A former Republican state legislator from Michigan has gained prominence in QAnon circles, and the organization he founded is moving closer to getting its candidates elected to key positions in battleground states.
“If one of these candidates in the future gets elected, there is a QAnon influencer that could help lead to a constitutional crisis,” said Alex Kaplan, a senior researcher for Media Matters for America.
The 65-year-old Willott, who QAnon adherents have come to believe is John F. Kennedy Jr. in disguise, and Marchant co-founded America First Secretary of State Coalition, which aims to elect pro-Trump election conspiracists to oversee statewide elections.
Willott then became a political power broker by joining forces with Marchant, and they formalized their coalition in May 2021 at a meeting also attended by Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, former Claremont Institute president Brian E. Kennedy and Joe Hoft, the brother of right-wing Gateway Pundit blogger Jim Hoft.
Rival QAnon leaders consider Willott to be a huckster, but he’s influential to a subset of Trump-backed candidates for secretary of state, including Marchant, who’s running in Nevada, and Rachel Hamm, who’s running in California and openly fantasizes about throwing prominent Democrats into prison at Guantanamo Bay.
“Remember, Juan told us the other night that if we can’t get justice through our courts, he has built another one,” Hamm said in on meeting that streamed online. “Remember? He said that the other night. We built one at Gitmo, they said … Juan has been very good to us.”