounced American Patriots USA as a hate organization in 2019, after Doles listed him as an invited speaker at one of the group's rallies.

So the group wasn't unknown to Collins. He named it as a hate group seven years ago. His campaign still ended up with its former vice president and former state director in county-level roles.

Doles's record isn't a secret either. He went to jail after a 1993 conviction for beating a Black man in Maryland, and he attended the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville.

The Collins campaign's answer, through spokesman Meyer Siegfried: "The past associations of these individuals was not known to the campaign, and these views do not represent Mike Collins or the more than 800 Convoy Captains around the state that want leaders who will deliver a prosperous, safer, and more affordable Georgia."

Mote told reporters he isn't a racist and that he left the group: "When we learned who [Doles] was, and that he was not the reformed Christian he claimed to be, we left immediately." Boggus didn't respond to reporters. He has previously told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Doles had changed: "He's proven to me that he's walked away from that lifestyle. Because I cannot stand the Klan."

The debate: "That's my family"

At Thursday's debate, Ossoff went straight at it. According to The Washington Sun, he called Collins a "bigot" and said Collins had "hired half the Third Reich to staff [his] congressional office." He also raised Collins' son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II: "Imagine running for the U.S. Senate while neo-Nazi propaganda is disseminated to an audience of millions from your home."

When moderator Rick Folbaum asked Collins what he had said to his daughter and son-in-law about the posts, and whether he would "once and for all denounce white supremacy," Talking Points Memo reported, his first words were: "That's my family."

Then he pivoted to his opponent. "The craziness that Jon Ossoff has been spewing out there — I actually had a crazy person get put in jail this weekend," he said, referring to a man arrested in Buffalo, New York, for allegedly threatening him and his son-in-law. Only after that did he offer the line he always offers: he has "condemned racism, antisemitism, hate."

TPM also reported that Collins didn't answer when asked who won the 2020 presidential election. He has previously and falsely claimed that Trump won Georgia.

This is not the first time

We have been keeping count, because the list keeps growing. In August we laid out four people connected to Collins — each documented by a different newsroom — who had been caught posting or defending Nazi imagery, white nationalist company or antisemitic abuse:

• His son-in-law, whom CNN reported is a "pro-White nationalist" influencer with more than 1.5 million followers. We covered that in July.
• His chief of staff, who Slate reported was in a group chat with Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer, and who Collins replaced in July.
• His digital director.
• A paid contractor for his leadership PAC, who posted a swastika and an image of himself in Klan robes. Collins' PAC paid him $7,700.

Now add two county leaders from a group Collins had already called a hate group. This time the answer was that the campaign didn't know and that these views don't represent Mike Collins. Every time, Collins' own answer has been a general condemnation of "racism, antisemitism, hate" that never names the person.

What the record shows

The former vice president and former state director of American Patriots USA — a white nationalist hate group founded by former Klan leader Chester Doles — held county roles in Mike Collins' Senate campaign, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. Collins had publicly denounced the same group as a hate organization in 2019. Asked at Thursday's debate what he had said to his son-in-law about his posts and whether he would denounce white supremacy, Collins began with "That's my family" and then turned to attacking Jon Ossoff.

Source

Report: Collins campaign leaders tied to group founded by former KKK leader — FOX 5 Atlanta