Phil Godlewski got rich peddling conspiracy theories about Democrats being groomers and pedophiles. Turns out he is one!
According to the far-right cult of QAnon, an elite cabal of pedophiles runs the world and the Democratic Party, specifically. And yet, time and again, it turns out to be far-right politicians like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.), who’s under federal investigation for human trafficking and statutory rape, and now QAnon leaders themselves who face allegations of grooming and child sexual abuse.
Phil Godlewski, a Pennsylvania-based QAnon leader with hundreds of thousands of followers on right-wing social platforms like Telegram and Rumble, sued a local newspaper in 2021 for defamation after the Scranton Times-Tribune mentioned a 2010 indictment against Godlewski for “corruption of a minor” in a profile about him. Now, per a new report from the Daily Beast, Godlewski’s defamation lawsuit has inadvertently exposed the full extent of his disturbing history of grooming and raping a teenage girl, who’s called “B.D.” in court records, over a period of time. More recently, text messages show he pressured a now-adult B.D. to lie about the situation in court.
According to police reports from the time and an affidavit filed this month by B.D. as part of the ongoing defamation suit, Godlewski met B.D. in 2008 when she was 15 and he was a 25-year-old baseball coach at her high school. Godlewski comforted the teen when her boyfriend at the time died by suicide, and they began having sex (again: statutory rape) shortly after, when she was still 15.
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Court filings from the Times-Tribune allege that as recently as May of this year, Godlewski contacted B.D. and offered her “a very, very large, and very, very unique financial opportunity,” adding, apparently in reference to the paper, “I don’t trust those motherfuckers and I am literally foaming at the mouth to take them down once and for all.” The Times-Tribune’s lawyers argue that Godlewski was implying he would pay B.D. to perjure herself by lying about their relationship in court.
It’s a gutting, abhorrent story, and one that certainly flies in the face of recent months of right-wing lies about liberal, predatory, LGBTQ child “groomers.” But between the aforementioned federal investigation of Gaetz and similar allegations against other far-right, QAnon-adjacent politicians (ahem, Google search “Lauren Boebart husband bowling alley,” please), I wish this story were more surprising.
