EXCLUSIVE: Stefanik Campaign Director Reposted Far-Right Conspiracy Misidentifying Brown University Shooter.
JUDGE ST. — In the quest to identify the Brown University shooter, right-wing operatives falsely accused a third-year undergraduate and blasted his name across the internet. The rumor, which proved last night to be entirely baseless, began in the darkest corners of the conservasphere, with 9/11-truther Laura Loomer, Pizzagate author Jack Posobiec, and eventually found its way to the fingertips of the Executive Director of Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s New York gubernatorial campaign.
Alex de Grasse, who has worked for Stefanik for nine years, reposted two posts on X with the name of the student who was wrongly accused of the incident, according to screenshots archived by The Judge Street Journal.
“It seems very likely that the Brown shooter was an ardent pro Palestine activist of Palestinian heritage,” the islamophobic venture capitalist Shaun Maguire posted on X, including the student’s name, which the Journal is not printing. “Brown is actively scrubbing his online presence, a student they formerly celebrated.”
In a statement to the Journal, de Grasse said “Shaun speaks for himself, he said seems very likely, idk why were they scrubbing this guys accounts?”
Maguire has since deleted the post.
De Grasse also reposted another tweet with the innocent student’s name from the prominent X account @rawsalerts, which has 1.3 million followers.
As the rumor continued, the right trained its ire on Brown’s president, Christina H. Paxson, who issued a statement on December 16 that called the conspiracy theory “irresponsible, harmful and in some cases dangerous for the safety of individuals in our community.”
Thirteen minutes after the statement was released, de Grasse continued to stoke the flames, and directly responded to a video of Paxson in which she said at a press conference, “The shooter is responsible. Horrific gun violence took the lives of these students.”
“What did the shooter yell?” de Grasse posted on X. Loomer and other conspiracy theorists claimed without any evidence that the shooter yelled “Allahu Akbar” before committing the attack.
“I am asking what the shooter yelled,” de Grasse told the Journal. “It’s a question. not an establishment of fact and it speaks for itself of course. And I speak for myself no one else (sic).”
One day later, de Grasse’s distaste for the Brown president appeared to rub off on his boss.
“It seems very clear to me that the president of @BrownUniversity will need to be hauled in front of Congress for a hearing under oath,” Stefanik posted on X on December 17. She got a book deal the last time she interrogated Ivy League presidents under oath.
Revelations of the posts come less than a week after the Journal reported that Stefanik belonged to the New York Young Republican Club, which invited a long list of racists and anti-semites to its annual gala at Cipriani on Saturday. After Politico’s Jason Beeferman asked Stefanik about her membership, the club scrubbed its website of her name. De Grasse was also a member of the NYYRC and attended the gala last year.
While Stefanik says she’s no fan of Nick Fuentes or anti-semitism, she seems comfortable with islamophobia. The North Country congresswoman has repeatedly called Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, the first Muslim to lead New York City, a “jihadist.”
Last night, when authorities announced they suspected a link between the shootings at Brown and the murder of an MIT professor, Stefanik indicated she had suspected that from the start.
“I was deeply concerned about this,” she wrote on X, “and informed my staff to start monitoring this closely a few days ago.
There seems to be a virulent mind virus infecting Republicans. It is a serious mental health problem and represents a threat to our country. One wonders if there is any cure?