MAGA candidate's scandal-plagued staff linked to former Klan leader: report

Two county-level organizers for Georgia Senate candidate Mike Collins have ties to a far-right group started by a former Ku Klux Klan leader, according to a Daily Beast exclusive, adding to the controversies around the Trump-endorsed Republican.

The group, American Patriots USA, was founded by Chester Doles, who once ranked second in the Maryland Klan and later led the neo-Nazi National Alliance. He served time after beating a Black man in 1993. The Southern Poverty Law Center labels the group a white nationalist hate organization. Though Doles says he's left white supremacy behind, the Beast reports he has kept showing up at gatherings of white supremacists, including the deadly 2017 Charlottesville rally.

Michael Boggus, who represented Banks County as one of Collins' "convoy captains," formerly ran the group's operations in Georgia and campaigned beside Doles in his 2020 congressional bid. Boggus didn't respond to the Beast. He told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the time that a private conversation changed his view of Doles.

"I cannot stand the Klan," Boggus said then.

Joshua Mote, Collins' captain for Hall County, was a vice president of the group under Doles. A photo obtained by the Beast shows him with Doles and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Last year, Mote posted a video cheering Collins' Senate announcement, and Collins responded with an enthusiastic reply. Separately, Mote was once named as manager of a sheriff candidate's campaign on a white supremacist website, and photos later appeared of that candidate apparently giving a Klan salute.

Mote said the campaign asked him to serve as captain in February and that he left in April after the death of his toddler son. He denied being racist and said the group wasn't a hate group in his roughly eight months there, adding that he and others left once they learned Doles wasn't the reformed Christian he claimed to be.

The links clash with Collins' own past statements. After Doles listed him as a speaker at a 2019 pro-Trump event, Collins branded the group a "hate organization." He's since lauded his convoy captains, named in every county, as the engine of his grassroots effort.

The report adds to a run of controversies. CNN reported in July on antisemitic posts by Collins' son-in-law, which prompted him to scrub all ties on his campaign site, and racist posts by a former intern surfaced in August. Collins himself, meanwhile, landed in hot water for endorsing an antisemitic attack on a reporter.

Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, who leads Collins handily in current polling averages at press time, responded with a statement on Wednesday. "Another week, another scandal for Mike Collins, who is surrounded at work, at home, and now at his campaign by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Klan associates," he said. "Tomorrow night on the debate stage the bigot congressman will finally have to answer for his extensive and disqualifying ties to white nationalism."