“Some of the names of QAnon-adjacent congressional candidates will be familiar, such as Republican incumbents Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, both considered long shots in 2020 whose first week in office included the January 6 assault on the Capitol by some of their own supporters, and who January 6 rally organizers allege met with them as part of their efforts to keep Trump in office — an allegation Boebert has denied,” Grant explains. “They are joined by newcomers like Republican Rep. Mayra Flores of Texas, who spread conspiracy theories that January 6 was ‘surely caused by infiltrators,’ and is currently serving in Congress after winning a special election this past spring.”

Grant continues, “There’s also Ohio Republican congressional candidate J.R. Majewski who was present at the Capitol on January 6 and boasted of helping get Trump supporters there, that has a chance at prevailing in a toss-up race. Like Greene and Boebert, Flores and Majewski are on record affirming support for QAnon — ‘I believe in everything that’s been put out from Q,’ Majewski said in 2021 — and both have tried to mislead reporters when questioned about their support for QAnon, denying or disavowing their past statements even as they still advance some core QAnon missions, such as casting doubt on the results of the 2020 election.”

QAnon have been major promotors of the Big Lie, the debunked conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump through widespread voter fraud. And QAnon supporters were among the extremists who attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in the hope of preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s Electoral College victory. QAnon supporter Jacob Chansley, dubbed the QAnon Shaman, is now serving a 41-month sentence in federal prison for his role in the attack on the Capitol Building.

“The dangers in this core belief in a stolen election becomes even more evident at the state-level, where QAnon-supporting candidates may be elected into positions with critical roles in the 2024 election, as part of a strategy led by QAnon influencers beginning in 2021,” Grant observes. “They have scored two supportive Republican candidates for governor, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Dan Cox in Maryland, and two for secretary of state, Republicans Jim Marchant in Nevada and Mark Finchem in Arizona. Mastriano and Cox both attended a QAnon conference in April 2022, ‘Patriots Arise,’ at which the opening speaker claimed that ‘child satanic trafficking’ existed and that he would ‘not stop until these people’ — the alleged traffickers — ‘are dead and in boxes in the ground.’ After Mastriano pitched himself to the crowd as the one who God would help win — and that what he would do to the state of Pennsylvania would make Florida look like ‘amateur hour’ — organizers presented him with a sword to ‘bless him.’”